Captain Ayres seized his revolver, and started to his feet, but he dropped it again with an angry laugh.
"Boots, get out of this!"
"Master—dacoits."
"Nonsense!" said Captain Ayres. "Don't you know, boy, that the camp is guarded, and there are outposts all round? If you don't do as I tell you at once, I shall make a prisoner of you."
He looked sternly at the eager face, out of which the eyes shone like stars. He saw a dull look of disappointment fall like a veil over his features, and then the brown shadow seemed to fade into the darker shadow of the tent. Boots had gone.
WRITING HOME
Gone for the night, it seemed; but the look in his face haunted the Captain. He picked up his revolver and loaded it, and then he drew his sword nearer, and carefully removed a spot of rust, for when once the rains come in Burmah it is almost impossible to keep steel in perfect order. He felt wide awake, and alert. His neat report—reporting nothing—lay folded on the table; the half-written letter to his mother lay staring at him reproachfully; the deathly silence outside was appalling. He pushed his chair back, lit his pipe, and loosened his sword-belt. He wished some of his comrades had come in, as they intended. He had an old pack of cards in his knapsack, and they might have managed to play dummy whist—anything would have been better than this idle loafing from place to place, with nothing to do.
His watch ticked loudly from the place on the tent pole where it hung. He leant forward and looked at it. A quarter to two—and at that moment a clear sharp cry divided the night, and sent the blood thrilling to his heart—a cry three times repeated, "Master! master! master!"
With his sword on, and his revolver in his hand, he had flung up the mat that formed the doorway in the hut before the echo died away. A dark compact body of police were forming into a square, the sentries and outposts were challenging, a quick rain of shot was pattering on the leaves, and the little camp was alive with the steady tramp of armed men. It was a most successful little fight, and Captain Ayres won the first of his many medals on that night. He took the head-man prisoner single-handed, and many of the dacoits were killed, while many more were conducted by the courageous little force into Mandalay, and were delivered up to justice. But when it was all over, and the day had broken, showing the gloomy details of the fight, Captain Ayres, pale and dishevelled, with his broken wrist tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, wandered over the ground, disconsolate and wretched, looking always for something he could not find.