The lock on the cell-door was broken, so he only closed it, then started back toward the guardroom.

“Three rifles, and three ammunition pouches gone!” he muttered.  “That’s three weapons they’ve got, in any case.  A hornet’s nest’d be better stopping in than this place.”

He overtook the men who were carrying in the nail-killed sentry, and he saw that their faces were drawn and white.  So were those of the other men, who were clustered in the guardroom door.

“What next, Sergeant?  Hadn’t we better be quick?  Why not burn the place?  That’d do instead o’ buryin’ the dead ones, and it’d give us a light to get away by.  Might serve as a beacon, too.  Might fetch assistance!”

It was evident that panic had set in.

“Fall in!” commanded Brown, and his straight back took on a curve that meant straightness to the nth power.

“’Tshun!  Ri’—­dress!  Eyes—­front!”

He glared at them for just about one minute before he spoke, and during that minute each man there realized that what was coming would be quite irrevocable.

“I’m sergeant here.  My orders are to hold this post until relieved.  Therefore—­and I hope there’s no man here holds any other notion; I hope it for his own sake!—­until we are relieved, we’re going to hold it!  Moreover, this command is going to be a real command, from now on.  It’s going to buck up.  I’m going to put some ginger in it.  There are three dead men here to be avenged, and I’m going to avenge ’em, or make you do it!  And if any man imagines he’s going to help himself by feeling afraid, let me assure him that the only thing he needs to fear is me!  I’ve a right to command men—­I know how—­ I intend to do it.  And if I’ve got to make men first out of whey-faced cowards, why, I’m game to do it, and this is just where I begin!  Now!  Anybody got a word to say?”

There was grim silence.

“Good!  I’ll assume, then, until I’m contradicted, that you’re all brave men.  Into the guardroom with you!”

“Sahib!  Sahib!” said a voice beside him.

“Well?  What?”

It was the Beluchi interpreter who had carried the lamp for him that evening when he arrested the fakir.

“Run, sahib!  It is time to run away!”

“Go on, then!  Why don’t you run?”

“I am afraid, sahib.”

“Of what?”

“Of the men who slew the soldiers.  Sahib!  Remember what the fakir said.  You will be pegged out on an anthill, sahib, when you have been beaten.  Run, while there is yet time!”

“Did you see them kill my men?”

“Nay, sahib!”

“How was that?”

“I ran away and hid, sahib.”

“How many were there?”

“Very many.  The Punjabi skin-buyer brought them.”

“He did, did he?  Very well!  Did he go off with the fakir?”

“I think he did.  I did not see.”

“Well, we’ll suppose he did, then.  And when the day breaks; we’ll suppose that we can find him, and we’ll go in search of him, and I wouldn’t like to be that Punjabi when I do find him!  Get into the guard-room, and wait in there until I give you leave to stir.”