The cavalry were very quiet, but each man gripped his carbine and stood beside his horse.  Again the voice called, ‘Who goes there?’ and in a louder key, ‘O, brothers, give the alarm!’ Now, every man in the cavalry would have died in his long boots sooner than have asked for quarter; but it is a fact that the answer to the second call was a long wail of ‘Marf karo!  Marf karo!’ which means, ’Have mercy!  Have mercy!’ It came from the climbing regiment.

The cavalry stood dumbfoundered, till the big troopers had time to whisper one to another:  ’Mir Khan, was that thy voice?  Abdullah, didst thou call?’ Lieutenant Halley stood beside his charger and waited.  So long as no firing was going on he was content.  Another flash of lightning showed the horses with heaving flanks and nodding heads, the men, white eye-balled, glaring beside them and the stone watch-tower to the left.  This time there was no head at the window, and the rude iron-clamped shutter that could turn a rifle bullet was closed.

‘Go on, men,’ said the Major.  ‘Get up to the top at any rate.’  The squadron toiled forward, the horses wagging their tails and the men pulling at the bridles, the stones rolling down the hillside and the sparks flying.  Lieutenant Halley declares that he never heard a squadron make so much noise in his life.  They scrambled up, he said, as though each horse had eight legs and a spare horse to follow him.  Even then there was no sound from the watch-tower, and the men stopped exhausted on the ridge that overlooked the pit of darkness in which the village of Bersund lay.  Girths were loosed, curb-chains shifted, and saddles adjusted, and the men dropped down among the stones.  Whatever might happen now, they had the upper ground of any attack.

The thunder ceased, and with it the rain, and the soft thick darkness of a winter night before the dawn covered them all.  Except for the sound of falling water among the ravines below, everything was still.  They heard the shutter of the watch-tower below them thrown back with a clang, and the voice of the watcher calling:  ‘Oh, Hafiz Ullah!’

The echoes took up the call, ‘La-la-la!’ And an answer came from the watch-tower hidden round the curve of the hill, ’What is it, Shahbaz Khan?’

Shahbaz Khan replied in the high-pitched voice of the mountaineer:  ‘Hast thou seen?’

The answer came back:  ‘Yes.  God deliver us from all evil spirits!’

There was a pause, and then:  ‘Hafiz Ullah, I am alone!  Come to me!’

‘Shahbaz Khan, I am alone also; but I dare not leave my post!’

‘That is a lie; thou art afraid.’

A longer pause followed, and then:  ’I am afraid.  Be silent!  They are below us still.  Pray to God and sleep.’

The troopers listened and wondered, for they could not understand what save earth and stone could lie below the watch-towers.

Shahbaz Khan began to call again:  ’They are below us.  I can see them.  For the pity of God come over to me, Hafiz Ullah!  My father slew ten of them.  Come over!’