red Brown. "Now, men, just because we've saved our skins
so far is no reason why we should neglect precautions. We're going to
put this imitation angel back on his throne again, so the same two carry
him that brought him here. There's no sense in giving two more men the
itch, and all the other ailments the brute suffers from! Form up round
him, the rest. Take open order--say two paces--and go slow. Feel your
way with your fixed bayonet, and don't take a step in the dark until
you're sure where it will lead you. Forward-march! One of you bring that
rope along."

The weird procession crawled and crept and sidled back to where it had
started from not so long before--jumping at every sound, and at every
shadow that showed deeper than the coal-black night around them. It took
them fifteen minutes to recross a hundred yards. But when they reached
the earthen throne again at last, and had hoisted the fakir back in
position on it, there had been no casualties, and the morale of the men
in Sergeant Brown's command was as good again as the breech-mechanism of
the rifles in his charge.

They were scarcely visible to him or one another in the blackness,
but he sensed the change in them, and changed his own tune to fit the
changed condition.

His voice had nothing in it but the abrupt military explosion when he
gave his orders now--no argument, no underlying sympathy. He was no
longer herding a flock of frightened children. He was ordering trained,
grown men, and he knew it and they knew it. The orders ripped out, like
the crack of a drover's whip.

"Fall in, now, properly! 'Tshun! Right dress! To two paces--open
order--from the center--extend! Now, then! Left and right wings--last
three at each end forward--right wheel--halt. That's it. 'Bout face. Now
each man keep two eyes lifting till the morning. If anything shows up,
or any of you hear a sound, shoot first and challenge afterward!"

They were standing so when the pale sun greeted them, in hollow square,
with their backs toward the fakir, who was squatting, staring straight
in front of him, on his dais, with his back turned to the tree and his
withered arm still pointing up to heaven like a dead man's calling to
the gods for vengeance.

A little later, Brown made each alternate man lie down and get what
sleep he could just where he was, with a comrade standing over him. He
himself slept so for a little while. But one of the men heard something
move among the hanging tend