CHAPTER XIV
The governor of the western marches “gets religion.” Mr. Warburton gives bakshish to Baluchi ruffians! Hector rushes off! And the old nurse decides that the little princess should marry a man who beats her—not too much!
When the confidential messenger returned to the rebel camp and delivered Hector's instructions to Koom Khan, the latter shrugged his massive shoulders resignedly and observed, with a painful effect after casualness, that Al Nakia might have saved himself the trouble since an elephant was an elephant on low ground as well as on high, while a coward was a coward with or without a weapon.
A cryptic saying which the messenger was presently able to decipher by listening to the rumors, the babble and gossip and laughter, that swept through the camp, causing the Arabs to scream with amusement after the manner of their kind, causing the Persians to make impromptu and mostly indecent puns, causing the renegade Tamerlanis to slap their stout thighs in an abandonment of mirth—causing, furthermore, Mr. Preserved Higgins to curse fantastically and the Sheik-ul-Islam to declare, with hypocritical, pontifical unction, that Allah was indeed most great, and that there was shining truth in the sura of the Koran where it said that 'Verily repentance will be accepted
