Fish walked across to where the drums were drumming and
the horns were horning. It was cold--awful cold. I've got that cold in
the back of my head now. There's a lump of it there."

The punka-coolies had gone to sleep. Two kerosene lamps were blazing in
the office, and the perspiration poured down my face and splashed on the
blotter as I leaned forward. Carnehan was shivering, and I feared that
his mind might go. I wiped my face, took a fresh grip of the piteously
mangled hands, and said, "What happened after that?"

The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.

"What was you pleased to say?" whined Carnehan. "They took them without
any sound. Not a little whisper all along the snow, not though the King
knocked down the first man that set hand on him--not though old Peachey
fired his last cartridge into the brown of 'em. Not a single solitary
sound did those swines make. They just closed up tight, and I tell you
their furs stunk. There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us
all, and they cut his throat, Sir, then and there, like a pig; and the
King kicks up the bloody snow and says, 'We've had a dashed fine run for
our money. What's coming next?' But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I tell
you, Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir.
No, he didn't, neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o'
one of those cunning rope bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter,
Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a
rope bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen
such. They prodded him behind like an ox. 'Damn your eyes!' says
the King. 'D' you suppose I can't die like a gentleman?' He turns to
Peachey--Peachey that was crying like a child. 'I've brought you to
this, Peachey,' says he. 'Brought you out of your happy life to be
killed in Kafiristan, where you was late Commander-in-Chief of the
Emperor's forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.' 'I do,' says Peachey.
'Fully and freely do I forgive you, Dan.' 'Shake hands, Peachey,' says
he. 'I'm going now.' Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and
when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, 'Cut you
beggars,' he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and
round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall
till he struck the water, and I could see his body caught on a rock with
the gold crown close beside.

"But