It is your way. You had better go back to the
Colonel and tell him to manage the Rajah in his own style."
The clock on the table chimed the half-hour. It was ten minutes' full
gallop back to the Colonel's bungalow. Stafford set his teeth in a
white heat of despair.
"If you have no consideration for the Station, for your own wife, for
your own country, at least consider yourself!" he exclaimed. "Are you
blind to the danger? We have scarcely fifty men, and up there are
thousands quietly waiting for the Rajah's signal. You must have seen
them with your own eyes pouring through--"
"I saw any amount of dirty pilgrims, and got out of the way as fast as
I could," was Travers' smiling retort.
Stafford stood baffled and helpless. For the first time he was able to
recognize and appreciate a certain type of Englishman to which he
himself to some extent belonged--an arrogant ignoramus who, encamped
behind his wall of superiority, fears nothing because he sees nothing,
and sees nothing because outside the walls there can not possibly be
anything worth looking at. Nicholson had torn down Stafford's imagined
security, and he stood aghast at his old insolent self-confidence as
reflected in Travers' smiling face.
"To be quite honest with you," the latter went on, after a moment's
pause, "I have very little faith in our dreadful danger. Admitted that
I led the Rajah on a more than doubtful speculation, admitted that
Miss Cary went further than she need have done, it is still most
unlikely that his injured feelings are going to lead him to such a
desperate step as to enter into conflict with the whole Empire.
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