ot-worn stones followed the contours of the ground, and ran up to the
walls of the Palace smooth as glass. Immediately facing the Gate of the
Fish was the Quarter-Guard barracks, a dark and dirty room, and here, in
a chamber hollowed out in a wall, were stored the big drums of State,
the _nakarras_. The appearance of the Englishman seemed to be the signal
for smiting the biggest of all, and the dull thunder rolled up the
Palace _chowk_, and came back from the unpierced Palace walls in hollow
groaning. It was an eerie welcome--this single, sullen boom. In this
enclosure, four hundred years ago, if the legend be true, a son of the
great Rao Bando, who dreamed a dream as Pharaoh did and saved Boondi
from famine, left a little band of Haras to wait his bidding while he
went up into the Palace and slew his two uncles who had usurped the
throne and abandoned the faith of their fathers. When he had pierced one
and hacked the other, as they sat alone and unattended, he called out to
his followers, who made a slaughter-house of the enclosure and cut up
the usurpers' adherents. At the best of times men slip on these smooth
stones; and when the place was swimming in blood, foothold must have
been treacherous indeed.

An inquiry for the place of the murder of the uncles--it is marked by a
staircase slab, or Tod, the accurate, is at fault--was met by the answer
that the Treasury was close at hand. They speak a pagan tongue in
Boondi, swallow half their words, and adulterate the remainder with
local patois. What can be extracted from a people who call four miles
variously _do kosh_, _do kush_, _dhi hkas_, _doo-a koth_, and _diakast_
all one word? The country-folk are quite unintelligible; which
simplifies matters. It is the catching of a shadow of a meaning here and
there, the hunting for directions cloaked in dialect, that is annoying.
Foregoing his archaeological researches, the Englishman sought the
Treasury. He took careful notes; he even made a very bad drawing, but
the Treasury of Boondi defied pinning down before the public. There was
a gash in the brown flank of the Palace--and this gash was filled with
people. A broken bees' comb with the whole hive busily at work on
repairs will give a very fair idea of this extraordinary place--the
Heart of Boondi. The sunlight was very vivid without and the shadows
were heavy within, so that little could be seen except this clinging
mass of humanity wriggling like maggots in a carcass. A s