King-Errant

CHAPTER IX

Those first few days of despair were as a dream. The world and all that is in it showed to Babar's eyes like a phantasy of sleep. He lay and rested at a friendly village, passing from the extreme of famine to plenty; from an estate of danger and calamity to peace and ease. The nice fat flesh, the bread of fine flour well baked, the sweet melons and excellent grapes in great abundance, all these made him feel sensibly the pleasures of peace and plenty; for enjoyment after suffering, abundance after want, come with an increased relish and afford a more exquisite delight. It was the first time in his life that he had passed from the injuries of his enemies and the pressure of actual hunger to the ease of security, and he revelled in it like the wholesome-hearted, and, for the time, mindless creature that he was.

But memory of a sort came back to him after a few days and he grew restless; so they marched on. And as he rode over the hills or walked, leading his mother's pony, discontent began once more to leaven his glad content. The world in these lower lying districts was beautiful in the early springtide, but there was something more in life than mere beauty. There was something else needed to make it splendid.

"I will go back to where we were in the White Mountains," he said one day. "I was happy there and so was Dearest-One."

It was the first time he had mentioned his sister's name, and his mother looked at him anxiously. But he said no more. Nature was dealing in kindly fashion with him and bringing memory back by slow degrees.

But at Bishâgher, where they halted a few days, it was like to have been otherwise, for there they came across an old duenna of Babar's mother who having been left behind in Samarkand because of the scarcity of horses, had, nothing daunted, trudged after her mistress on foot. The two women sobbed on each other's necks, while the one told and the other listened to the piteous tale of a marriage, which after all had not been so bad as it might have been, because of old Isân-daulet's masterful spirit. But they said nothing to the menfolk about it all. It was as well that their boy should hear as few details as possible.

And here--the first possible place for news since those long months of siege--tidings came of family deaths at Tashkend. It was fourteen years since Babar's mother had been there and seen her people, and now, when they were hopeless, homeless, and when, moreover, she had her old governess to serve her once more, the time seemed fitting for a visit.

So she went, and for the first time for many years Babar was left alone without any hostages to fortune.

And one of the first things he did with his liberty was to climb a certain hill all set with flowers, which he and his sister had climbed one spring day in the past. The gentians were as blue, the primulas as pink as ever, and the mosaic of forget-me-nots and yellow crowsfoot lay almost inconceivably bright as ever. The blue sky, grazing ground for fleecy white flocks of clouds, stretched away beyond the hills to that faint bluer line of distant Samarkand.

All was as it had been. And the green enamel frame set with jewels, like flowers, lay on the transparent ice where she had put it. He had not noticed that before; one could see through the slab--see green grass-blades, and a half opened flower bud that had been held in chill prison for years and years and years--It was quaint, utterly, when her face, her portrait had gone! The rain had washed it away. The vellum on which it had been painted lay white as snow.

Yes! quaint utterly. The icy grip had kept its hold, the warm sunshine had let slip its prize. He sat down idly, his head resting in his hands.

Yes! her face had gone! What matter now if there was place or grace beside it for another? Poor Baisanghâr! and poor--infinitely poorer Dearest-One! For the first time the full meaning of what had happened came over him; he turned round passionately, hid his face among the flowers and cried like a child.

Ishk and ashk! Love and tears. How little divided them. So the thought of his dead, crippled cousin came to him and the memory of that vivid, fate-defying face stood between him and despair. The Crystal Bowl! Yes! he would laugh as he quaffed: life had brought him strange adventures; let her bring more! He was ready for them--quite ready, in his manhood, to take what the years might hold. For boyhood had gone. That had capitulated with Samarkand.

He did not formulate all this clearly; he simply felt it. Felt the keen joy in life come back to him as he sat up once more and looked out over God's beauties with still swimming eyes; and the tears were magnifying glasses!

