Strangers drawn from the ends of the earth, jewelled and plumed were we;
I was the Lord of the Inca Race, and she was the Queen of the Sea.
Under the stars beyond our stars where the reinless meteors glow,
Hotly we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago.

Dust of the stars was under our feet, glitter of stars above —
Wrecks of our wrath dropped reeling down as we fought and we spurned and we strove;
Worlds upon worlds we tossed aside, and scattered them to and fro,
The night that we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago.

She with the star I had marked for my own — I with my set desire —
Lost in the loom of the Night of Nights, ‘wildered by worlds afire —
Met in a war ‘twixt love and hate where the reinless meteors glow,
Hewing our way to Valhalla, a million years ago.

— The Sack of the Gods.

In summer the nights of the desert are hotter than the days, for when the sun goes down, earth, masonry, and marble give forth their stored heat, and the low clouds, promising rain and never bringing it, allow nothing to escape.

Tarvin was lying at rest in the verandah of the rest-house, smoking a cheroot and wondering how far he had bettered the case of the Maharaj Kunwar by appealing to the Maharajah. His reflections were not disturbed; the last of the commercial travellers had gone back to Calcutta and Bombay, grumbling up to the final moment of their stay, and the rest-house was all his own. Surveying his kingdom, he meditated, between the puffs of his cheroot, on the desperate and apparently hopeless condition of things. They had got to the precise point where he liked them. When a situation looked as this one did, only Nicholas Tarvin could put it through and come out on top. Kate was obdurate; the Naulahka was damnably coy; the Maharajah was ready to turn him out of the State. Sitabhai had heard him denounce her. His life was likely to come to a sudden and mysterious end, without so much as the satisfaction of knowing that Heckler and the boys would avenge him; and if it went on, it looked as though it would have to go on without Kate, and without the gift of new life to Topaz — in other words, without being worth the trouble of living.

The moonlight, shining on the city beyond the sands, threw fantastic shadows on temple spires and the watch-towers along the walls. A dog in search of food snuffed dolefully about Tarvin’s chair, and withdrew to howl at him at a distance. It was a singularly melancholy howl. Tarvin smoked till the moon went down in the thick darkness of an Indian night. She had scarcely set when he was aware of something blacker than the night between him and the horizon.

‘Is it you, Tarvin Sahib?’ the voice inquired in broken English.

Tarvin sprang to his feet before replying. He was beginning to be a little suspicious of fresh apparitions. His hand went to his hip pocket. Any horror, he argued, might jump out at him from the darkness in a country managed on the plan of a Kiralfy trick spectacle.

‘Nay; do not be afraid,’ said the voice. ‘It is I— Juggut Singh.’

Tarvin pulled thoughtfully at his cigar. ‘The State is full of Singhs,’ he said. ‘Which?’

‘I, Juggut Singh, of the household of the Maharajah.’

‘H’m. Does the King want to see me?’

The figure advanced a pace nearer.

‘No, Sahib; the Queen.’

‘Which?’ repeated Tarvin.

The figure was in the verandah at his side, almost whispering in his ear. ‘There is only one who would dare to leave the palace. It is the Gipsy.’

Tarvin snapped his fingers blissfully and soundlessly in the dark, and made a little click of triumph with his tongue. ‘Pleasant calling hours the lady keeps,’ he said.

‘This is no place for speaking, Sahib. I was to say, “Come, unless you are afraid of the dark.”’

‘Oh, were you? Well, now, look here, Juggut; let’s talk this thing out. I’d like to see your friend Sitabhai. Where are you keeping her? Where do you want me to go?’

‘I was to say, “Come with me.” Are you afraid?’ The man spoke this time at his own prompting.

‘Oh, I’m afraid fast enough,’ said Tarvin, blowing a cloud of smoke from him. ‘It isn’t that.’

‘There are horses — very swift horses. It is the Queen’s order. Come with me.’

Tarvin smoked on, unhurrying; and when he finally picked himself out of the chair it was muscle by muscle. He drew his revolver from his pocket, turned the chambers slowly one after another to the vague light, under Juggut Singh’s watchful eye, and returned it to his pocket again, giving his companion a wink as he did so.

‘Well, come on, Juggut,’ he said, and they passed behind the rest-house to a spot where two horses, their heads enveloped in cloaks to prevent them from neighing, were waiting at their pickets. The man mounted one, and Tarvin took the other silently, satisfying himself before getting into the saddle that the girths were not loose this time. They left the city road at a walking pace by a cart-track leading to the hills.

‘Now,’ said Juggut Singh, after they had gone a quarter of a mile in this fashion, and were alone under the stars, ‘we can ride.’

He bowed forward, struck his stirrups home, and began lashing his animal furiously. Nothing short of the fear of death would have made the pampered eunuch of the palace ride at this pace.

