He
it was who told Jaimihr of the unexpected departure through the
palace-grounds.
"Ride, Jaimihr-sahib! Ride!" he advised him.
"How many have you? A hundred? Plenty! Ride and cut him off! There
is but one road to Alwa's place; he must pass by the northern ford
through Howrah River. Ride and cut him off!"
So, loose-reined, foam-flecked, breathing vengeance, Jaimihr and his
hundred thundered through the dark hot night, making a bee-line for the
point where Alwa's band must pass in order to take the shortest route
to safety.
It was his word to the Jew that saved Alwa's neck. He and his men were
riding borrowed horses, and he had promised to return them and reclaim
his own. They had moved at a walk through winding, dark palace-alleys,
led by a palace attendant, and debouched through a narrow door that
gave barely horse-room into the road where Jaimihr had once killed a
Maharati trader who molested Rosemary McClean. The missionary and his
daughter were mounted on the horses seized in Jaimihr's stable;
Joanna, moaning about "three gold mohurs, sahib--three, where are
they?" was up behind Ali Partab, tossed like a pea on a drum-skin by
the lunging movements of the wonder of a horse.
Instead of heading straight for home, in which case--although he did
not know it--he would have been surely overhauled and brought to bay,
he led at a stiff hand gallop to the Jew's, changed horses, crossed the
ford by the burning ghats, and swooped in a wide half-circle for the
sandy trail that would take him homeward.
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