Now he turned to us and said in his quaint broken English: "Walda Nagasta most lovely woman! No wonder King Solomon love her mother.

If Barung's daughter, my wife, had been like her, think I run through great river into rising sun with Fung." Oliver instantly translated this remark, which made us all laugh, including Maqueda herself, and very grateful we were to find the opportunity for a little innocent merriment upon that tragic night.
By this time the regiment was ready to start, and had formed up into companies.

Before the march actually began, however, the officer of the Abati patrol, in whose charge Roderick had been brought to us, demanded his surrender that he might deliver his prisoner to the Commander-in-Chief, Prince Joshua.

Of course, this was refused, whereon the man asked roughly: "By whose order ?" As it happened, Maqueda, of whose presence he was not aware, heard him, and acting on some impulse, came forward, and unveiled.
"By mine," she said.

"Know that the Child of Kings rules the Abati, not the Prince Joshua, and that prisoners taken by her soldiers are hers, not his.