One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
the constantly unseen—a trebly cataphractic Invisible. The
Rajah professes curiosity to know how it is that the singular
people nourish their loyalty, since they cannot attest to the
continued being of the object in which they put their faith.
He is informed by his prostrate servant of a settled habit
they have of diligently seeking their Divinity, hidden above,
below; and of copiously taking inside them doses of what is
denied to their external vision: thus they fortify credence
chemically on an abundance of meats and liquors; fire they
eat, and they drink fire; they become consequently instinct
with fire. Necessarily therefore they believe in fire. Believing,
they worship. Worshipping, they march Eastward at
morn, Westward at eve. For that way lies the key, this way
the cupboard, of the supplies, their fuel.
According to Stage directions, The Rajah and His Minister
Enter a Gin-Palace.—It is to witness a service that they have
learnt to appreciate as Anglicanly religious.
On the step of the return to their Indian clime, they speak
of the hatted sect, which is most, or most commercially,
succoured and fattened by our rule there: they wave adieu to
the conquering Islanders, as to ‘Parsees beneath a cloud.’
The two are seen last on the deck of the vessel, in perusal
of a medical pamphlet composed of statistics and sketches,
traceries, horrid blots, diagrams with numbers referring to
notes, of the various maladies caused by the prolonged prosecution
of that form of worship.
‘But can they suffer so and live?’ exclaims the Rajah, vexed
by the physical sympathetic twinges which set him wincing.
‘Science,’ his Minister answers, ‘took them up where Nature,
in pity of their martyrdom, dropped them. They do
not live; they are engines, insensible things of repairs and
patches; insteamed to pursue their infuriate course, to the
one end of exhausting supplies for the renewing of them, on
peril of an instant suspension if they deviate a step or stop:
nor do they.’
The Rajah is of opinion, that he sails home with the key of
the riddle of their power to vanquish. In some apparent allusion
to an Indian story of a married couple who successfully
made their way, he accounts for their solid and resistless advance,
resembling that of—
The doubly-wedded man and wife,
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