you! Tomorrow our rear will be surrounded, too;
they have laid planks across the little streams behind us, and are
preparing to drag guns to that side, too. Now, sahib, we have fire left
in us. We can smite yet, and do damage while we die. Tomorrow night
may find us decimated and without heart for the finish. I advise you to
advance at dawn, sahib!"

That advice came as a great relief to Byng-bahadur. He had been the
first to see the hopelessness of the position, and every instinct that
he had told him to finish matters, not in the last reeking ditch, but
ahead, where the enemy would suffer fearfully while a desperate charge
roared into them, to peter out when the last man went down fighting.
Surrender was unthinkable, and in any event would have been no good,
for the mutineers would be sure to butcher all their prisoners; his only
other chance had been to hold out until relief came, and that hope was
now forlorn.

A Mohammedan stepped out of blackness and saluted him--a native officer,
in charge of a handful of irregular cavalry, whose horses had all been
shot.

"Well--what is it?"

"This, sahib. Do we die here? I and my men would prefer to die yonder,
where a mutineer or two would pay the price!"

A Ghoorka officer--small as a Japanese and sturdy-looking came up next.
The whole thing was evidently preconcerted.

"My men ask leave to show the way into the ranks ahead, General-sahib!
They are overweary of this shambles!"

"We will advance at dawn!" said Byng. "Egan--" He turned to a British
officer, who was very nearly all the staff he had. "Drag that table up.
Let's have some paper here and a pencil, and we'll work out the best
plan possible."

He sent for the commanding officers of the British regiments--both of
them captains, but the seniors surviving--and a weird scene followed
round the lamp set on the tiny table. British, Sikh, Mohammedan, and
Ghoorka clustered close to him, and watched as his pencil traced
the different positions and showed the movement that was to make the
morrow's finish, their faces outlined in the lamp's yellow glow and
their breath coming deep and slow as they agreed on how the greatest
damage could be done the enemy before the last man died.

As he finished, and assigned each leader to his share in the last
assault that any one of them would take a part in, a streak of light
blazed suddenly across the sky. A shooting-star swept in a wide parabola
to the horizon. A murmur went up