“Yes, Iris?” he said.

“I am not sure, but I imagine something moved among the bushes behind the house.”

“All right, dear.  I will keep a sharp look-out.  Can you hear us talking?”

“Hardly.  Will you be long?”

“Another minute.”

He descended and told Mir Jan what the miss-sahib said.  The native was about to make a search when Jenks stopped him.

“Here,”—­he handed the man his revolver—­“I suppose you can use this?”

Mir Jan took it without a word, and Jenks felt that the incident atoned for previous unworthy doubts of his dark friend’s honesty.  The Mahommedan cautiously examined the back of the house, the neighboring shrubs, and the open beach.  After a brief absence he reported all safe, yet no man has ever been nearer death and escaped it than he during that reconnaissance.  He, too, forgot that the Dyaks were foxes, and foxes can lie close when hounds are a trifle stale.

Mir Jan returned the revolver.

“Sahib,” he said with another salaam, “I am a disgraced man, but if you will take me up there with you, I will fight by your side until both my arms are hacked off.  I am weary of these thieves.  Ill chance threw me into their company:  I will have no more of them.  If you will not have me on the rock, give me a gun.  I will hide among the trees, and I promise that some of them shall die to-night before they find me.  For the honor of the regiment, sahib, do not refuse this thing.  All I ask is, if your honor escapes, that you will write to Kurnal I-shpence-sahib, and tell him the last act of Mir Jan, naik in B troop.”

There was an intense pathos in the man’s words.  He made this self-sacrificing offer with an utter absence of any motive save the old tradition of duty to the colors.  Here was Anstruther-sahib, of the Belgaum Rissala, in dire peril.  Very well, then, Corporal Mir Jan, late of the 19th Bengal Lancers, must dare all to save him.

Jenks was profoundly moved.  He reflected how best to utilize the services of this willing volunteer without exposing him to certain death in the manner suggested.  The native misinterpreted his silence.

“I am not a budmash,[Footnote:  Rascal.] sahib,” he exclaimed proudly.  “I only killed a man because—­”

“Listen, Mir Jan.  You cannot well mend what you have said.  The Dyaks, you are sure, will not come before morning?”

“They have carried the wounded to the boats and are making the ladders.  Such was their talk when I left them.”

“Will they not miss you?”

“They will miss the mussak,[Footnote:  Goatskin.] sahib.  It was the last full one.”

“Mir Jan, do as I bid, and you shall see Delhi again, Have you ever used a Lee-Metford?”

“I have seen them, sahib; but I better understand the Mahtini.”

“I will give you a rifle, with plenty of ammunition, Do you go inside the cave, there, and——­”