Tarvin watched him roll in the saddle, chuckled a little, and followed.

‘You wouldn’t make much of a cow-puncher, Juggut, would you?’

‘Ride!’ gasped Juggut Singh. ‘For the cleft between the two hills — ride!’

The dry sand flew behind their horses’ hoofs, and the hot winds whistled about their ears as they headed up the easy slope toward the hills, three miles from the palace. In the old days, before the introduction of telegraphs, the opium speculators of the desert were wont to telegraph the rise and fall in the price of the drug from little beacon-towers on the hills. It was toward one of these disused stations that Juggut Singh was straining. The horses fell into a walk as the slope grew steeper, and the outline of the squat-domed tower began to show clear against the sky. A few moments later Tarvin heard the hoofs of their horses ring on solid marble, and saw that he was riding near the edge of a great reservoir, full of water to the lip.

Eastward, a few twinkling lights in the open plain showed the position of Rhatore, and took him back to the night when he had said good-bye to Topaz from the rear platform of a Pullman. Night-fowl called to one another from the weeds at the far end of the tank, and a great fish leaped at the reflection of a star.

‘The watch-tower is at the further end of the am,’ said Juggut Singh, ‘The Gipsy is there.’

‘Will they never have done with that name?’ uttered an incomparably sweet voice out of the darkness. ‘It is well that I am of a gentle temper, or the fish would know more of thee, Juggut Singh.’

Tarvin checked his horse with a jerk, for almost under his bridle stood a figure enveloped from head to foot in a mist of pale yellow gauze. It had started up from behind the red tomb of a once famous Rajput cavalier who was supposed by the country-side to gallop nightly round the dam he had built. This was one of the reasons why the Dungar Talao was not visited after nightfall.

‘Come down, Tarvin Sahib,’ said the voice mockingly in English. ‘I, at least, am not a grey ape. Juggut Singh, go wait with the horses below the watchtower.’

‘Yes, Juggut; and don’t go to sleep,’ enjoined Tarvin —‘we might want you.’ He alighted, and stood before the veiled form of Sitabhai.

‘Shekand,’ she said, after a little pause, putting out a hand that was smaller even than Kate’s.

‘Ah, Sahib, I knew that you would come. I knew that you were not afraid.’

She held his hand as she spoke, and pressed it tenderly. Tarvin buried the tiny hand deep in his engulfing paw, and, pressing it in a grip that made her give an involuntary cry, shook it with a hearty motion.

‘Happy to make your acquaintance,’ he said, as she murmured under her breath, ‘By Indur, he has a hold!’

‘And I am pleased to see you, too,’ she answered aloud. Tarvin noted the music of the voice. He wondered what the face behind the veil might look like.

She sat down composedly on the slab of the tomb, motioning him to a seat beside her.

‘All white men like straight talk,’ she said, speaking slowly, and with uncertain mastery of English pronunciation. ‘Tell me, Tarvin Sahib, how much you know.’

She withdrew her veil as she spoke, and turned her face toward him. Tarvin saw that she was beautiful. The perception thrust itself insensibly between him and his other perceptions about her.

‘You don’t want me to give myself away, do you, Queen?’

‘I do not understand. But I know you do not talk like the other white men,’ she said sweetly.

‘Well, then, you don’t expect me to tell you the truth?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Else you would tell me why you are here. Why do you give me so much trouble?’

‘Do I trouble you?’

Sitabhai laughed, throwing back her head, and clasping her hands behind her neck. Tarvin watched her curiously in the starlight. All his senses were alert; he was keenly on his guard, and he cast a wary eye about and behind him from time to time. But he could see nothing but the dull glimmer of the water that lapped at the foot of the marble steps, and hear nothing save the cry of the night-owls.

‘O Tarvin Sahib,’ she said. ‘You know! After the first time I was sorry.’

‘Which time was that?’ inquired Tarvin vaguely.

‘Of course it was when the saddle turned. And then when the timber fell from the archway I thought at least that I had maimed your horse. Was he hurt?’

‘No,’ said Tarvin, stupefied by her engaging frankness.

‘Surely you knew,’ she said almost reproachfully.

He shook his head. ‘No, Sitabhai, my dear,’ he said slowly and impressively. ‘I wasn’t on to you, and it’s my eternal shame. But I’m beginning to sabe. You worked the little business at the dam, too, I suppose, and the bridge and the bullock-carts. And I thought it was their infernal clumsiness? Well, I’ll be ——’ He whistled melodiously, and the sound was answered by the hoarse croak of a crane across the reeds.

The Queen leaped to her feet, thrusting her hand into her bosom. ‘A signal!’ Then sinking back upon the slab of the tomb, ‘But you have brought no one with you. I know you are not afraid to go alone.’

