“It is night,” Ismail answered. “It was time.”
King stared about him. He had not realized until then that without aid of the lamps he could not see his own hand held out in front of him; his eyes had grown used to the gloom, like those of the surgeons in the sick-bays below the water line in Nelson's fleet.
“But who shouted?”
“Who knows? There is only one here who gives orders. We be many who obey,” said Ismail.
“Whose men were the last ones?” King asked him, trying a new line.
“Bull-with-a-beard's.”
“And whose man art thou, Ismail?”
The Afridi hesitated, and when he spoke at last there was not quite the same assurance in his voice as once there had been.
“I am hers! Be thou hers, too! But it is night. Sleep against the toil tomorrow. There be many sick in Khinjan.”
King made a little effort to clean the cave, but the task was hopeless. For one thing he was so weary that his very bones were water; for another, Ismail pretended to be equally tired, and when the suggestion that they should help was put to the others they claimed their izzat indignantly. Izzat and sharm (honor and shame) are the two scarcely distinguishable enemies of honest work, into whose teeth it takes both nerve and resolution to drive a Hillman at the best of times. Nerve King had, but his resolution was asleep. He was too tired to care.