A quaint conceit that might be worked up into a couplet or perchance a quatrain. Baisanghâr would have done it finely: he worked well on such finniken fancies. But he had been wrong in the verses he had written on the back of the enamel frame. Were they there still? Aye! they had been protected from the tears of rain.

He read the lines over, feeling as he read them that there was something in them that lacked. So, as he felt, words came to him; for he was born with that artistic temperament which cannot help trading on its own most sacred emotions; perhaps because such natures see vaguely that individualism is a snare to the soul, that all things worth recording are part of a Greater Personality than their own. And the outcome of feeling and words ran thus:--

He jumped up feeling quite pleased with himself, for they were the first verses in that measure he had ever composed!

After this when he was wandering barefoot over hill and dale, he would sit down when he found some pleasant spot and string rhymes together; for he was in a backwater, mentally and bodily. For twenty years he had battled with Fate over trivialities; since what, after all, were Ferghâna and Samarkand and Hissâr? Only tiny little bits of God's earth. He was beginning to be a trifle weary of it all, to long for a larger horizon. So he sent off on the pretext of getting news, the few followers who had remained with him while he, Nevian-Gokultâsh, and another wandered farther and farther, higher and higher up the White Mountains until they reached the Roof-of-the-World. And there they lodged awhile in the felt tents of a shepherd and lived on sheeps'-milk, cheese and buckwheat-cakes. Their host was a man of some eighty years; but his mother was still alive, and of extreme age, being at this time no less than one hundred and eleven years old, and in full possession of her faculties. Indeed, the circumstances of the great Timur's invasion of India remained fresh in her memory owing, doubtless, to her having been in her youth greatly interested in one who had been in his army.

She was a hale old woman, smoke-dried yet apple-cheeked, who loved to hear herself talk, especially when the tall good-looking young stranger sat at her feet, fixing his hazel eyes that were at once so sad and so merry on her whirling pirn as she twisted the brown wool for the blankets.

How it whirled, and leaped, and spun, as the withered old hand jerked the thread! So the Hand of Fate jerked men's lives, setting them spinning like tops into the shadows, out into the firelight again; always, always spinning!

"So the Great Khân was feeding his dogs, being in those days infidel, when Shaikh Jumâl-ud-din the divine came to him. 'Am I better than this dog?' quoth Timur, 'or is he better than I?' And the Shaikh smiled. 'If the King has faith he is better than his dog; but if he has no faith, then is his dog better than he, since the dog believes in a master.' So the Great Khân said the Creed immediately."

"Wah!" murmured the circle of shepherds; but Babar would press for tales of the Great Invasion. And sometimes the old lady would begin at the very beginning, and tell how Timur's soldiers, imitating their leader, would make their left arms straight as the letter "I" and their right arms crooked as a "K" and so write death in the blood of their enemies. How they let fly their arrows as the moon lets fly shooting stars so that the blood-sodden hillsides showed like a drift of red tulips. Or she would drone on--it was a long story--over the "Battle of the Mire," where the enemy not having strength to fight, sought help from the magic rain-stone, so that though the sun was in the Warrior, a host of dark clouds suddenly filled the sky. The thunder resounded, the lightnings flashed, the water descended from the eyes of the stars until the voice of Noah was heard praying a second time for deliverance from the Deluge. Then the beasts of the field swam like fishes, the skin of the horses' bellies adhered to the crust of the earth. The feathers of the arrows damped off, their notches came out, neither men nor horses could move by reason of the rain ...

So she would maunder on until Babar would say impatiently:

"Get on to India, mother! I would fain be there myself."

And he would hardly listen as she, once more beginning at the very beginning, would detail the eight-hundred-thousand men, provided with rations for seven years and each accompanied with two milch-kine and ten milch-goats, so that when stores were exhausted they might live on milk, and when milk dried up they could convert the animals themselves into provisions.

It was all doubtless very wise of Timur--God rest his soul!--who was ever great on the commissariat; but he, Babar, preferred the laconic remark in his great ancestor's autobiography, "The princes of India were at variance with one another. Resolved to make myself master of the Indian empire. Did so."

