The subaltern went along the verandah to the door and tried it.  It was firmly fastened.

“Here, sahib!” cried a sepoy who ran up with a comrade carrying a heavy log.

“Shahbash! (Well done!) Break in the door,” said Wargrave.

Other men, who had come up, seized the long log and dashed it violently against the door.  The bolt held, but the frail hinges gave way and the door fell in.

“Stand back!” cried Wargrave.

It seemed certain death to enter the room in which a murderer lurked in darkness, armed with a rifle and fixed bayonet and resolved to sell his life dearly.  But the subaltern did not hesitate.  He was the only sahib there and of course it was his duty to go in.  He could not ask his men to risk a danger that he shirked himself.  That is not the officer’s way, whose motto must ever be “Follow where I lead.”

Wargrave sprang into the room unarmed.  He was outlined against the faint light outside.  A spurt of flame lit the darkness; and the subaltern, as he tripped over the raised threshold, felt that he was shot.  He staggered on.  A rifle lunged forward and the bayonet stabbed him in the side; but with a desperate effort he closed with his unseen assailant and grappled fiercely with him.  Struggling to overpower the assassin before his ebbing strength left him he fought madly.  The Indian officers and sepoys blocking up the doorway could see nothing; but they could hear the choking gasps, the panting breaths, the muttered curses and the stamping feet of the combatants locked in the death-grapple.  They could not interfere, they dared not fire.  In impotent fury they shouted: 

“Bring lamps!  Bring lamps!”

Then, groaning in their powerlessness to aid their beloved officer, they listened, as a light danced over the stones from a lantern in the hand of a running sepoy.  The moment it came and lit up the scene they rushed on the murderer wrestling fiercely with Wargrave and dragged him off as the subaltern collapsed and fell to the ground.  The glare of the lantern shone on his white face.

“The sahib is dead!” cried a sepoy, and sprang at the murderer who was struggling in the grip of the two powerfully-built Indian officers.  Others followed him, and his captors had to fight hard and use all their authority to keep the prisoner from being killed by the bare hands of his maddened comrades.  Only the arrival of the armed men of the guard saved him.

Frenzied with grief the sepoys bent over their officer lying motionless and apparently dead on the stone floor.  They loved him.  Many of them wept openly and unashamed.  The subhedar knelt beside him and opened his shirt.  The blood had soaked through the white mess-jacket that Wargrave wore.

The native officer looked up into the ring of brown faces bent over him.  Suddenly he cried angrily: 

“Mahbub Khan, why hast thou not gone for the doctor sahib as thou wert told, O Son of an Owl?”