Soldiers Three - Penn State University

through them. She could embroider strange things in gold
and silver, and dance softly with the moonlight when it came
in at the window. Also she knew the hearts of men, and the
heart of the City, and whose wives were faithful and whose
untrue, and more of the secrets of the Government Offices
than are good to be set down in this place. Nasiban, her maid,
said that her jewellery was worth ten thousand pounds, and
that, some night, a thief would enter and murder her for its
possession; but Lalun said that all the City would tear that
thief limb from limb, and that he, whoever he was, knew it.
So she took her sitar and sat in the window-seat and sang a
song of old days that had been sung by a girl of her profession
in an armed camp on the eve of a great battle—the day
before the Fords of the Jumna ran red and Sivaji fled fifty
miles to Delhi with a Toorkh stallion at his horse’s tail and
another Lalun on his saddle-bow. It was what men call a
Mahratta laonee, and it said:—
Their warrior forces Chimajee
Before the Peishwa led,
The Children of the Sun and Fire
Behind him turned and fled.
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And the chorus said:—
With them there fought who rides so free
With a sword and turban red,
The warrior-youth who earns his fee
At peril of his head.
‘At peril of his head,’ said Wali Dad in English to me.
‘Thanks to your Government, all our heads are protected,
and with the educational facilities at my command’—his eyes
twinkled wickedly—’I might be a distinguished member of
the local administration. Perhaps, in time, I might even be a
member of a Legislative Council.’
‘Don’t speak English,’ said Lalun, bending over her sitar
afresh. The chorus went out from the City wall to the blackened
wall of Fort Amara which dominates the City. No man
knows the precise extent of Fort Amara. Three kings built it
hundreds of years ago, and they say that there are miles of
underground rooms beneath its walls. It is peopled with many
ghosts, a detachment of Garrison Artillery and a Company