attack for the English troops, and
were getting their distance by snap-shots at the only moving object
without the square.

'What luck! What stupendous and imperial luck!' said Dick. 'It's "just
before the battle, mother." Oh, God has been most good to me!

Only'--the agony of the thought made him screw up his eyes for an
instant--'Maisie...'

'Allahu! We are in,' said the man, as he drove into the rearguard and
the camel knelt.

'Who the deuce are you? Despatches or what? What's the strength of the
enemy behind that ridge? How did you get through?' asked a dozen voices.
For all answer Dick took a long breath, unbuckled his belt, and shouted
from the saddle at the top of a wearied and dusty voice, 'Torpenhow!
Ohe, Torp! Coo-ee, Tor-pen-how.'

A bearded man raking in the ashes of a fire for a light to his pipe
moved very swiftly towards that cry, as the rearguard, facing about,
began to fire at the puffs of smoke from the hillocks around. Gradually
the scattered white cloudlets drew out into the long lines of banked
white that hung heavily in the stillness of the dawn before they turned
over wave-like and glided into the valleys. The soldiers in the square
were coughing and swearing as their own smoke obstructed their view, and
they edged forward to get beyond it. A wounded camel leaped to its feet
and roared aloud, the cry ending in a bubbling grunt. Some one had
cut its throat to prevent confusion. Then came the thick sob of a
man receiving his death-wound from a bullet; then a yell of agony and
redoubled firing.

There was no time to ask any questions.

'Get down, man! Get down behind the camel!'

'No. Put me, I pray, in the forefront of the battle.' Dick turned his
face to Torpenhow and raised his hand to set his helmet straight, but,
miscalculating the distance, knocked it off. Torpenhow saw that his hair
was gray on the temples, and that his face was the face of an old man.

'Come down, you damned fool! Dickie, come off!'

And Dick came obediently, but as a tree falls, pitching sideways from
the Bisharin's saddle at Torpenhow's feet. His luck had held to the
last, even to the crowning mercy of a kindly bullet through his head.

Torpenhow knelt under the lee of the camel, with Dick's body in his
arms.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Light That Failed, by Rudyard Kipling

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIGHT THAT FAILED ***

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