Five minutes later the whole party drew rein on the upper levels of earth, and their sometime pursuer swept tumultuously onward fifteen feet below.
Desmond's eyes had an odd light in them as he turned from the swirling waters to the impassive face of the man who had saved their lives.
"I do—not—forget," he said with quiet emphasis.
The old Sikh shook his head with a rather uncertain smile.
"True talk, Hazúr. I had known it without assurance. Yet was mine own help no great matter. It was written that my Captain Sahib should not die thus!"
"That may be," Desmond answered gravely, for he had been strangely upheld by the same conviction. "Yet there be also—these others. In my thinking it is no small matter that, except for your quickness of mind and hearing, forty-four good men and horses would now be at the mercy of that torrent. But this is no time for words. It still remains to reach Kohat before sundown."
The sun was slipping behind the hills, with the broad smile of a tyrant who fully enjoys the joke, when Desmond drew up before his own verandah and slid to the ground.
"Thank God that's over!" he muttered audibly. But he did not at once enter the house. His first care, as always, was for the horse he rode; and with him it was no mere case of the "merciful man," but of sheer love for that unfailing servant of the human race.
He accompanied Badshah Pasand to the stable, superintended the removal of his saddle, and looked him carefully all over. That done, he issued explicit orders for his treatment and feeding: the great charger—as though fully aware of his master's solicitude,—nuzzling a mouse-coloured nose against his shoulder the while.
Arrived in the comparative coolness of the hall, he shouted for a drink, and a bath. Then, turning towards the drawing-room, promised himself a few minutes blessed relaxation in the depths of his favourite chair.