She had not even a notion where Bill was, beyond a vague one that he belonged to another province.  For when the Honorable East India Company was muddling the affairs of India, the honors and emoluments and privileges—­such as they were!—­were reserved for the benefit of the commissioned ranks.

So a transfer to Jailpore did not mean to Jane Emmett ten extra degrees of heat, the neighborhood of jungle-fever and a brand-new breed of smells.  Those disadvantages, which weighted down the souls of her employers, were completely overshadowed, so far as she was concerned, by the knowledge that she was traveling nearer by a hundred leagues or so to where her Bill was stationed.  She was going west; and somewhere to the west was Bill.  Anything was good—­fever, and prickly heat, and smells included—­that brought her any nearer him.

There would be no sense in endeavoring to analyze her sensations when the sudden outburst overwhelmed the inner-guard at Jailpore.  The sight of white women being butchered, and of white men with the blood of their own women on their hands, selling their lives as dearly as the God of War would let them in a holocaust of flames, blinded her.  It was probably just a splurge of fire and noise and smoke and blood in her memory, with one or two details standing out.  The only real sensation that she felt—­even when a tall, lean Rajput flung her across his shoulder, ran with her and dropped her down through a square hole into stifling darkness—­was a longing for Bill Brown, her Bill, the one man in the world who could surely stop the butchery.

The others prayed.  But she refused to pray.  She felt angry—­not prayerful!  Had she come nine thousand miles, and sacrificed six good years of youth and youth’s heritage, to be cast into a reeking dungeon and left to die there in the dark?  Not if Bill should know of it!  And so she changed her argument, and prayed for Bill.  If only Bill knew—­straight-backed, honest, stiff-chinned, uncompromising, plain Bill Brown.  He would change things!

“Oh, Bill!  Bill!  Bill!” she sobbed.  “Dear God, bring Bill to me!”

VII.

When a man knows what is out against him, and from which direction he may look to meet death, he only needs to be a very ordinary man to make at least a gallant showing.  Gallery or no gallery to watch, given responsibility and trained men under hire, not one man in a thousand will fail to face death with dignity.

But Brown knew practically nothing, and understood still less, of what was happening.  He had Juggut Khan’s word for it that Jailpore was in flames, and that all save four of its European population had been killed.  He believed that to be a probably exaggerated statement of affairs, but he did not blink the fact that he might expect to be overwhelmed almost without notice, and at any minute.  That was a fact which he accepted, for the sake of argument and as a working-basis on which to build a plan of some kind—­His orders were to hold that post, and he would hold it until relieved by General Baines or death.  But there are several ways of holding a hot coal besides the rather obvious one of sitting on it.