“I?” he answered readily; “why, I have just left those dogs of Feringhis (may God burn them in hell!), where I took service for a short time, so as to learn their ways, and their tricks of fighting.”

“Shahbash (bravo)!” exclaimed the company; “and what are you going to do now?”

“What am I going to do now?  Why, fight the accursed infidels, of course!” replied the duffadar.

“That is indeed fortunate,” said the headman of the village, “for our spies tell us that the Feringhis intend attacking us.  We shall now be able to make you the general of our forces, and since you have been so wise as to learn the cunning strategy of the infidels we shall of a surety kill them all, and send their souls to hell.”

“Oh yes, certainly, if I am here,” hastily murmured Faiz Talab, adding as he regained his composure and the Oriental art of fluently telling the thing that is not true, “but unfortunately I have urgent business over the Khost, and cannot delay.  To-morrow at crack of dawn I must be on my way.”

“Our kismet is indeed bad, but let the will of God be done!” was the pious rejoinder of the most villainous-looking of the surrounding cut-throats.

Night having now fallen, and the lighting arrangements of an Afghan village being limited to a wood fire, travellers and villagers began one by one to roll themselves up in their wadded quilts, and each man, hugging his sword, dropped off to sleep.

Just before dawn Faiz Talab was awakened by someone rudely shaking him.  “Get up, oh indolent one, the English are upon us, and we look to you to help us to defeat them.  Here, take this rifle and these twenty rounds of ammunition, and come and show us how best we may arrange our battle line.”

Up jumped the duffadar, and hastily shook together his sleeping wits.  Here was a pretty dilemma!  Evidently something had occurred to precipitate action on the part of the British, and it had been found inexpedient, or perhaps impossible, to wait for the receipt of his report.  Meanwhile the duffadar was in the exceedingly uncomfortable position of him who finds himself between the devil and the deep sea.  As the chosen leader, thus miraculously fallen from heaven on the eve of battle, he had become so important a figure that it was impossible for him to take up a modest position in the rear; indeed, a bullet through the head would have been the immediate rejoinder to any such suggestion on his part.  Forced thus by circumstance into the forefront of the battle, he turned his back to the devil and stood forth to face the deep sea, and the great waves of British soldiers which surged across it to the attack.

“The first thing to do,” he shouted authoritatively, “is to take good cover, so that the bullets and cannon-balls of the English cannot hit us; and then, when they have expended their ammunition, we will shout Allah! and charge them with the sword.”

“Well spoken!” was the cry, and the order passed up and down the line.