It was however the more intimate personal experiences which the old woman held by virtue of that dead "interest" of hers, which fired Babar's imagination; but these fragments of a half-forgotten past were not always to be got at. The long years of common round and daily task had overlaid them; it needed a subtle touch upon the instrument to make it vibrate once more. But Babar found a key. There was a certain Turkhomân ballad called "The Maid-of-the-Spring," which invariably unlocked the old woman's memory. So, often, as they sat over the camp fire at night, Babar, smiling to himself, would say, "A song, a song! Let us sing 'The Maid-of-the-Spring' together once more, grandmother! There is none sings it as thou dost."

Which was true! Still the toneless treble of the old voice whining away like the fine whing of a mosquito did not sound so bad against the rich baritone. And the youngest maiden could not have nodded and becked more, or looked more arch. And perhaps the old heart beat as quickly as a young one; such things do not go by age.

And this is what they sang in somewhat monotonous antiphon:

He.
Maid of the Spring! I'm thirsty! I pray
A drop of water! I must away.
God bless you, my girl! And don't be slow!
Give me a drink and let me go.

She.
I don't give drinks to strange young men
Who come a-swaggering down the glen;
Naught you'll get from my pitcher to-day,
Drink for yourself and go your way.

He.
Maid of the Spring! I cannot alight,
I'm far too tired! I'm wearied quite!
I haven't time! God bless you, my dear!
Give me a drink--I can't stay here.

She.
The birds sing sweet in the spring, they say,
It's sweeter still when I tune my lay,
But tired man should sleep in his bed--
Farewell! God's blessing be on your head.

He.
Give me some water, you pretty dear!
If I'd only time, you need not fear.
My darling! a drink from that stoup of thine,
Be it water or be it wine.

She.
Many men travel along this way,
All are thirsty but none can stay.
Take my pitcher and drink if you will,
A thirsty man must have his fill.

He.
Your brows are arched by a pen, I swear,
Your teeth are pearls--I will treat you fair,
Get down from my horse and wait an hour.
Give me your lips, my sweet, my flower.

She.
Roses and violets grow our groves,
No one may pluck them but he who loves.
My brother has slaves, and sticks a-main;
Drink and be off--it soon will rain!

He.
Darlingest dear! let it storm or rain,
My wide felt cloak shall shelter us twain.
Pitcher and all, leap up and ride,
We'll find a kiss at the water's side.

She.
My love! my love! have you come at last?
Drop the pitcher and hold me fast!
There are my lips before we fly
Out to a new world--you and I.

"And now for India!" Babar would cry when the applause was over. "I want to hear about the size of it, and the fruit and flowers of it, and all about it. See you, grandmother, begin and tell me of the young woman thy man met at Lahore--then thou wilt remember to a nicety!"

So the summer passed, until old Isân-daulet arriving from Samarkand with news of Dearest-One, set Babar's mind a-jogging once more over his enemy Shaibâni. But there was nothing to be done in winter time: such a bitter cold winter, too. More than one man died of it, and even Babar himself admitted that, after diving sixteen times in swift succession into a river that was only unfrozen in the middle by reason of its swift current, the extreme chilliness of the water quite penetrated his bones; as well it might.

Then early spring brought a great grief which gave pause to energy. Nevian-Gokultâsh was done to death, by a scoundrel who was jealous of Babar's affection for him, and who had the temerity to say that faithful creature had fallen over a precipice when he was drunk. Nevian, who adhered so strictly to the law of Islâm! Nevian, who had always sided for sobriety, who had been to the full as urgent as old Kâsim Beg against a King giving himself up to wine. Babar, helpless to follow the murderer, felt deeply the death of his playmate in childhood, the companion of his boyhood. There were few persons for whose loss he would have grieved so much or so long. For a week or ten days, he thought of nothing else and the unbidden tears were ever in his eyes.

