"Go, you two," he said, "ride out on your ponies and see who the stranger is, and what his business. Have a care, lest there are badmashes lurking near. The stranger may be a decoy. Have a care, I say, for when you have ridden down the slope we cannot protect you."
The men descended through the tower, and were presently seen trotting down the track. Every yard of their progress was followed intently by the garrison. Their diminishing forms were lost to the watchers at intervals through the windings of the track and the inequalities of the ground. Presently they were seen, little more than dots, moving side by side along the straight stretch at the farther end of which the solitary stranger could still be discerned.
They approached him, came to a halt, and dismounted. After a minute or two the party separated. Two men proceeded northward along the track, one on horseback, the other on foot. The third man rode in the opposite direction towards the house.
The whole garrison of eighteen men were now mustered, some on the roof, some on the wall, silent, their eyes fixed on the slowly approaching horseman. By and by it was seen that he was not either of the two who had lately ridden down. Then the dafadar, who had the telescope at his eyes, suddenly exclaimed:
"Mashallah! It is Ennicott Sahib!"
Amid a chorus of ejaculations he hurried down to the courtyard, mounted his horse, and galloped down the track to meet the officer. The strangeness of that meeting formed the theme of a discourse to the men of the garrison later in the day.
"When I came near enough to see the face of the huzur," said Narrain Khan, "I beheld that it was the face of a sick man. His left arm hung straight at his side like the broken leg of a sheep. I was on the point of invoking the mercy of Allah upon the huzur--is he not the light of our eyes?--when his great voice sounded in my ears like the voice of a trumpet, and before even I could make my salaam he cried--what think you were the words of the great one?"
"'Water, for I am athirst,'" suggested one man.
"Wah! does the huzur think of himself? You speak as a witless babe."
"'Is all well?'" said another.