“We might do some execution with rifles from here,” Cunningham suggested; “I believe I’ll send for mine.”  But Mahommed Gunga overheard him.

“Nay, sahib!  No shooting will be necessary.  Watch!”

There was a clatter of hoofs, and they all looked up in time to see the tails of the last four chargers disappearing round the corner, downward.  They had gone—­full pelt—­down a path that a man might hesitate to take!  From where they stood, there was an archer’s view of every inch of the only rock-hewn road that led from the gate to the summit of the cliff; an enemy who had burst the gate in would have had to climb in the teeth of a searching hail of missiles, with little chance of shooting back.

They could see the gate itself, and Jaimihr on the other side.  And, swooping—­shooting—­sliding down the trail like a storm-loosed avalanche, they could see the nine go, led by Alwa.  No living creature could have looked away!

Below, entirely unconscious of the coming shock, the mounted sepoys waited behind Jaimihr in four long, straight lines.  Jaimihr himself, with a heavy-hilted cimeter held upward at the “carry,” was about four charger lengths beyond the iron screen, ready to spur through.  Close by him were a dozen, waiting to ram a big beam in and hold up the gate when it had opened.  And, full-tilt down the gorge, flash-tipped like a thunderbolt, gray-turbaned, reckless, whirling death ripped down on them.

They caught sound of the hammering hoofs too late.  Two gongs boomed in the rock.  The windlass creaked.  Five seconds too late Jaimihr gathered up his reins, spurred, wheeled, and shouted to the men behind him.  The great gate rose, like the jaws of a hungry monster, and the nine—­streaking too fast down far too steep a slide to stop themselves—­burst straight out under it and struck, as a wind blast smites a poppy-field.

Jaimihr was borne backward—­carried off his horse.  Alwa and the first four rode him down, and crashed through the four-deep line beyond; the second four pounced on him, gathered him, and followed.  Before the lines could form again the whole nine wheeled—­as a wind-eddy spins on its own axis—­and burst through back again, the horses racing neck and neck, and the sabres cutting down a swath to screech and swear and gurgle in among the trampled garden stuff.

They came back in a line, all eight abreast, Alwa leading only by a length.  At the opening, four horses—­two on either side—­slid, rump to the ground, until their noses touched the rock.  Alwa and four dashed through and under; the rest recovered, spun on their haunches, and followed.  The gongs boomed again down in the belly of the rock, and the gate clanged shut.

“That was good,” said Mahommed Gunga quietly.  “Now, watch again!”

Almost before the words had left his lips, a hail of lead barked out from twenty vantage-points, and the smoke showed where some forty men were squinting down steel barrels, shooting as rapidly and as rottenly as natives of India usually do.  They did little execution; but before Alwa and his eight had climbed up the steep track to the summit, patting their horses’ necks and reviling Jaimihr as they came, the cavalry below had scampered out of range, leaving their dead and wounded where they lay.