After this, a great restlessness set in, fostered by old Isân-daulet, whose whole life had been one long succession of battles and murders and sudden deaths, and whose belief in Moghul troops never wavered. Why, she suggested, not go to his uncles the Khâns at Tashkend? His mother had been ill; she would like to see him once more. And if his tongue was sufficiently careful amongst his thirty-two teeth, he might get substantial help.

"For what?" gloomed Babar--"to get back Âkshi and lose Andijân or get Andijân and lose Âkshi? 'Tis all one in the end."

"Not the fine fighting, child!" replied the old lady craftily. "That is the same, be it in Gehannum or Bihisht." (Hell or Heaven.)

That was undoubtedly true; and there was no good to be gained by rambling from hill to hill as he had been doing.

So, once more, the young adventurer gathered together a very scanty band of followers; for old Kâsim Beg, who till then had never left him, had come to words with Isân-daulet over these same Moghuls, and refused to accompany him.

"I say not, sire," remonstrated the wise old soldier, "that these men are bad soldiers for me; but they are for the Most Exalted, who has ideas of discipline. Besides, I care not to risk my own neck for a chance. In obedience to the Most Exalted's commands I beheaded quite a number of these men in the last campaign, for marauding. Wherefore, therefore, should I go amongst their mourning relatives? I will come if there be fighting. Then there is no leisure and little desire for private revenge; blood can be let anywhere and one corpse is as good as another."

So Kâsim went with his immediate adherents towards Hissâr; and Babar set off to Tashkend with rather a heavy heart. In a somewhat didactic mood also, for resting for a day or two beside a spring in the lower hills, he caused a verse to be inscribed on a stone slab which formed one side of the well where the water gushed in from the hill above, to disappear into the earth when it had run through a masonry trough.

He was not, however, at home in the rubâi, as he had not, at that time, studied with much attention the style and phraseology of poetry.

Indeed, one of his first actions on reaching Tashkend was to submit some of his compositions to the Khân who had pretensions to taste, and who, moreover, wrote verses himself; though his odes, to be sure, were rather deficient in manner and substance. The younger poetaster, however, did not get either explicit or satisfactory criticism, and came to the conclusion that his uncle had no great skill in poetic diction. He did not know, for instance, that in the Turkhi language it was allowable, by poetic licence, to interchange certain letters for the sake of the rhyme.

"He will think thee a nincompoop," stormed Isân-daulet. "Why did'st not show him thy sword play?"

"He may see that ere long," quoth Babar, grimly, and went straight away to write the first ghazel of six Couplets he ever composed.

He was quite pleased with this effusion and sang it at a festive party soon after with great gusto; but the next morning he found that the golden clasp of his girdle had been stolen by one of the appreciative audience!

Moghuls again!

CHAPTER X

So, vaguely thought Babar as life went on dully with the family party at Tashkend. Most of his servants had left from absolute want; one, or at most two attendants were all that he could muster when he went to pay his compliments to the Khân, his uncle. Once, indeed, he accompanied the latter on a foray; but it was a useless sort of expedition. He, the Khân, took no part, beat no enemy; he simply went out and came back again.

The young man spent much of his time with his mother who was convalescing but slowly; and she naturally, after so many years of absence, saw much of her sisters and cousins; most of them elderly women, inclined to make much of the handsome young King-errant whose melancholy never could withstand the faintest joke.

For all that Babar, at the bottom of his heart, was utterly dissatisfied with himself and his world. Never since the debacle at Samarkand had he found himself again, the light-hearted, intensely vital person, who, taking things as they came, could yet turn them to his own uses. He began to tell himself privately that, rather than pass his life as he was now doing, homeless and purposeless, it would be better to retire into some corner where he might live unknown and undistinguished; that, rather than exist in distress and abasement far better were it to flee away from the sight of man, so far as his feet could carry him. In his infancy he remembered he had always had a strong desire to see China, but had never been able to accomplish his wish because of being a King and having a duty towards his relations and connections.

