“Supposing you tell me what’s the matter?” suggested young Bellairs, prompt as are most of his breed to appear casual the moment there was cause to feel excited.

“Your gunners have taken all my breath, sir.  I can’t speak!”

“You shouldn’t take chances with a section of artillery!  They’re not like infantry—­they don’t sleep all the time—­you can’t ride through them as a rule!”

“Don’t sleep, don’t they!  Then what have you been doing on the road?  And what are you standing here for?  Ride, man, ride!  You’re wanted!”

“Get out of the way, then!” suggested Bellairs, and Captain O’Rourke legged his panting charger over to the roadside.

“Advance-guard, forward, trot!” commanded the lieutenant.

“Have you brought your wife with you?” demanded O’Rourke, peering into the jingling blackness.

“No.  Of course not.  Why?”

“`Of course not!  Why?’ says the man!  Hell and hot porridge!  Why, the whole of India’s ablaze from end to end—­the sepoys have mutinied to a man, and the rest have joined them!  There’s bloody murder doing—­ they’ve shot their officers—­Hammond’s dead and Carstairs and Welfleet and heaven knows who else.  They’ve burned their barracks and the stores and they’re trying to seize the magazine.  If they get that, God help every one.  They’re short of ammunition as it is, but two companies of the Thirty-third can’t hold out for long against that horde.  You’ll be in the nick of time!  Hurry, man!  For the love of anything you like to name, get a move on!”

IV.

“Trot, march!

“Canter!”

Bellairs was thinking of his wife, alone in Hanadra, unprotected except by a sixty-year-old Risaldar and a half-brother who was a civilian and an unknown quantity.  There were cold chills running down his spine and a sickening sensation in his stomach.  He rode ahead of the guns, with O’Rourke keeping pace beside him.  He felt that he hated O’Rourke, hated everything, hated the Service, and the country—­ and the guns, that could put him into such a fiendish predicament.

O’Rourke broke silence first.

“Who is with your wife?” he demanded suddenly.

“Heaven knows!  I left her under the protection of Risaldar Mahommed Khan, but he was to ride off for an escort for her.”

“Not your father’s old Risaldar?” asked O’Rourke.

“The same.”

“Then thank God!  I’d sooner trust him than I would a regiment.  He’ll bring her in alive or slit the throats of half Asia—­maybe ’he’ll do both!  Come, that’s off our minds!  She’s safer with him than she would be here.  Have you lots of ammunition?”

“I brought all I had with me at Hanadra.”

“Good!  What you’ll need tonight is grape!”

“I’ve lots of it.  It’s nearly all grape.”

“Hurrah!  Then we’ll treat those dirty mutineers to a dose or two of pills they won’t fancy!  Come on, man—­set the pace a little faster!”