“It is he,” cried one, a squat, broad-shouldered fellow, as they stood at gaze, and long knives flashed.

“Oho, Spy!  Aha, Dog!  For what hast thou come?” asked one burly fellow as he advanced warily upon the intruder, who backed slowly to the angle of the high walls.

“To die, Hidayetullah.  To die, Nazir Ali Khan.  To die slaying!  Come on!” was the reply, and in one moment the speaker’s Khyber knife flashed from his loose sleeve into the throat of the nearest foe.

As he withdrew it, the door-keeper slashed at his abdomen, missed by a hair’s-breadth, raised his arm to save his neck from a slash, and was stabbed to the heart, the knife held dagger-wise.  Another Pathan rushing forward, with uplifted knife held as a sword, was met by a sudden low fencing-lunge and fell with a hideous wound, and then, whirling his weapon like a claymore in an invisibly rapid Maltese cross of flashing steel, the man who had been Ross-Ellison drove his enemies before him, whirled about, and established himself in the opposite corner, and spat pungent Border taunts at the infuriated crowd.

“Come on, you village curs, you landless cripples, you wifeless sons of burnt fathers!  Come on!  Strike for the credit of your noseless mothers!  Run not from me as your wives ran from you—­to better men!  Come on, you sweepers, you swine-herds, you down-country street-scrapers!” and they came on to heart’s content, steel clashed on steel and thudded on flesh and bone.

“Get a rifle,” cried one, lying bleeding on the ground, striving to rise while he held his right shoulder to his neck with his partly severed left hand.  As he fainted the shoulder gaped horribly.

“Get a cannon,” mocked Ross-Ellison.  “Get a cannon, dogs, against one man,” and again, whirling the great jade-handled knife, long as a short sword, he rushed forward and the little mob gave ground before the irresistible claymore-whirl, the unbreakable Maltese cross described by the razor-edge and needle-point.

“It is a devil,” groaned a man, as his knife and his hand fell together to the ground, and he clapped his turban on the stump as a boy claps his hat upon some small creature that he would capture.

The madman whirled about in the third corner and, as he ceased the wild whirl, ducked low and lunged, lessening the number of his enemies by one.  This lunge was a new thing to men who could only slash and stab, a new thing and a terrible, for it could not be parried save by seizing the blade and losing half a hand.

“Come on, you growing maidens!  Come on, grandmothers!  Come on, you cleaners of pig-skins, you washers of dogs!  Come on!” and as he shouted, the door crashed down and a patrol of British soldiers, attracted by the noise, and delayed by the stout door, burst into the courtyard.

“At the henemy in front, fixed sights,” shouted the corporal in charge.  And added an order not to be found in the drill-book:  “Blow ’em to ’ell if they budges.”