Now he no longer had a throne. Now, his mother--the only tie left, for Ayesha his wife had never returned to him--was safe with her mother and her brother.

Now, therefore, was the time. His mother, however, he knew well would not support the proposition; besides he had still a few followers who, having attached themselves to him with very different hopes, would be bitterly disappointed at his project. He could not bear to hurt anyone's feelings, so he devised a plan in order to get away quietly. He had never seen his other uncle, the younger Khân of Outer Moghulistân. Why should he not go, in this slack time, and pay him a visit?

There seemed, indeed, no reason against this; and Babar was on the very point of starting when a messenger arrived hot haste, to say that the younger Khân himself was on his way to see his nephew and his nephew's mother!

It was a blow; Babar's plan was utterly disconcerted, but being, like all his race, full of family affection, he set off with ever so many elderly Khânums with beautiful high-sounding names to meet his uncle. Such a meeting as it was; so many embracings and kneelings and yet more embracings; some ceremonious, others quite without form or decorum. After which the great circle of cousins and aunts, and uncles and nephews, sat down and continued talking about past occurrences and old stories till after midnight.

His younger uncle had, according to the custom of his tribe, brought Babar a complete dress of state. A cap embroidered with gold thread, a long frock of China satin ornamented with flowered needle-work. A cuirass of fine chain-mail, Chinese fashion, with a whetstone and a purse-pocket from which were suspended a lot of little trinkets such as women wear, including a bag of perfumed earth. He looked very smart in it indeed, and when he returned to his own, tricked out in all this finery, they declared it was only by his voice they recognised him; that they had thought he was some grand young Sultan!

Life at any rate did not seem quite so empty; since the two Khâns, having got together, began to propose a joint expedition to recover Andijân--for Babar, being an understood corollary so long as they remained under the influence of stern old Isân-daulet, who ruled her sons in matriarchal fashion.

So they set off with flaunting pennons and kettledrums, after the manner of Moghul armies, and at their first halt held a muster of the troops, also in the Moghul fashion. In groups of three, three horse-tail standards were erected, and from the centre staff of each a long strip of white cloth was fastened, on the loose end of which stood the foot of the leader of that division. All around, in a huge circle, the troops were drawn up. Then with many ceremonials and sprinklings of mares'-milk spirit, each leader estimated the total number of the force. The final verdict being received with a wild war-shout; and then, at full speed, the whole army galloped centre-wards, the foremost troopers drawing bridle within a foot or two of the standards. On this occasion Babar looked with a certain awe, yet some misgiving, at no less than thirty thousand wild horsemen of the desert.

But he had more certain aid than this. He found that he was not all forgot in the little valley at the extreme limit of the habitable world; and the country people welcomed his return with acclaim. So as soon as he could, with that curious distrust of Moghul blood, which makes the name given to the dynasty he founded in India so quaintly ironical, he parted company with his uncle's forces, and pushing on with such of his own people as had come together, sought for fine fighting.

And he got it. Still reckless, almost without definite aim, he followed swift on every opportunity for a skirmish. When he saw a body of the enemy, he advanced at full gallop without minding order or array; and in nine cases out of ten the sheer daredevil clash succeeded. The enemy could not stand the charge and fled without exchanging blows. But sometimes his ill-luck with the Moghuls pursued him. Once when he, with his staff, was waiting outside Andijân for the return of a messenger. It was about the third watch of the night, and some of them were nodding, others fast asleep on their horses, when all at once the saddle-drums struck up with martial noise and hubbub. The few men who were with Babar were seized with a panic and took to flight; except three, all the rest ran off to a man. In vain these four galloped after the fugitives; in vain they horsewhipped some of them.

All their exertions were ineffectual to make them stand.

There was nothing for it but to try and check the pursuers themselves as best they could. So the four turned, stood and discharged flights of arrows, until the enemy was almost within sword thrust; then, wheeling swiftly, they galloped on to take up a fresh position of offence.

