“Never mind! We can hold this causeway until morning! Men! Take close order. Line up at the causeway-entrance. Kneel. Prepare for volley-firing. Now, let 'em come!”
“I am for making an immediate escape, sahib!”
“Go ahead!” said Brown, almost dreamily.
He seemed to be thinking hard on some other subject as he spoke.
“Sahib, one of the women there—she who is maid to the other two—asked me where Bill Brown might be! She swore to me that she had recognized his voice when the trapdoor opened up above her. Are you not Bill Brown?”
“Yes, I'm William Brown!”
“Her name, she says, is Emmett!”
“You don't surprise me, Juggut Khan! I thought I had recognized her voice. It seemed strangely familiar. Well—here come the rebels up the causeway. See? They're at the bottom now with lanterns! Ready, men!”
There came the answering click of breech-bolts, and a little rustling as each man eased his position, and laid his elbow on his knee.
“Can you find your way out through the way we came, Juggut Khan?”