CHAPTER XXIV.
RAHMAT-ULLAH.
Lady Haigh sat up, and listened attentively. “It may be only the sentries moving about,” she whispered at last.
“No, there are none. I peeped out to see. They are sleeping all round the tent, so that we could not pass, but they have no one on the watch. There it is again! Listen!”
But this time there was no difficulty in distinguishing the sounds, for a tremendous voice, so close at hand that Lady Haigh stopped her ears involuntarily, shouted, “At them, boys! Cold steel! Don’t let one of them escape!” and immediately the wildest tumult arose outside the tent. It aroused even Hafiza, who sat up and with great presence of mind opened her mouth to scream, but was forestalled by Lady Haigh, who flew at her like a wild cat, and gagged her with a corner of the resai.
“Do you want us all to be killed?” she demanded fiercely. “Our only chance is that they may not remember us.”
“Elma, are you there?” said a voice outside the tent at the back, and Lady Haigh released Hafiza and turned in the direction of the sound.
“Is it you, Dugald?” she cried joyfully, trying to tear up the edge of the tent-cloth from the ground, but it was well pegged down.
“Stand aside!” said the voice, and there was a rending sound as a sword cut a long slit in the cloth, revealing Sir Dugald dimly against the starry sky. “Out with you!” he said, “and stoop till I tell you to stand up.”
Determined to obey to the very letter, Lady Haigh and Penelope crawled out through the slit on their hands and knees, followed by Hafiza, who was so anxious not to be left behind that she kept a firm hold on Penelope’s riding-habit. Sir Dugald led the way through the brushwood, away from the clash of swords and the wild confusion of shouts and yells in front of the tent, and when they had passed the brow of the hill, he gave them leave to stand up.
“We are to make for the horses,” he said. “I only hope they won’t have run away, or we shall find ourselves in a hole. But Miani has the sense of a dozen, and wouldn’t go without his master.”