hat nothing can be done without the help of the
accursed Hindus? I for one will not join hands with the dogs."

"Nay, nay, in this matter Islam and Shiva are at one. The Hindu by
tasting the fat of the sacred cow, the Musalman by tasting the fat of
the loathed swine, become alike defiled. The Feringhis are powerful.
They are in the saddle. If the Hindus will aid us in tearing them out of
the saddle, shall we despise their help? Have you not a saying,
'Buffalo! though we are not of one mountain, we belong to one thicket'?
We Musalmans have our horns in the thicket; shall not Hindus help to
disentangle them? When the Feringhis are smitten and sent to perdition,
then will be the time for us true believers to deal fitly with the Hindu
dogs. Will it not be then as it was in the days of the great Shah Nadir?
Once more the Afghans, men of your race and faithful sons of the
Prophet, will pour into the plains and set up a new and glorious
kingdom. Who reigns now in Delhi? Bahadur Shah, toothless, feeble-kneed,
a puppet in the hands of the Feringhis, doing nought from sunrise to
sunset but invent foolish verses. We will change that; we will restore
him to his dignities, or set up another in his room. As in the old days,
every soldier in our host shall become a zamindar. There will be no
goose-step to learn; no useless drill; none of the humiliation of
obeying the commands of the white-faced dogs."

Though the fakir spoke in low tones, there was an intensity in his
utterance that had its effect upon the listeners. This news of the
fat-smeared cartridge troubled them in spite of themselves. They had
heard nothing of it before; as a matter of fact, it had not yet been
issued from the factory at Dam-dam; and but for the insolence of a
Lascar, probably no suspicion of it would have arisen. The Lascar asked
a Hindu one day for a drink of water from his brass lotah, which the
Hindu indignantly refused, since he could not himself use the vessel
again without losing caste. Upon this the Lascar retorted that he would
soon have no caste to lose, since he would have to bite a cartridge
smeared with the fat of pigs and cows. The news spread like wild-fire
through the native army; and the terrible fear that the introduction of
the new cartridge was a cunning device to make them pariahs, acting on
superstitious minds which had other causes of disaffection, wrought the
sepoys to a dangerous state of unrest.

But the fakir, besides appealing to