So she struck a match and lit a newspaper. In a moment a ball of fire was floating downward to him, and it was then that the smell of dust and kerosene entered his consciousness as pincers enter the flesh of men in torment. He stood up with hands upstretched to catch the fire—caught it—bore it downward—and smothered it in gunny-bags.
"Still dark?" she said, looking through the aperture once more. "I will send another one!"
So Ranjoor Singh found his tongue and cursed her with a force and comprehensiveness that only Asia can command; he gave her to understand that the next fire she dropped on him should be allowed to work God's will and burn her—her, her rats, her cobras, and her cutthroats. Two honest Sikhs, he swore, would die well to such an end.
"Drop thy fire and I will fan the flame!" he vowed, and she believed him.
"I will send my cobras down to keep the sahib company!" she mocked.
But Ranjoor Singh proposed to take one danger at a time, and he was quite sure that she wanted him alive, not dead, for otherwise he would have been dead already. He held his tongue and listened while she splashed the water.
"Thy trooper is very thirsty, sahib!"
She was on a warmer scent now, for that squadron of his and the men of his squadron were the one love of his warrior life. Some spirit of malice whispered her as much.
"The trooper shall have water when Ranjoor Singh sahib has promised on his Sikh honor."
"Promised what?" His voice betrayed interest at last; it suggested future possibilities instead of a grim present.