In this way they covered and protected the retreat, until by good fortune they fell in with a patrol party of their own. Then, of course, came immediate charge, to discover that the pursuers were Moghuls from his uncle's force, who were out on a pillaging expedition of their own! In this manner, by a false alarm, the plan which Babar had conceived came to nothing, and he had to return after a fruitless journey.

Truly, if the young man had wished to throw away his life, he could scarcely have dared Fate more recklessly. More than once he found himself almost alone facing stupendous odds. Once, when surprised at night in negligent security without advanced guard and without videttes, he had to gallop out almost unarmed to meet a large body of the enemy and found himself in the midst of them with but three supporters. Even so Fate was against him. He drew out of his quiver by mistake a green-tipped finger guard instead of an arrow, and being unwilling to throw it away because his uncle the Khân had given it to him, lost as much time in returning it to its place as would have sufficed for the despatch of two arrows, and, ere he was ready, his companions had been swept back by the onslaught and he was alone. To draw up to his ear and let the foremost foe have it for all he was worth was easy, but at the same instant an arrow struck him on the right thigh unsteadying his aim, and the next moment that foremost foe was on him and smote him such a blow on the head with a sword, that, despite his steel cap he was nigh stunned. And then, through his having neglected to clean his sword after swimming a river, it had rusted a little in the scabbard and he lost time in drawing it. Still, he won through that time, and, despite continual anxiety and irritation because of the behaviour of the Moghul troops which his uncles detached to help him, and who would insist on plundering and were with difficulty restrained from putting honourable prisoners to death, he was fairly successful, until a final act of treachery threw him on his beam ends, and he was forced to retreat, fairly beaten.

He was invited to a parley by the enemy and the Moghuls urged him to accept the invitation, and by hook or by crook, to seize or murder the leaders. Babar was indignant. Such artifice and underhand dealing were, he said, totally abhorrent to his habits and disposition. If he made an agreement for peaceful interview, he would not violate it.

Nor did he. But whether from perversity or sheer stupidity, his orders were disobeyed, and he found himself committed to battle in the very heart of the opponents' defences, and without a sufficient force to secure success. Even then he challenged Fate, by waiting for personal retreat a full hour or more, unwilling, as he thought, to leave some of his friends in danger. Finally news came that having been beaten, at the other side of the city in about as much time as milk takes to boil, they, and half Babar's men, had escaped long before by another gate!

Only about twenty men were left to the young King. It was no longer season to tarry; they set off, a great band of the enemy's troops in full pursuit.

And then commenced a memorable ride for life. Man after man dropped out, maimed by the flights of following arrows.

"Help! Help!" cried a well known voice behind him and Babar instantly turned bridle to aid a dear friend. But those who rode on either side the young King would not have it; this was no time to defy Death. It was the time to keep hold on Life. So, with strong hands upon his reins, Babar had no choice but to ride on. There were but eight of them left now; a wearied, hurried band of hunted men struggling through broken glens remote from the beaten road. The enemy behind was now out of sight, but, as at sunset the fugitives passed into more level ground, a shadow darker than the shadows of evening should be, showed on the plain.

Placing his men under cover, Babar dismounted, and on foot, ascended an eminence to see what this might be. When suddenly from behind, a number of horsemen showed coming towards them. It was too dark to see their number but, doubtless, it must be a detachment in pursuit, and the only hope flight.

"There is no use, sire," said a noble, "going on thus. They will outweary and take us all. Better by far, that you and Kâli-Gokultâsh choose two extra horses from amongst us, your devoted servants; so by keeping the four horses at full speed you may escape--it is a last chance."

But Babar shook his head. To leave anyone dismounted in the midst of the enemy was beyond him; so he set his teeth and rode on.

"The Most High is heavier than I am," urged an entreating voice at his elbow, "and it is my lord they want, not this slave whose horse is fairly fresh."

