“Now, Sergeant,” he ordered, “it looks as though that were the Doonha barracks burning over yonder.  There’s no knowing, though, what it is.  Send four men on, two hundred yards ahead of you, and you and the rest keep a good two hundred yards ahead of the guns.  See that the men keep on the alert, and mind that they spare their horses as much as possible.  If there’s going to be trouble, we may just as well be ready for it!”

“Very good, sir!”

“Go ahead, then!”

At a word from the sergeant, four men clattered off and were swallowed in the darkness.  A minute later the advance-guard followed them and then, after another minute’s pause, young Bellairs’ voice was raised into a ringing shout again.

“Section, advance!  Trot, march!”

The trace-chains tightened, and the clattering, bumping, jingling procession began again, its rear brought up by the six-horse ammunition-wagon.  They rode speechless for the best part of an hour, each man’s eyes on the distant conflagration that had begun now to light up the whole of the sky ahead of them.  They still rode in darkness, but they seemed to be approaching the red rim of the Pit.  Huge, billowing clouds of smoke, red-lit on the under side, belched upward to the blackness overhead, and a something that was scarcely sound—­ for it was yet too distant—­warned them that it was no illusion they were riding into.  The conflagration grew.  It seemed to be nearly white-hot down below.

Bellairs wet his finger and held it extended upward.

“There’s no wind that I can feel!” he muttered.  “And yet, if that were a grass-fire, there’d be game and rats and birds and things—­ some of ’em would bolt this way.  That’s the Doonha barracks burning or I’m a black man, which the Lord forbid!”

A minute later, every man in the section pricked up his ears.  There was no order given; but a sensation ran the whole length of it and a movement from easy riding to tense rigidity that could be felt by some sixth sense.  Every man was listening, feeling, groping with his senses for something he could neither hear as yet nor see, but that he knew was there.  And then, far-distant yet—­not above, but under the jolting of the gun-wheels and the rattle of the scabbards—­ they could hear the clickety-clickety-clickety-click of a horse hard-ridden.

They had scarcely caught that sound, they had barely tightened up their bridle-reins, when another sound, one just as unmistakable, burst out in front of them.  A ragged, ill-timed volley ripped out from somewhere near the conflagration and was answered instantly by one that was close-ripped like the fire of heavy ordnance.  And then one of the advance-guard wheeled his horse and drove his spurs home rowel-deep.  He came thundering back along the road with his scabbard out in the wind behind him and reined up suddenly when his horse’s forefeet were abreast of the lieutenant.