As he strolled up and down, supervising drills, went round the sentry-posts by night, or marched at the head of a patrol, Captain Malet-Marsac would reflect upon the relativity of things, the false values of civilization, and the extraordinary devitalising and deteriorating results of “education”.  When it came to vital issues, elementals, stark essential manhood,—­then the elect of civilization, the chosen of education, weighed, was found not only wanting but largely negligible.  Where the highly “educated” was as good as the other he was so by reason of his games and sports, his shikar, or his specialized training—­as in the case of the engineers and other physically-trained men.

Captain John Bruce, for example, Professor of Engineering, was a soldier in a few weeks and a fine one.  In time of peace, a quiet, humorous, dour and religious-minded man, he was now a stern disciplinarian and a cunning foe who fought to kill, rejoicing in the carnage that taught a lesson and made for earlier peace.  The mind that had dreamed of universal brotherhood and the Oneness of Humanity now dreamed of ambushes, night-attacks, slaughterous strategy and magazine-fire on a cornered foe.

Surely and steadily the men enclosed behind the walls of the old Prison rose into the ranks of the utterly reliable, the indefatigable, the fearless and the fine, or sank into those of the shifty, unhearty, unreliable, and unworthy—­save the few who remained steadily mediocre, well-meaning, unsoldierly, fairly trustworthy—­a useful second line, but not to be sent on forlorn hopes, dangerous reconnoitring, risky despatch-carrying, scouting, or ticklish night-work.  One siege is very like another—­and Ross-Ellison’s garrison knew increasing weariness, hunger, disease and casualties.

Mrs. Dearman’s conduct raised Colonel Ross-Ellison’s love to a burning, yearning devotion, and his defence of Gungapur became his defence of Mrs. Dearman.  For her husband she appeared to mourn but little—­there was little time to mourn—­and, for a while, until sights, sounds and smells became increasingly horrible, she appeared almost to enjoy her position of Queen of the Garrison, the acknowledged Ladye of the Officers and men of the Corps.  Until she fell sick herself, she played the part of amateur Florence Nightingale right well, going regularly with a lamp—­the Lady with the Lamp—­at night through the hospital ward.  Captain John Bruce was the only one who was not loud in her praises, though he uttered no dispraises.  He, a dour and practical person, thought the voyage with the Lamp wholly unnecessary and likely to awaken sleepers to whom sleep was life; that lint-scraping would have been a more useful employment than graciousness to the poor wounded; that a woman, as zealous as Mrs. Dearman looked, would have torn up dainty cotton and linen confections for bandages instead of wearing them; that the Commandant didn’t need all the personal encouragement and enheartenment that she wished to give him—­and many other uncomfortable, cynical, and crabby thoughts.  Captain Malet-Marsac loved her without criticism.