He had no idea how long he lay stock-still, for fear of calling attention to himself, and hated his servant and Mahommed Gunga and all India.  Once—­twice—­he thought he heard another sound, almost like the footfall of a man on the veranda near him.  Once he thought that a man breathed within ten paces of him, and for a moment there was a distinct sensation of not being alone.  He hoped it was true; he could deal with an assassin.  That would be something tangible to hate and hit.  Manhood came to his assistance—­the spirit of the soldier that will bow to nothing that has shape; but it died away again as the creeping silence once more shut down on him.

And then the thunder of the tom-toms ceased.  Then even the venomed crawlers that he knew were near him faded into nothing that really mattered, compared to the greater, stealthy horror that he knew was coming, born of the shuddersome, shut silence that ensued.  There was neither air nor view—­no sense of time or space—­nothing but the coal-black pit of terror yawning—­cold sweat in the heat, and a footfall—­an undoubted footfall—­followed by another one, too heavy for a man’s.

Where heavy feet were there was something tangible.  His veins tingled and the cold sweat dried.  Excitement began to reawaken all his soldier senses, and the wish to challenge seized him—­the soldierly intent to warn the unaware, which is the actual opposite of cowardice.

“Halt!  Who comes there?”

He lipped the words, but his dry throat would not voice them.  Before he could clear his throat or wet his lips his eye caught something lighter than the night—­two things—­ten—­twelve paces off—­two things that glowed or sheened as though there were light inside them—­ too big and too far apart to be owl’s eyes, but singularly like them.  They moved, a little sideways and toward him; and again he heard the heavy, stealthy footfall.

They stayed still then for what may have been a minute, and another sense—­smell—­warned him and stirred up the man in him.  He had never smelled it in his life; it must have been instinct that assured him of an enemy behind the strange, unpleasant, rather musky reek that filled the room.  His right hand brought the rifle to his shoulder without sound, and almost without conscious effort on his part.

He forgot the heat now and the silence and discomfort.  He lay still on his side, squinting down the rifle barrel at a spot he judged was midway between a pair of eyes that glowed, and wondering where his foresight might be.  It struck him all at once that it was quite impossible to see the foresight—­that he must actually touch what he would hit if he would be at all sure of hitting it.  He remembered, too, in that instant—­as a born soldier does remember things—­that in the dark an attacking enemy is probably more frightened than his foe.  His father had told it him when he was a little lad afraid of bogies; he in turn had told it to the other boys at school, and they had passed it on until in that school it had become rule number one of school-boy lore—­just as rule number two in all schools where the sons of soldiers go is “Take the fight to him.”