“Then I wonder you chose to go there,” was the sharp retort.
“There was plenty to do just at first, but my rascals are quiet enough now. A good many of them are dead, for one thing. You heard of our big fight before you came up—with a raiding-party six hundred strong? I had to send here for help, worse luck! but even when the reinforcements came up we were so few that the fellows actually stood to receive us. We charged through them again and again—I never remember a finer fight—and there were very few of them left afterwards.”
“You speak as if you liked it!” said Penelope, with a shudder.
“Like it? it’s the finest thing in life—the only thing worth living for. You see a great big brute of a Malik coming at you with a curved tulwar just sweeping down. You try to parry, or fire your Colt point-blank into his face, and for the moment you can’t quite decide whether you are dead or the Malik, until you suddenly realise that your horse is carrying you on towards another fellow, and the Malik is down. Splendid is no word for it!”
“Don’t!” said Lady Haigh sharply. “You’ll make Miss Ross ill again. What’s that?” as a long-drawn, quavering cry seemed to descend from the upper air, “Mem Sahib, the regiment returns!”
Lady Haigh sprang up, and was rushing out of the room, when she suddenly remembered Penelope, and ran back to her. “Yes, I’ll help you, Pen—how selfish of me! It’s our chaprasi,” she explained hurriedly to Ferrers. “I stationed him on the tower above this to watch for any one who might be coming. He was horribly frightened, and said he knew he should fall down and be killed; but of course I was not going to give in to that. Carry this cushion up for Miss Ross, please. There’s a doorway on the ramparts where she can sit in the shade.”
Ferrers followed obediently, as Lady Haigh half helped, half dragged her friend up the narrow stairs, and, after allowing her one look at the moving cloud of dust, which was all that could be seen in the distance, established her in the doorway on the cushion, taking her own place at a telescope which was fixed on a stand.
“This is my own idea,” she said to Ferrers. “Now, why don’t you say I may justly be proud of it? I am as good as a sentry, I spend so much time up here scanning the desert. I’m glad they’re coming from that direction, for we shall be able to distinguish them so much sooner. They must pass us before getting into the town. Now I begin to see them. They have prisoners with them, Pen, and there are certainly fewer of them than started, but somehow they don’t look as if they had been fighting. No, I see what it is. There’s a whole squadron gone!”
“What!” cried Ferrers, who was standing by, unable to get a single glance through the telescope, which was monopolised by his hostess. “Clean gone, Lady Haigh? Must have been detached on special duty, surely? It couldn’t have been wiped out.”
“No, no, of course,” and Lady Haigh withdrew from the glass, and allowed him to look through it; “that must be it, but it gave me such a fright. But I saw Dugald and Colin, Pen, and the Chief. Muhabat Khan!” she called to the chaprasi, who descended slowly from the top of the tower, and stood before her in a submissive attitude but with an injured expression, “go and meet the regiment as it comes, and say to the Major Sahib that Ferrers Sahib is here, and that I should be glad if he and Ross Sahib will come in to tiffin with us. Now, Pen, I shall take you down again,” as the messenger departed. “Captain Ferrers will bring the cushion.”