"A Cossack is a Cossack," said the Princess, "be he Terek or Kuban,
Don or Astrachan, and they all know as much about diplomacy as Prince
Erlik--or Izzet Bey's nose.... James, you are unusually silent, dear
friend. Are you regretting those papers?"
"It's a pity," he said. But he had not been thinking of the lost
papers; Rue Carew's beauty preoccupied him. The girl was in black,
which made her skin dazzling, and reddened the chestnut colour of her
hair.
Her superb young figure revealed an unsuspected loveliness where the
snowy symmetry of neck and shoulders and arms was delicately accented
by the filmy black of her gown.
He had never seen such a beautiful girl; she seemed more wonderful,
more strange, more aloof than ever. And this was what preoccupied and
entirely engaged his mind, and troubled it, so that his smile had a
tendency to become indefinite and his conversation mechanical at
times.
Captain Sengoun drained one more of numerous goblets; gazed
sentimentally at the Princess, then with equal sentiment at Rue
Carew.
"As for me," he said, with a carelessly happy gesture toward the
infinite, "plans are plans, and if they're stolen, tant pis! But
there are always Tartars in Tartary and Turks in Turkey. And, while
there are, there's hope for a poor devil of a Cossack who wants to
say a prayer in St. Sophia before he's gathered to his ancestors."
"Have any measures been taken at your Embassy to trace the plans?"
asked Neeland of the Princess.
"Of course," she said simply.
"Plans," remarked Sengoun, "are not worth the tcherkeske of an
honest Caucasian! A Khirgize pony knows more than any diplomat; and my
magaika is better than both!"
"All the same," said Rue Carew, "with those stolen plans in your
Embassy, Prince Erlik, you might even gallop a sotnia of your
Cossacks to the top of Achi-Baba."
"By heaven! I'd like to try!" he exclaimed, his black eyes ablaze.
"There are dongas," observed the Princess dryly.
"I know it. There are dongas every twenty yards; and Turkish gorse
that would stop a charging bull! My answer is, mount! trot! gallop!
and hurrah for Achi-Baba!"
"Very picturesque, Alak. But wouldn't it be nicer to be able to come
back again and tell us all about it?"
"As for that," he said with his full-throated, engaging laugh, "no
need to worry, Princess, for the newspapers would tell the story. What
is this Gallipoli country, anyway, that makes our Chancellery wag its
respected head and frown and whisper in corners and take little notes
on its newly laundered cuffs?