“Let us go back and loot the mullah's camp and take the women!” urged a dozen men at least.
“Go then!” said King. “Go back! But I go on!”
“He is afraid! The hakim is afraid of what he saw!”
King let them think so. He let them think anything they chose, knowing well that what had unnerved him had at least rendered them amenable to leading. They would have no more dared go back without him, and without at least a hundred others, than they would have dared go and hunt in the ruins of Khinjan.
Even Ismail clang to his stirrup and would not leave him, looking like a fledgling with his beard all new-sprouted on his jaw, and eyes wider than any bird's.
“Why art thou here?” King asked him. “Had she no true men who would die with her?”
The Afridi scowled, but choked the answer back.
“Art thou my man now?” King asked him. But he shook his head.
So they marched without talking over the hideous boulder-strewn range that separates Khinjan from the Khyber, sleeping fitfully whenever King called a halt, and eating almost nothing at all, for only a few of them had thought of bringing food.
They reached the Khyber famished and were fed at Ali Masjid Fort, after King had given a certain password and had whispered to the officer commanding. But he did not change into European clothes yet, and none of his following suspected him of being an Englishman.