Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/289

Rh on betel-leaf and areca-nut. Then the King inquired how he was to help them.

'Build us a house exactly opposite to the enemy's fort, so that we may take up our residence close to it,' was her reply.

The house was built, and the queen with a number of beautiful girls occupied it. It had a broad terraced roof level with the fort walls. Upon this roof the queen assembled her girls every evening to dance and sing. At first the men looked on with curiosity and wonder. The older ones shook their heads at such folly, while the younger men laughed and chaffed the girls on their method of warfare.

A strange kind of Rajah is your ruler to send out a band of dancing-girls against us !' they cried from the walls.

The chaff was received good-naturedly. The girls laughed and showed their white teeth between lips that were full and tempting. Each evening, when the day's work was over, the inhabitants of the fort gathered upon the walls before the palace of the nautch-queen. Each day the girls, decked in fresh jasmin and oleander flowers, posed and swayed and showed their supple limbs in the dance. With their songs was wafted the intoxicating scent of sandalwood and attar of rose as their silken draperies floated upon the evening breeze; and the young men were filled with madness. The older wiseheads, however, looked on with grave apprehension, and would have driven the women away or killed them; but the young men were infatuated, and cried :

‘Let them be! What harm can a parcel of women do? Their singing and dancing serve to pass the hours of the evening. It would be more fitting if we invited them to come into the fort instead of driving them away.’