Haslewood rose and went out from the courtyard with the orderly.  He returned in a few minutes, saying that the man had returned to Wafadar Nazim’s camp.  The six men resumed their meal, and just as they ended it a Pathan glided in white flowing garments into the courtyard and bowed low.

“Huzoor,” he said, “His Highness the Khan sends you greeting.  God has been very good to him.  A son has been born to him this day, and he sends you this present, knowing that you will value it more than all that he has”; and carefully unfolding a napkin, he laid with reverence upon the table a little red cardboard box.  The mere look of the box told the six men what the present was even before Luffe lifted the lid.  It was a box of fifty gold-tipped cigarettes, and applause greeted their appearance.

“If he could only have a son every day,” said Lynes, and in the laugh which followed upon the words Luffe alone did not join.  He leaned his forehead upon his hand and sat in a moody silence.  Then he turned towards the servant and bade him thank his master.

“I will come myself to offer our congratulations after dinner if his Highness will receive me,” said Luffe.

The box of cigarettes went round the table.  Each man took one, lighted it, and inhaled the smoke silently and very slowly.  The garrison had run out of tobacco a week before.  Now it had come to them welcome as a gift from Heaven.  The moment was one of which the perfect enjoyment was not to be marred by any speech.  Only a grunt of satisfaction or a deep sigh of pleasure was now and then to be heard, as the smoke curled upwards from the little paper sticks.  Each man competed with his neighbour in the slowness of his respiration, each man wanted to be the last to lay down his cigarette and go about his work.  And then the Doctor said in a whisper to Major Dewes: 

“That’s bad.  Look!”

Luffe, a mighty smoker in his days of health, had let his cigarette go out, had laid it half-consumed upon the edge of his plate.  But it seemed that ill-health was not all to blame.  He had the look of one who had forgotten his company.  He was withdrawn amongst his own speculations, and his eyes looked out beyond that smoke-laden room in a fort amongst the Himalaya mountains into future years dim with peril and trouble.

“There is no moon,” he said at length.  “We can get some exercise to-night”; and he rose from the table and ascended a little staircase on to the flat roof of the fort.  Major Dewes and the three other officers got up and went about their business.  Dr. Bodley, the surgeon, alone remained seated.  He waited until the tramp of his companions’ feet had died away, and then he drew from his pocket a briarwood pipe, which he polished lovingly.  He walked round the table and, collecting the ends of the cigarettes, pressed them into the bowl of the pipe.

“Thank Heavens I am not an executive officer,” he said, as he lighted his pipe and settled himself again comfortably in his chair.  It should be mentioned, perhaps, that he not only doctored and operated on the sick and wounded, but he kept the stores, and when any fighting was to be done, took a rifle and filled any place which might be vacant in the firing-line.