"Let down the bridge. We had better see."
"The sahib will without doubt take lamps?"
"Yes, and your men."
The Sikhs had already been awakened. In a few minutes four of them accompanied Bob across the bridge, the first carrying a candle lamp.
The far side of the bridge rested on a platform constructed on a rock in mid-stream. The rock was connected with the farther bank by a short bridge supported on timbers and resembling a rough wooden jetty. Gur Buksh had said that the cry seemed to have come from the end of the bridge, and Bob searched for some time up and down the track for a few yards in each direction, listening again for the sound. It was not repeated. He proceeded to range the space once occupied by the Pathans' huts, but made no discovery. Puzzled, and still half suspecting that the cry had been a ruse to decoy him from the mine, he returned to the bridge, and was about to cross, when the man who held the lamp uttered a sudden exclamation.
"Behold, sahib; here he is!"
He pointed to a man lying across one of the girders sustaining the platform. Only his head could be seen. Bob knelt down and stooped over, asking the Sikh to lower the lamp. He saw a bearded, turbaned man in uniform, with arms and legs twined about the girder.
"He is unconscious," he said. "Lift him up and bring him into the compound."
The Sikhs had some difficulty in raising the man, who, in spite of his unconsciousness, clung tenaciously to the beam. But they got him up at last, and carried him across the bridge and up to the house. Bob waited to see the bridge lowered again, then hurried back.
"Cold water, khansaman," he said as he entered.