“They are.  I join them now,” and the squat broad-shouldered figure rolled away with swinging, swaggering gait.

Suddenly Private Augustus Grobble started from deep sleep to acutest wide-eyed consciousness and was aware of a man’s face peering over a boulder not twenty yards from him—­a hideous hairy face, surmounted by a close-fitting skull-cap that shone greasy in the moonlight.  The blood of Augustus froze in his veins, he held his breath, his heart shook his body, his tongue withered and dried.  He closed his eyes as a wave of faintness swept over him, and, as he opened them again, he saw that the man was crawling towards him, and that between his teeth was a huge knife.  The terrible Pathan, the cruel dreadful stalker, the slashing disemboweller was upon him!—­and with a mighty effort he sprang to his feet and fled for his life down the hill in the direction of the Prison.  His sudden movements awoke Private Green, who, in one scared glance, saw a number of terrible forms arising from behind boulders and rushing silently and swiftly towards him and his flying comrade.  Leaping up he fled after Grabble, running as he had never run before, and, even as he leapt clear of the sleeping group, the wave of Pathans broke upon it and with slash and stab assured it sound sleep for ever, all save Edward Jones, who, badly wounded as he was, survived (to the later undoing of Moussa Isa, murderer of a Brahmin boy).

Of the four Pathans who had surprised the sentry group, one, with a passing slash that re-arranged the face of Reginald Ladon Gurr, sped on after the flying sentries.  But that the man was short and stout of build and that the fugitives had a down-hill start, both would have died that night.  As it was, within ten seconds, a tremendous sweep of the heavy blade of the long Khyber knife caused Private Gosling-Green to lose his head completely and for the last time.  Augustus Grobble, favoured of fortune for the moment, took flying leaps that would have been impossible to him under other circumstances, bounded and ran unstumbling, gained the shadow of the avenue of trees, and with bursting breast sped down the road, reached the gate, shouted the countersign with his remaining breath, and was dragged inside by Captain Michael Malet-Marsac.

“Well?” inquired he coldly of the gasping terrified wretch.

When he could do so, Augustus sobbed out his tale.

“Bugler, sound the alarm!” said the officer.  “Sergeant of the Guard put this man in the guard-room and keep him under arrest until he is sent for,” and, night-glasses in hand, he climbed one of the ladders leading to the platform erected a few feet below the top of the well-loopholed wall, just as a shot was fired and followed by others in rapid succession on the hill whence Grobble had fled.

The shot was fired by Corporal Horace Faggit and so were the next four as he rapidly emptied his magazine at the swiftly charging Pathans who rose out of the earth on his first shot at the man he had seen wriggling to the cover of a stone.  As he fired and shouted, the picket-sentry did the same, and, within a minute of Horace’s first shot, ten rifles were levelled at the spot where the rushing silent fiends had disappeared.  Within thirty yards of them were at least half a dozen men—­and not a glimpse of one to be seen.