Fiction > Book editions > London, 1889 - Master of Ballantrae

270 THE MASTER OF BALLANTIJAE.
bare again. A third time, I found my opportunity;
I built up a i)]aee for myself in India with an infinite
patience; and then Clive came, my rajah was swallowed
up, and I escaped out of the convulsion, like another
iEneas, with Secundra Dass upon my back. Three times
I have had my hand i;pon the highest station: and I am
not yet three-and-forty. I know the world as few men
know it when they come to die — Court and camp, the
East and the West; I know where to go, I see a thou-
sand openings. I am now at the height of ray resources,
sound of health, of inordinate ambition. AVell, all this
I resign ; I care not if I die, and the world never hear of
me; I care only for one thing, and that I will have.
jNIind yourself; lest, when the roof falls, you, too, should
be crushed under the ruins.^^
As I came out of his house, all hope of intervention
quite destroyed, I was aware of a stir on the harbour-
side, and, raising my eyes, there was a great ship newly
come to anchor. It seems strange I could have looked
upon her with so much indifference, for she brought
death to the brothers of Durrisdeei'. After all the
desperate episodes of this contention, the insults, the
opposing interests, the fraternal duel in the shrubbery,
it was reserved for some poor devil in Grub Street, scrib-
bling for his dinner, and not caring what he scribbled,
to cast a spell across four thousand miles of the salt sea,
and send forth both these brothers into savage and