‘Oh, I’m not trying to do you up, young lady,’ he answered. ‘I’m too busy admiring your picturesque and systematic deviltry. So you’re at the bottom of all my troubles? That quicksand trick was a pretty one. Do you often work it?’

‘Oh, on the dam!’ exclaimed the Queen, waving her hands lightly. ‘I only gave them orders to do what they could. But they are very clumsy people — only coolie people. They told me what they had done, and I was angry.’

‘Kill any one?’

‘No; why should I?’

‘Well, if it comes to that, why should you be so hot on killing me?’ inquired Tarvin dryly.

‘I do not like any white men to stay here, and I knew that you had come to stay.’ Tarvin smiled at the unconscious Americanism. ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘the Maharajah was fond of you, and I had never killed a white man. Then, too, I like you.’

‘Oh!’ responded Tarvin expressively.

‘By Malang Shah, and you never knew!’ She was swearing by the god of her own clan — the god of the gipsies.

‘Well, don’t rub it in,’ said Tarvin.

‘And you killed my big pet ape,’ she went on. ‘He used to salaam to me in the mornings like Luchman Rao, the prime minister. Tarvin Sahib, I have known many Englishmen. I have danced on the slack-rope before the mess-tents of the officers on the line of march, and taken my little begging gourd up to the big bearded colonel when I was no higher than his knee.’ She lowered her hand to within a foot of the ground. ‘And when I grew older,’ she continued, ‘I thought that I knew the hearts of all men. But, by Malang Shah, Tarvin Sahib, I never saw a man like unto you! Nay,’ she went on almost beseechingly, ‘do not say that you did not know. There is a love song in my tongue, “I have not slept between moon and moon because of you”; and indeed for me that song is quite true. Sometimes I think that I did not quite wish to see you die. But it would be better that you were dead. I, and I alone, command this State. And now, after that which you have told the King ——’

‘Yes? You heard, then?’

She nodded. ‘After that I cannot see that there is any other way — unless you go away.’

‘I’m not going,’ said Tarvin.

‘That is good,’ said the Queen, with a little laugh. ‘And so I shall not miss seeing you in the courtyard day by day. I thought the sun would have killed you when you waited for the Maharajah. Be grateful to me, Tarvin Sahib, for I made the Maharajah come out. And you did me an ill turn.’

‘My dear young lady,’ said Tarvin earnestly, ‘if you’d pull in your wicked little fangs, no one wants to hurt you. But I can’t let you beat me about the Maharaj Kunwar. I’m here to see that the young man stays with us. Keep off the grass, and I’ll drop it.’

‘Again I do not understand,’ said the Queen, bewildered. ‘But what is the life of a little child to you who are a stranger here?’

‘What is it to me? Why, it’s fair-play; it’s the life of a little child. What more do you want? Is nothing sacred to you?’

‘I also have a son,’ returned the Queen, ‘and he is not weak. Nay, Tarvin Sahib, the child always was sickly from his birth. How can he govern men? My son will be a Rajput; and in the time to come —— But that is no concern of the white men. Let this little one go back to the gods!’

‘Not if I know it,’ responded Tarvin decisively.

‘Otherwise,’ swept on the Queen, ‘he will live infirm and miserable for ninety years. I know the bastard Kulu stock that he comes from. Yes; I have sung at the gate of his mother’s palace when she and I were children — I in the dust, and she in her marriage-litter. To-day she is in the dust. Tarvin Sahib’— her voice melted appealingly —‘I shall never bear another son; but I may at least mould the State from behind the curtain, as many queens have done. I am not a palace-bred woman. Those’— she pointed scornfully toward the lights of Rhatore —‘have never seen the wheat wave, or heard the wind blow, or sat in a saddle, or talked face to face with men in the streets. They call me the gipsy, and they cower under their robes like fat slugs when I choose to lift my hand to the Maharajah’s beard. Their bards sing of their ancestry for twelve hundred years. They are noble, forsooth! By Indur and Allah — yea, and the God of your missionaries too — their children and the British Government shall remember me for twice twelve hundred years. Ahi, Tarvin Sahib, you do not know how wise my little son is. I do not let him go to the missionary’s. All that he shall need afterward — and indeed it is no little thing to govern this State — he shall learn from me; for I have seen the world, and I know. And until you came all was going so softly, so softly, to its end! The little one would have died — yes; and there would have been no more trouble. And never man nor woman in the palace would have breathed to the King one word of what you cried aloud before the sun in the courtyard. Now, suspicion will never cease in the King’s mind, and I do not know — I do not know ——’ She bent forward earnestly. —‘Tarvin Sahib, if I have spoken one word of truth this night, tell me how much is known to you.’

Tarvin preserved absolute silence. She stole one hand pleadingly on his knee. ‘And none would have suspected. When the ladies of the Viceroy came last year, I gave out of my own treasures t............