He has shut
himself and men up in his mud fort, but when this brass mother of
destruction spits into his stronghold a ball or two that is not opium he
will come forth or we will enter by the gate the cannon has made."
"Then there will be bloodshed, Risiladar," Barlow declared.
"True, Captain Sahib; but that is, after a manner, the method of
collecting just dues in this land where those who till the soil now,
were, but a generation or two since, men of the sword,--they can't forget
the traditions. In the land of the British Raj six inches of a paper,
with a big seal duly affixed, would do the business. That I know, for I
have travelled far, Sahib. As to the bloodshed, worse will be the
trampling of crops, for in the district of this worshipper of Mahomet the
wheat grows like wild scrub in the jungle, taller than up to the belly of
my horse. That is the whyfore of the cannon, in a way of speaking,
because from a hill we can send to this man a slaying message, and leave
the wheat standing to fill the bellies of those who are in his hands as a
tyrant.
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