“Who’s in command now?” he asked, for they had told him of General Baines’ death by poison.

“I am,” said a gray-haired officer who rode up at that moment.

“I’m your senior, sir, by two years,” answered Kendrick.

“Then you command, sir.”

“Very good.  Enough time’s been wasted.  The column can wait here until my main body reaches us.  Then we’ll march at once on Jailpore.  This idea of leaving Jailpore to its fate is nonsense!  The rebels are in strength there, and they have perpetrated an abominable outrage.  There we will punish them, or else we’ll all die in the attempt!  If we have to raze Jailpore to the ground, and put every man in it to the sword before we find the four Europeans supposed to be left alive there, our duty is none the less obvious!  Here comes my column.  Tell the men to be ready to march in ten minutes.”

He turned his horse, to look through the dust at the approaching column, but the man who had been superseded touched him on the sleeve.

“What’s that?  Better have a rest?  Tired out, you say?  Oh!  Form them all up in hollow square, then, and I’ll say a few words to them.  There are other ways of reviving a leg-weary column than by letting it lie down.”

Ten minutes later a dull roar rose up through a steel-shot dust-cloud, and three thousand helmets whirled upward, flashing in the sun.  Three thousand weary men had given him his answer!  There was no kind of handle to it; no reserve—­nothing but generous and unconditional allegiance unto hunger, thirst, pain, weariness, disease or death.  It takes a real commander to draw that kind of answer from a tired-out column, but it is a kind of answer, too, that makes commanders!  It is not mere talk, on either side.  It means that by some sixth sense a strong man and his men have discovered something that is good in each other.

XI.

“You’ve made good time, friend Juggut Khan!” said Brown, advancing to meet him where the men and the fakir and the interpreter would not be able to Overhear.

“Sahib, I killed one horse—­the horse you looted for me—­and I brought away two from Bholat.  One of them carried me more than fifty miles, and then I changed to this one, leaving the other on the road.  I have orders for you, sahib.”

“Hand ’em over then,” said Brown.  “Orders first, and talk afterward, when there’s time!”

The Rajput drew out a sealed envelope, and passed it to him.  Brown tore it open, and read the message, scowling at the half-sheet of paper as though it were a death-sentence.

“Where’s the general?”

“With his column-twenty or thirty miles away to the northward by now!”

“And he’s left me, with this handful, in the lurch?”

“Nay, sahib!  As I understood the orders, he has left you with a very honorable mission to fulfil!”