He rode off, and Colonel Carter stared long and steadily at the approaching horsemen.  He saw a dense mass of the enemy, about a thousand strong, detach itself from the left wing and move to intercept them, and he noticed that the movement made a tremendous difference to the ranks opposed to him.  He stepped up to young Bellairs and touched his sleeve.  Bellairs started like a man roused from a dream.

“That’s your wife over there!” said Colonel Carter.  “There can’t be any other white woman here-abouts riding with a Rajput escort!”

Bellairs gripped the colonel’s outstretched arm.

“Where?” he almost screamed.  “Where?  I don’t see her!”

“There, man!  There, where that mass of men is moving!  Look!  By the
Lord Harry!  He’s charging right through the mob!  That’s Mahommed
Khan, I’ll bet a fortune!  Now’s our chance
Bugler!”

The bugler ran to him, and he began to puff into his instrument.

“Blow the `attention’ first!”

Out rang the clear, strident notes, and the non-commissioned officers and men took notice that a movement of some kind would shortly be required of them, but the din of firing never ceased for a single instant.  Then, suddenly, an answering bugle sang out from the other flank.

“Advance in echelon!” commanded Colonel Carter, and the bugler did his best to split his cheeks in a battle-rending blast.

“You remain where you are, sir!” he ordered young Bellairs.  “Keep your guns served to the utmost!”

Six-and-twenty horsemen, riding full-tilt at a thousand men, may look like a trifle, but they are disconcerting.  What they hit, they kill; and if they succeed in striking home, they play old Harry with formations.  And Risaldar Mahommed Khan did strike home.  He changed direction suddenly and, instead of using up his horses’ strength in outflanking the enemy, who had marched to intercept him, and making a running target of his small command, he did the unexpected—­which is the one best thing to do in war.  He led his six-and-twenty at a headlong gallop straight for the middle of the crowd—­it could not be called by any military name.  They fired one ragged volley at him and then had no time to load before he was in the middle of them, clashing right and left and pressing forward.  They gave way, right and left, before him, and a good number of them ran.  Half a hundred of them were cut down as they fled toward their firing-line.  At that second, just as the Risaldar and his handful burst through the mob and the mob began rushing wildly out of his way, the British bugles blared out the command to advance in echelon.

The Indians were caught between a fire and a charge that they had good reason to fear in front of them, and a disturbance on their left flank that might mean anything.  As one-half of them turned wildly to face what might be coming from this unexpected quarter, the British troops came on with a roar, and at the same moment Mahommed Khan reached the rear of their firing-line and crashed headlong into it.