Once they heard footsteps on the stone flags overhead.  But the footsteps went away again, and then all was still.  Soon they lost all count of time.  They were only aware of heat and discomfort and fear and utter weariness.

One woman and an infant wept.  One woman prayed aloud incessantly.  The third woman—­the menial, the worst educated and least enlightened of the three, according to the others’ notion of it—­stubbornly refused to admit that there was not some human means of rescue.

“If Bill were here,” she kept on grumbling, “Bill’d find a way!”

And in the darkness that surrounded her she felt that she could see Bill’s face, as she remembered it—­red-cheeked and clean-shaven—­six years or more ago.

IX.

The blazing roof of the guardroom lit up even the crossroads for a while, and Brown and his men could see that for the present there was a good wide open space between them and the enemy.  The firelight showed a tree not far from the crossroads, and since anything is cover to men who are surrounded and outnumbered, they made for that tree with one accord, and without a word from Brown.

“We’ve all the luck,” said Brown.  “There’s not a detachment of any other army in the world would walk straight on to a find like this!”

He held up one frayed end of a manila rope, that was wound around the tree-trunk.  Some tethered ox had rendered them that service.

“Fifty feet of good manila, and a fakir that needs hanging!  Anybody see the connection?”

There was a chorus of ready laughter, and the two men who had the unenviable task of carrying the fakir picked him up and tossed him to the tree-trunk.  The roof of the guardhouse was blazing fiercely, and now they had fired the other roofs.  The fakir, the tree and the little bunch of men who held him prisoner were as plainly visible as though it had been daytime.  A bullet pinged past Brown’s ear, and buried itself in the tree-trunk with a thud.

“Let him feel that bayonet again!” said Brown.

A rifleman obeyed, and the fakir howled aloud.  An answering howl from somewhere beyond the dancing shadows told that the fakir had been understood.

“And now,” said Brown, paraphrasing the well-remembered wording of the drill-book, in another effort to get his men to laughing again, “when hanging a fakir by numbers—­at the word one, place the noose smartly round the fakir’s neck.  At the word two, the right-hand man takes the bight of the rope in the hollow of his left hand, and climbs the tree, waiting on the first branch suitable for the last sound of the word three.  At the last sound of the word three, he slips the rope smartly over the bough of the tree and descends smartly to the ground, landing on the balls of his feet and coming to attention.  At the word four, the remainder seize the loose end of the rope, being careful to hold it in such a way that the fakir has a chance to breathe.  And at the last sound of the word five, you haul all together, lifting the fakir off the ground, and keeping him so until ordered to release.  Now—­one!”