’This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim with an exasperated little laugh, “What can you do with such silly beggars?  They will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie the more they seem to like it.”  You could trace the subtle influence of his surroundings in this irritation.  It was part of his captivity.  The earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said, “My dear fellow, you don’t suppose I believe this.”  He looked at me quite startled.  “Well, no!  I suppose not,” he said, and burst into a Homeric peal of laughter.  “Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went off all together at sunrise.  Jove!  You should have seen the splinters fly,” he cried.  By his side Dain Waris, listening with a quiet smile, dropped his eyelids and shuffled his feet a little.  It appears that the success in mounting the guns had given Jim’s people such a feeling of confidence that he ventured to leave the battery under charge of two elderly Bugis who had seen some fighting in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and the storming party who were concealed in the ravine.  In the small hours they began creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the wet grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed signal.  He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he watched the swift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work and the climbing, he felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how afraid he was he would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before the time came for the advance.  “It was the slowest half-hour in my life,” he declared.  Gradually the silent stockade came out on the sky above him.  Men scattered all down the slope were crouching amongst the dark stones and dripping bushes.  Dain Waris was lying flattened by his side.  “We looked at each other,” Jim said, resting a gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder.  “He smiled at me as cheery as you please, and I dared not stir my lips for fear I would break out into a shivering fit.  ’Pon my word, it’s true!  I had been streaming with perspiration when we took cover—­so you may imagine . . .”  He declared, and I believe him, that he had no fears as to the result.  He was only anxious as to his ability to repress these shivers.  He didn’t bother about the result.  He was bound to get to the top of that hill and stay there, whatever might happen.  There could be no going back for him.  Those people had trusted him implicitly.  Him alone!  His bare word. . . .

’I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed upon me.  “As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret it yet,” he said.  “Never.  He hoped to God they never would.  Meantime—­worse luck!—­they had got into the habit of taking his word for anything and everything.  I could have no idea!  Why, only the other day an old fool he had never seen in his life came from some village miles away to find out if he should divorce his wife.  Fact.