“Tin!” said we, with one voice.  Tin means three, sahib, but it sounded rather like the scream of a shell that leaves on its journey.

My horse laid his ears back and dug his toes into the ground.  A trumpet sounded, and Colonel Kirby rose in his stirrups: 

“Outram’s Own!” he yelled, “by squadrons on number One—­”

But the sahib would not be interested in the sequence of commands that have small meaning to those not familiar with them.  And who shall describe what followed?  Who shall tell the story of a charge into the night, at an angle, into massed regiments of infantry advancing one behind another at the double and taken by surprise?

The guns of both sides suddenly ceased firing.  Even as I used my spurs they ceased.  How?  Who am I that I should know?  The British guns, I suppose, from fear of slaying us, and the German guns from fear of slaying Germans; but as to how, I know not.  But the German star-shells continued bursting overhead, and by that weird light their oncoming infantry saw charging into them men they had never seen before out of a picture-book!

God knows what tales they had been told about us Sikhs.  I read their faces as I rode.  Fear is an ugly weapon, sahib, whose hilt is more dangerous than its blade.  If our officers had told us such tales about Germans as their officers had told them about us, I think perhaps we might have feared to charge.

Numbers were as nothing that night.  Speed, and shock, and unexpectedness were ours, and lies had prepared us our reception.  D Squadron rode behind Ranjoor Singh like a storm in the night—­swung into line beside the other squadrons—­and spurred forward as in a dream.  There was no shouting; no war-cry.  We rode into the Germans as I have seen wind cut into a forest in the hills—­downward into them, for once we had leapt the trench the ground sloped their way.  And they went down before us as we never had the chance of mowing them again.

So, sahib, we proved our hearts—­whether they were stout, and true, as the British had believed, or false, as the Germans planned and hoped.  That was a night of nights—­one of very few such, for the mounted actions in this war have not been many.  Hah!  I have been envied!  I have been called opprobrious names by a sergeant of British lancers, out of great jealousy!  But that is the way of the British.  It happened later, when the trench fighting had settled down in earnest and my regiment and his were waiting our turn behind the lines.  He and I sat together on a bench in a great tent, where some French artists gave us good entertainment.

He offered me tobacco, which I do not use, and rum, which I do not drink.  He accepted sweetmeats from me.  And he called me a name that would make the sahib gulp, a word that I suppose he had picked up from a barrack-sweeper on the Bengal side of India.  Then he slapped me on the back, and after that sat with his arm around me while the entertainment lasted.  When we left the tent he swore roundly at a newcomer to the front for not saluting me, who am not entitled to salute.  That is the way of the British.  But I was speaking of Ranjoor Singh.  Forgive me, sahib.