Hussain at once began an elaborate explanation in Pukhtu, Terrington nodding his head and following the indications of the other's hands, but Rose could not tell by any outward sign how the recital affected him. He turned to her when it ended, and told her they were going higher for a wider view. She pleaded to go with him, but he merely shook his head, smiling at the chaos of rocks above them, over which a goat only could go in safety.
Rose sat herself down in a corner of the sangar opposite the three signallers, and watched Terrington and Hussain haul themselves up the scarp, taking cover as warily as though they were stalking sambur, yet never hesitating nor halting for an instant, the Risaldar a length in front, and Terrington swinging hand and foot after him in absolute accord.
They disappeared behind a buttress, and Rose fell to watching the signallers, two bronzed and splendid sepoys and a havildar of the Guides, whose blue and white flag slapped ceaselessly in the air.
Far away upon a spur above the road by which they had come she could make out the flutter of an answering signal, and, while she tried to follow it, suddenly a star of light winked like a sunlit window on the hill-side far down the defile.
It stirred the little group like the fall of a shell. The havildar thrust his paper and pencil on the unoccupied sepoy, hoisted the heliograph over his shoulder, and scrambled out of the sangar with his head turning as he went for a glimpse of the unexpected sun. He had his tripod settled, and an answering shaft of light was flying from his mirror down the valley before the flag had ceased its flapping behind him, but not before the nearer station had also found the sunlight and set a second star in the gray sameness of the hills. The flag fell, the click of the mirror took up the speech of its shaken folds, and dazzling lances of sunlight flung from ten miles away began tilting with the lashes of Rose Chantry's eyes. She was so absorbed by the strangeness of their silent language, that she was startled to find that Terrington had dropped alone and unnoticed from the rocks above her, and was scribbling a message which he handed as he finished it to the havildar.
He stood watching intently the answering flashes, twice prompting the reader when he was at fault. Rose, conscious of a certain still determination which had come into his manner, went over and stood beside him.
"Has anything happened?" she asked, as the answer to his order sparkled in the air.
He wrote a second message before replying; then he put his hand in her arm and walked her back to the sangar.
"Yes," he said; "Mir Khan is proving himself to be a good soldier. He's going to take no risks."
"Are you taking any?" she asked.