at last, when men's hearts burned in them too
terribly for sleep, that some one proposed a resolution and sent the
word whispering from hut to hut, that we should ask for Ranjoor
Singh to be brought to us. Let the excuse be that he was our
rightful leader, and that therefore he ought to advise us what we
should do. Let us promise to do faithfully whatever Ranjoor Singh
should order. Then, when he should have been brought to us, should
he talk treason we would tear him in pieces with our hands. That
resolution was agreed to. I also agreed. It was I who asked the next
day that Ranjoor Singh be brought. The German officer laughed; yet I
asked again, and he went away smiling.

We talked of our plan at night. We repeated it at dawn. We whispered
it above the bread at breakfast. After breakfast we stood in groups,
confirming our decision with great oaths and binding one another to
fulfillment--I no less than all the others. Like the others I was
blinded now by the sense of our high purpose and I forgot to
consider what might happen should Ranjoor Singh take any other line
than that expected of him.

I think it was eleven in the morning of the fourth day after our
decision, when we had all grown weary of threats of vengeance and of
argument as to what each individual man should do to our major's
body, that there was some small commotion at the entrance gate and a
man walked through alone. The gate slammed shut again behind him.

He strode forward to the middle of our compound, stood still, and
confronted us. We stared at him. We gathered round him. We said
nothing.

"Fall in, two deep!" commanded he. And we fell in, two deep, just as
he ordered.

"'Ten-shun!" commanded he. And we stood to attention.

Sahib, he was Ranjoor Singh!

He stood within easy reach of the nearest man, clothed in a new
khaki German uniform. He wore a German saber at his side. Yet I
swear to you the saber was not the reason why no man struck at him.
Nor were there Germans near enough to have rescued him. We, whose
oath to murder him still trembled on our lips, stood and faced him
with trembling knees now that he had come at last.

We stood before him like two rows of dumb men, gazing at his face. I
have heard the English say that our eastern faces are impossible to
read, but that can only be because western eyes are blind. We can
read them readily enough. Yet we could not read Ranjoor Singh's that
day. It dawned on us as we stared that we did