If Your Honour will
give us but an hour we will take the oath."
A mile down the red road from the bungalow, looking like a huge beehive
with its heavy enveloping roof of thatch, that was Jean Baptiste's
head-quarters, was a particularly sacred pipal of huge growth. It was
an extraordinary octopus-like tree, and most sacred, for perched in the
embrace of its giant arms was a shrine that had been lifted from its
base in the centuries of the tree's growth.
And now, an hour later, the pipal was surrounded by thousands of
Mahratta sepoys, for word had gone forth,--the mysterious rumour of
India that is like a weird static whispering to the four corners of the
land a message,--had flashed through the tented city that the men from
Karowlee were to take the oath of allegiance to Sindhia.
The fat Dewan had come down in a _palki_ swung from the shoulders of
stout bearers, while Jean Baptiste had ridden a silver-grey Arab.
And then just as a bleating, mottled white-and-black goat was led by a
thong to the pipal, Nana Sahib came swirling down the road in a brake
drawn by a spanking pair of bay Arabs with black points.
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