muttered.
"Things look right, don't they, if that's so! Obey, Obey! I'd have liked
to see England just once again--I would indeed. If I could only see her
just once. If I'd a letter from her, or her picture. This is a rotten,
rat-in-a-hole, lonely, uncreditable way to die! I wish Juggut Khan
were here. I'd have somebody to help me keep my good courage up in that
case."

The lock on the cell-door was broken, so he only closed it, then started
back toward the guardroom.

"Three rifles, and three ammunition pouches gone!" he muttered. "That's
three weapons they've got, in any case. A hornet's nest'd be better
stopping in than this place."

He overtook the men who were carrying in the nail-killed sentry, and he
saw that their faces were drawn and white. So were those of the other
men, who were clustered in the guardroom door.

"What next, Sergeant? Hadn't we better be quick? Why not burn the place?
That'd do instead o' buryin' the dead ones, and it'd give us a light to
get away by. Might serve as a beacon, too. Might fetch assistance!"

It was evident that panic had set in.

"Fall in!" commanded Brown, and his straight back took on a curve that
meant straightness to the nth power.

"'Tshun! Ri'--dress! Eyes--front!"

He glared at them for just about one minute before he spoke, and during
that minute each man there realized that what was coming would be quite
irrevocable.

"I'm sergeant here. My orders are to hold this post until relieved.
Therefore--and I hope there's no man here holds any other notion; I hope
it for his own sake!--until we are relieved, we're going to hold it!
Moreover, this command is going to be a real command, from now on. It's
going to buck up. I'm going to put some ginger in it. There are three
dead men here to be avenged, and I'm going to avenge 'em, or make you
do it! And if any man imagines he's going to help himself by feeling
afraid, let me assure him that the only thing he needs to fear is me!
I've a right to command men--I know how--I intend to do it. And if I've
got to make men first out of whey-faced cowards, why, I'm game to do it,
and this is just where I begin! Now! Anybody got a word to say?"

There was grim silence.

"Good! I'll assume, then, until I'm contradicted, that you're all brave
men. Into the guardroom with you!"

"Sahib! Sahib!" said a voice beside him.

"Well? What?"

It was the Beluchi interpreter who had carried the lamp for him that
evening when he arrest