Babar set his teeth again; but he felt the truth of the words and exchanged horses. Jân-Kâli could slip aside down some ravine. They would not follow him. It was he, Zahir-ud-din Mohamed Babar, that was wanted.

Again came the plea--"My horse is fresher than the Most High's."

And yet again Babar exchanged steeds.

On and on, the horses flagging, followers dropping out, until but two remained--the King and his foster-brother Kâli-Gokultâsh.

"Sire!--you had best go on!" muttered the latter as his horse stumbled and almost fell.

"Whither?" called back the King bitterly. "Come on! be it Life or Death, let us meet it together."

And ever and ever, as they went on blindly, he paused to look back, to wait ...

And once, when he looked back there was no one near at hand. Only in the far distance, coming closer and closer, dark figures--were there two or more?

But now, alone, hopeless, the worst seemed over. Babar dug spurs into his horse, weary but willing, and was off with renewed vigour in his veins. It was himself against the world once more! He would fight it out to the end--the bitter end!

It was now dark and before him lay a hill. If he could reach it, and dismount, he might trust to his own nimbleness in climbing. But his horse was dropping, and two of the pursuers were within bowshot, ere he could fling himself from his steed on rising ground and dash up a glen to the right. He did not pause to shoot, though he had arrows in his quiver. A few of these he had stuck in his belt as he flung off his accoutrements piece-meal; they were for use at the last--the very last!

But voices followed him; eager, protesting voices. They were no enemies; neither were they friends. But they could not leave a King in such a desolate situation Let him confide in them and he might yet find safety.

It was a desperate chance; still it was a chance. And there were but two of them. One brave man could surely keep them in check--or kill them before he died. Babar pulled up, went back to his horse and faced Fate. So, all that night, they rode together, and when dawn came, one of the troopers commandeered some loaves of bread. All that day they lay watchfully in hiding, and when night came they passed on to a half-ruined house on the outskirts of a town. Here the troopers brought Babar an old fur coat; which was welcome, for the nights were bitterly cold. They also brought him a mess of boiled millet-flour pottage, which he ate and found wonderfully comfortable.

So comfortable, that having lit a fire, Babar actually fell asleep beside it, despite his imminent danger, despite his distrust of his comrades who were for ever whispering amongst themselves. But he was outwearied after three nights' riding, and two days of watchful hiding. Indeed when they roused him at dawn on the pretext that there were spies about, and that a change was imperative, he was so spent and outdone that he felt inclined to bid them do their worst, or leave him to his fate. Yet he followed them dully, to a garden on the outskirts of the town--as well die there as elsewhere.

But it was a primrose dawn, with a promise of brilliant sunshine, and the garden, partially walled, held a few flowers, a few birds.

It needed no more to re-arouse vitality, and Babar, with fresh vigour in his veins after his few hours of sleep, began to emerge from the slough of despondency in which he had passed the last three days. These would-be guides of his were doubtless traitors; could he escape them?

The day passed on to noon. Babar, in a corner of the garden, performed his religious ablutions and recited his prayers, adding to them the consolations of poetry by repeating the couplet:

That was a self-evident proposition, and as such gave his simple, clear-sighted soul much comfort. So much so, that he fell asleep under the trees, and dreamt a dream of victory and triumph.

From which he awoke to find three men standing over him, to hear whispers of how best to seize and throttle him.

To spring to his feet and face them did not take long.

"Ill-begotten, treacherous hounds!" he cried, ablaze with anger. "So canst thou dare when Babar sleeps--let us see who will lay hands on him awake!"

The villains fell back; but at that moment the tramp of horsemen was heard beyond the garden wall, and one of the trio laughed.

"Crow away, cockerel!" he cried. "Mayhap, hadst thou trusted us at first we might have let thee escape according to our oath. But now is the work of death taken out of our hands; for yonder comes a troop to seize thee and save our promise unbroken."

He turned as he spoke to welcome the newcomers, then started. For the horsemen hurrying in to the garden were not Babar's foes, but his friends!

