two sailors had departed, the audience sat
waiting for the heroes of the evening and calling for them with impatient
outbursts of applause. Shere Ali waited too. But there was no impatience
on his part, as there was no enthusiasm. He was just getting through the
evening; and this hot and crowded den, with its glitter of lights,
promised a thrill of excitement which would for a moment lift him from
the torture of his thoughts.

But the antagonists still lingered in their dressing-rooms while their
trainers put the final touch to their preparations. And while the
antagonists lingered, the two young men next to him began again to talk,
and this time the words fell on Shere Ali's ears.

"I think it ought to be stopped," said one. "It can't be good for us. Of
course the fellow who runs the circus doesn't care, although he is an
Englishman, and although he must have understood what was being shouted."

"He is out for money, of course," replied the other.

"Yes. But not half a mile away, just across the Maidan there, is
Government House. Surely it ought to be stopped."

The speaker was evidently serious. He spoke, indeed, with some heat.
Shere Ali wondered indifferently what it was that went on in the circus
in the Maidan half a mile from the Government House. Something which
ought to be stopped, something which could not be "good for us." Shere
Ali clenched his hands in a gust of passion. How well he knew the
phrase! Good for us, good for the magic of British prestige! How often
he had used the words himself in the days when he had been fool enough
to believe that he belonged to the white people. He had used it in the
company of just such youths as those who sat next to him now, and he
writhed in his seat as he imagined how they must have laughed at him in
their hearts. What was it that was not "good for us" in the circus on
the Maidan?

As he wondered there was a burst of applause, and on the opposite side of
the ring the soldier, stripped to the waist, entered with his two
assistants. Shere Ali was sitting close to the lower corner of the ring
on the right-hand side of the stage; the soldier took his seat in the
upper corner on the other side. He was a big, heavily-built man, but
young, active, and upon his open face he had a look of confidence. It
seemed to Shere Ali that he had been trained to the very perfection of
his strength, and when he moved the muscles upon his shoulders and back
worked under his skin as tho