That advice came as a great relief to Byng-bahadur.  He had been the first to see the hopelessness of the position, and every instinct that he had told him to finish matters, not in the last reeking ditch, but ahead, where the enemy would suffer fearfully while a desperate charge roared into them, to peter out when the last man went down fighting.  Surrender was unthinkable, and in any event would have been no good, for the mutineers would be sure to butcher all their prisoners; his only other chance had been to hold out until relief came, and that hope was now forlorn.

A Mohammedan stepped out of blackness and saluted him—­a native officer, in charge of a handful of irregular cavalry, whose horses had all been shot.

“Well—­what is it?”

“This, sahib.  Do we die here?  I and my men would prefer to die yonder, where a mutineer or two would pay the price!”

A Ghoorka officer—­small as a Japanese and sturdy-looking came up next.  The whole thing was evidently preconcerted.

“My men ask leave to show the way into the ranks ahead, General-sahib!  They are overweary of this shambles!”

“We will advance at dawn!” said Byng.  “Egan—­” He turned to a British officer, who was very nearly all the staff he had.  “Drag that table up.  Let’s have some paper here and a pencil, and we’ll work out the best plan possible.”

He sent for the commanding officers of the British regiments—­both of them captains, but the seniors surviving—­and a weird scene followed round the lamp set on the tiny table.  British, Sikh, Mohammedan, and Ghoorka clustered close to him, and watched as his pencil traced the different positions and showed the movement that was to make the morrow’s finish, their faces outlined in the lamp’s yellow glow and their breath coming deep and slow as they agreed on how the greatest damage could be done the enemy before the last man died.

As he finished, and assigned each leader to his share in the last assault that any one of them would take a part in, a streak of light blazed suddenly across the sky.  A shooting-star swept in a wide parabola to the horizon.  A murmur went up from the wakeful lines, and the silence of the graveyard followed.

“There is our sign, sahib!” laughed the Mohammedan.  The old Sikh nodded and the Ghoorka grinned.  “It is the end!” he said, without a trace of discouragement.

“Nonsense!” said Byng, his face, too, turned upward.

“What, then, does it mean, sahib?”

“That—­it means that God Almighty has relieved a picket!  We’re the picket.  We’re relieved!  We advance at dawn, and we’ll get through somehow!  Join your commands, gentlemen, and explain the details carefully to your men—­let’s have no misunderstandings.”

The dawn rose gold and beautiful upon a sleepless camp that reeked and steamed with hell-hot suffering.  It showed the rebels stationary, still in swarming lines, but scouts reported several thousand of them moving in a body from the flank toward the British rear.