"Kutluk! Babâi!" cried the young King, recognising two of his most devoted adherents. They flung themselves from their horses.

"The King! Long live the King!" they shouted, as bending the knee at a respectful distance they rushed forward to fall at the feet of their dear leader.

It had been a wonderful ride for life; yet in a way a needless one, as Babar told his uncles when he rejoined them. Since, had he but known, as he afterwards discovered, that the following party was not a whole detachment, but only a band of twenty troopers, he and his seven would of course, have made a stand and engaged them with every hope of success.

Not that it would have made much difference; for both the elder Khân and the younger one had become weary of their expedition, and on news of the Great Usbek raider Shaibâni's appearance in their country, had retired in hot haste to their dominions.

So Babar once more was at the end of his tether. The Moghuls he told his grandmother, to her great dudgeon, were no good as conquerors. Nature had made them pillagers, and an inch of plunder was worth more than an ell of honour.

"He is out of joint with life," said his mother, weeping.

Old Isân-daulet sniffed. "Try him with a pretty girl," she suggested.

The Khânum shook her head. "He is not that sort--he will not even marry and that is nigh shameless--since he is one and twenty, yet without a child. 'Tis hard indeed on a woman of my age to have no grandchild."

"Except Dearest-One's boy," said the old woman, her stern face softening. "Lo! perfidious barbarian though the father be, I should like to see the child. It should have the makings in it of a man--from its mother." And she was silent for awhile; perhaps she was thinking of that night in Samarkand when a girl had waited patiently for worse than death. Then she spoke:

"See you, daughter! Your boy is not all King, no more than he is all my grandson. He hath material for half-a-dozen different persons in him and he hath not yet made choice of which to take. Lo!--mayhap--I have had too big a hand in the pease-porridge. Let be a bit. Let him do as he likes for a while and if that be to leave us for the time--so be it. Hurry not God's work."

It was wise advice. None wiser. So for two whole years, the King was King-errant indeed. Even whither he went none know. Most likely he fulfilled his boyhood's desire to see China; but this much is certain. He and a few intimate friends, not half-a-dozen at most, wandered for months and months. Over the White Mountains likely, amid eternal snows, across the high lying steppes to Kashgâr, and so onwards.

Or perhaps from Tashkend he may have wandered over high plateaux and past wide lakes to the Great Tian-Shan mountains. But either way, from some high peak, he must have caught one glimpse at least of a sight never to be forgotten. The sight of the wide plain of Eastern Turkhestân lying like a lake of pale amber beneath an encircling rim of snowy pearls, that change to rubies in the sunset. Marvellous indeed! All around the everlasting hills contemptuous of man and his finite work, glittering icily on that ever-present haze of dust, which effaced alike, the sand of the central desert, and the faint fringe of cultivation on the skirts of the hills. Over a thousand feet of golden dust-pall covering the corpses of the six sand-buried cities of Khotân!

Buried when, and how? And wherefore, in God's name, did humanity found its houses on the Moving Sands?

Fine stimulation here, for the imagination of a poet born.

Babar must have sat and looked, sat and learnt from the slow invincible march of the sand waves piled by the desert winds, something of the strength of patience. Slow and sure. Under the gentle call of a summer breeze, mayhap, one sand atom shifting place; then another and another. But in the end, a high-piled wave, ready to fall over and engulf what lay beyond, when the whistle of the winter winds rang over the wastes, rousing the hidden devil in those harmless sand grains, to whirls of death.

Shifting, shifting; never still for a second. Unearthing there, burying here.

With what end?

And doubtless Babar heard the oft told tale of the Muâzzim of Kâr, and of the minaret of the mosque which the sand can never hide for long; which even in these later days the dry biting winds of the desert lay bare, ever and anon, until the golden final of its blue dome shines bright as ever over the wide plain.

Perhaps,--being a poet born--he may have tried to put the legend into verse with better success than the following: