“Ye may fight for the rebels, if ye wish! There will be a safe-permit written.”
Again there was no answer.
“For whom, then, fight ye?”
“For the Raj!” The deep-throated answer rang out promptly from every one of them, and they stood with their sword-hilts thrust out toward the colonel. He rose and touched each hilt in turn.
“They are now thy servants!” said the Risaldar, laying his head back. “It is good! I go now. Give my salaams to General Turner sahib!”
“Good-by, old war-dog!” growled the colonel, in an Anglo-Saxon effort to disguise emotion. He gripped at the right hand that was stretched out on the ground beside him, but it was lifeless.
Risaldar Mahommed Khan, two-medal man and pensionless gentleman-at-large, had gone to turn in his account of how he had remembered the salt which he had eaten.