few Malo'ts
got over the gate. It was rather a tight thing for a minute or two, but
the recruits took it beautifully. Lucky job we hadn't any badly wounded
men to carry, because we had forty miles to Macnamara's camp. By Jove,
how we legged it! Half way in, old Rutton Singh collapsed, so we slung
him across four rifles and Stalky's overcoat; and Stalky, his prisoner,
and a couple of Sikhs were his bearers. After that I went to sleep. You
can, you know, on the march, when your legs get properly numbed. Mac
swears we all marched into his camp snoring and dropped where we halted.
His men lugged us into the tents like gram-bags. I remember wakin' up
and seeing Stalky asleep with his head on old Rutton Singh's chest. _He_
slept twenty-four hours. I only slept seventeen, but then I was coming
down with dysentery."

"Coming down? What rot! He had it on him before we joined Stalky in the
fort," said Tertius.

"Well, _you_ needn't talk! You hove your sword at Macnamara and demanded
a drum-head court-martial every time you saw him. The only thing that
soothed you was putting you under arrest every half hour. You were off
your head for three days."

"Don't remember a word of it," said Tertius, placidly. "I remember my
orderly giving me milk, though."

"How did Stalky come out?" McTurk demanded, purling hard over his pipe.

"Stalky? Like a serene Brahmini bull. Poor old Mac was at his Royal
Engineers' wits' end to know what to do. You see I was putrid with
dysentery, Tertius was ravin', half the men had frost-bite, and
Macnamara's orders were to break camp and come in before winter. So
Stalky, who hadn't turned a hair, took half his supplies to save him
the bother o' luggin' 'em back to the plains, and all the ammunition he
could get at, and, _consilio et auxilio_ Rutton Singhi, tramped back
to his fort with all his Sikhs and his precious prisoners, and a lot of
dissolute hangers-on that he and the prisoner had seduced into service.
He had sixty men of sorts--and his brazen cheek. Mac nearly wept with
joy when he went. You see there weren't any explicit orders to Stalky to
come in before the passes were blocked: Mac is a great man for orders,
and Stalky's a great man for orders--when they suit his book."

"He told me he was goin' to the Engadine," said Tertius. "Sat on my cot
smokin' a cigarette, and makin' me laugh till I cried. Macnamara bundled
the whole lot of us down to the plains next day. We were a walkin'
hospital."