“Dunno, I’m sure,” said Cunningham.

“Read me this one, then.  By pacifying both Mohammedan and Hindoo and by letting both keep their religion, by sometimes playing one against the other and by being just, the British Government has become supreme from the Himalayas to the ocean.  Can you tell me why they now issue cartridges for the new rifles that are soaked in the fat of cows and pigs, thus insulting both Mohammedan and Hindoo?”

“I didn’t know it was so.”

“Sahib, it is!  These damned new cartridges and this new drill-sahib, I —­I who am loyal to the marrow of my bones—­would no more touch those cartridges—­nor bite them, as the drill decrees—­than I would betray thee!  Pig’s fat!  Ugh!”

He spat with Mohammedan eloquence and wiped his lips on his tunic sleeve before resuming.

“Then, like a flint and steel, to light the train that they have laid, they loose these missionaries, in a swarm, from one end of India to the other.  Why?  What say one and all?  Mohammedan and Hindoo both say it is a plot, first to make them lose their own religion by defilement, then to make Christians of them!  Foolishness to talk thus?  Nay!  It was foolishness to act thus!

“Sahib, peace follows in the wake of soldiers, as we know.  Time and time again the peace of India has been ripped asunder at the whim of priests!  These padre people, preaching new damnation everywhere, are the flint and steel for the tinder of the cartridge fat!”

“I never knew you to croak before, Mahommed Gunga.”

“Nor am I croaking.  I am praising Allah, who has sent thee now to the place whence the wind will come to fan the hell flames that presently will burn.  The wind will blow hot or cold—­for or against the government—­according as you and I and certain others act when opportunity arrives!  See yonder!”

They had been seen, evidently, for horsemen—­looking like black ants on the desert—­seemed to have crawled from the bowels of the living rock and were galloping in their direction.

“Friends?” asked Cunningham.

“Friends, indeed!  But they have yet to discover whether we are friends.  They set me thinking, sahib.  Alwa is well known on this country-side and none dare raid his place; few would waste time trying.  Therefore, it is all one to him who passes along this road; and he takes no trouble, as a rule, to send his men out in skirmishing order when a party comes in view.  Why, then, does he trouble now?”

“Couldn’t say.  I don’t know Alwa.”

“I am thinking, sahib, that the cloud has burst at last!  A blood-red cloud!  Alwa is neither scare-monger nor robber; when he sends out armed men to inspect strangers on the sky-line, there is war!  Sahib, I grow young again!  Had people listened to me—­had they called me anything but fool when I warned them—­thou and I would have been cooped up now in Agra, or in Delhi, or Lucknow,