Brown stared hard at the half-sheet of notepaper again.  Reading was not his longest suit by any means, and at that he infinitely preferred to wrestle with printed characters.

“Have you read it, Juggut Khan?” he asked.

“Nay, sahib.  I can speak English, but not read it.”

“Then we’re near to being in the same boat, we two!” said Brown with a grin.  “I’ll have another try!  It looks like a good-by message to me—­here’s the word `good-by’ written at the end above his signature.”

“There were other matters, sahib.  There was an order.  I can not read, but I know what is in the message.”

“Well?”

“You, and your twelve—­”

“Nine!” corrected Brown.

“Three dead?”

Brown nodded.

“Your nine, then, sahib, and you and I are to proceed immediately to Jailpore, and to gain an entrance if we can, rescue those whom I concealed there and bring them to Harumpore, or to the northward of Harumpore, wherever we can find the column.”

“Eleven men are to attempt that?”

Brown was studying out the letter word by word, and discovering to his amazement that its purport was exactly what Juggut Khan pretended.

“If there are no more than eleven of us, then yes, eleven!  And, sahib, since you seem to hold at least an island here where a man may lie down unmolested, I propose to sleep for an hour or two, before proceeding.  I have had no sleep since I left Jailpore.”

“Nothing of the sort!” said Brown.  “If we’re to march on Jailpore, off we go at once!  You can sleep on the road, my son!  It’s time we paid a visit to that village, I’m thinking.  Those treacherous brutes need a lesson.  I’d have been down there before, only I wanted to be in full view of the road in case anybody came looking for me from Bholat.  We’ll need a wagon for the fakir.  You can sleep in it too.”

“Sleep with a fakir?  I?  Allah!  I am a Rajput, sahib!  A sergeant of the Rajput Horse, retired!”

“I wouldn’t want to sleep with him myself!” admitted Brown.  “Come and look at him.  You can smell him from here, but the sight of him’s the real thing!”

The Rajput swaggered up beside Brown, after loosening his horse’s girths and lifting the saddle for a moment.

“He’s not the only one that needs a drink!” said Brown.  “We’re all dry as brick-dust here, except the fakir!”

“He must wait a while before he drinks.  Show me the fakir.  Why, Brown sahib, know you what you have there?”

“The father of all the smells, and all the dirt and all the evil eyes and evil tongues in Asia!” Brown hazarded.

“More than that, sahib!  That is the nameless fakir—­him whom they know as he!  Has there been no attempt made to rescue him?”

“They rescued him once, and murdered three of my men to get him.  When they tried again, I put a halter round his neck and he and I arranged a sort of temporary compromise.”