“Besides!  The way it seems to me, if there’s any more trouble cooking in this neighborhood, it’s going to cook pretty fast, and it’s going to boil around that guardroom; and if we’re not in the guardroom, why, that’s point number one for us!  Leave the guardroom lantern lighted, and bring out nothing but your cartridge-pouches and the box of ammunition.  Leave everything else where it lies.  Quick, now.”

They obeyed him on the run, afraid to be out of his sight for a moment even, trusting him as little children trust a nurse, and ready to do anything so long as he would only keep them up and doing, and not make them stay by the scene of the murders.  Brown knew their state of mind as accurately as he knew the range of their service rifles, and he knew just how he could best keep panic from them.  He knew too, if not what was best to do, at least what he intended doing, and he knew how he could best get them in a state to do it.

Behind his own mind lay all the while a sense of loneliness and hopelessness.  He did not entertain the thought of failure to hold the crossroads, and he was so certain that General Baines would come with his division that he could almost see the advance-guard trotting toward him down the trunk road.  But there is no accounting for a soldier’s moods, and something told him—­something deep down inside him that he could neither name nor understand—­that he was out now on the adventure of a lifetime, and that the heart-cord which had held him tight to England all these years had been cut.  He felt gloomy and dispirited, but not a man of the nine who followed him had the slightest inkling of it.

He halted them outside the guardroom, and bullydamned two of them because some unimportant part of their accouterments was missing; and he “’Tshuned” them, and stood them at ease, and “’Tshuned” them again, until he had them jumping at the word.  Then he marched them two abreast in and out among the huts in search of any sign of native servants.  They found no sign of any one at all.  Though in that black darkness it would have been quite possible for half a hundred men to lie undetected.  Brown decided that the camp was empty.  He thought it probable that any one concealed there would have tried his luck on somebody at least, at close range as he passed.

So he marched them back to the guard-room once again, and sent two of them in to drag out the shivering Beluchi, who had taken cover underneath a cot and refused to come out until he was dragged out by the leg.  The native’s terror served to pull the men together quite a little, for Tommy Atkins always does and always did behave himself with pride when what he is pleased to consider his inferiors are anywhere about.  They showed that unfortunate Beluchi how white men marched into the darkness—­best foot foremost; without halt or hesitation, when ghosts or murderers or unseen marksmen were close at hand.

The Beluchi let himself be dragged, trembling, between two of them.  It was he who first saw something move, or heard some one breathe.  For he was absolutely on edge, and had nothing to attend to but his own fear.  The others had to keep both eyes and ears lifting, to please Brown the exacting.  The Beluchi struggled and held back, almost breaking loose, and actually tearing his loin-cloth.