“As soon as I stopped I was ashamed of myself—­as well I might be in front of privates—­and went back and started again.  Off I jumped this time—­with a kind of sob, I remember—­clean into the air, with the big white sail bellying out above me.

“I must have thought at a frightful pace.  It seemed a long time before I was sure that the thing meant to keep steady.  At first it heeled sideways.  Then I noticed the face of the rock which seemed to be streaming up past me, and me motionless.  Then I looked down and saw in the darkness the river and the dead Sepoy rushing up towards me.  But in the indistinct light I also saw three Chins, seemingly aghast at the sight of me, and that the Sepoy was decapitated.  At that I wanted to go back again.

“Then my boot was in the mouth of one, and in a moment he and I were in a heap with the canvas fluttering down on the top of us.  I fancy I dashed out his brains with my foot.  I expected nothing more than to be brained myself by the other two, but the poor heathen had never heard of Baldwin, and incontinently bolted.

“I struggled out of the tangle of dead Chin and canvas, and looked round.  About ten paces off lay the head of the Sepoy staring in the moonlight.  Then I saw the water and went and drank.  There wasn’t a sound in the world but the footsteps of the departing Chins, a faint shout from above, and the gluck of the water.  So soon as I had drunk my full I started off down the river.

“That about ends the explanation of the flying man story.  I never met a soul the whole eight miles of the way.  I got to Walters’ camp by ten o’clock, and a born idiot of a sentinel had the cheek to fire at me as I came trotting out of the darkness.  So soon as I had hammered my story into Winter’s thick skull, about fifty men started up the valley to clear the Chins out and get our men down.  But for my own part I had too good a thirst to provoke it by going with them.

“You have heard what kind of a yarn the Chins made of it.  Wings as long as a mule, eh?—­And black feathers!  The gay lieutenant bird!  Well, well.”

The lieutenant meditated cheerfully for a moment.  Then he added, “You would scarcely credit it, but when they got to the ridge at last, they found two more of the Sepoys had jumped over.”

“The rest were all right?” asked the Ethnologist.

“Yes,” said the lieutenant; “the rest were all right, barring a certain thirst, you know.”

And at the memory he helped himself to soda and whisky again.

THE DIAMOND MAKER