"'It was very short,' Charley said. 'We were at mess--not in our present mess-room--we were dining with the fellows of some other regiment. Suddenly, without any warning, the windows were filled with a crowd of Sepoys, who opened fire right and left into us. Half the fellows were shot down at once; the rest of us made a rush to our swords just as the niggers came swarming into the room. There was a desperate fight for a moment. I remember that Subadar Pirán--one of the best native officers in the regiment, by the way--made a rush at me, and I shot him through the head with a revolver. At the same moment a ball hit me, and down I went. At the moment a Sepoy fell dead across me, hiding me partly from sight. The fight lasted a minute or two longer. I fancy a few fellows escaped, for I heard shots outside. Then the place became quiet. In another minute I heard a crackling, and saw that the devils had set the mess-room on fire. One of our men, who was lying close by me, got up and crawled to the window, but he was shot down the moment he showed himself. I was hesitating whether to do the same or to lie still and be smothered, when suddenly I rolled the dead Sepoy off, crawled into the anteroom half-suffocated by smoke, raised the lid of a very heavy trapdoor, and stumbled down some steps into a place, half-storehouse half-cellar, under the mess-room. How I knew about it being there I don't know. The trap closed over my head with a bang. That is all I remember.' "'Well, Charley, curiously enough my dream was also about an extraordinary escape from danger, lasting, like yours, only a minute or two. The first thing I remember--there seems to have been something before, but what, I don't know--I was on horseback, holding a very pretty but awfully pale girl in front of me. We were pursued by a whole troop of Sepoy cavalry, who were firing pistol-shots at us. We were not more than seventy or eighty yards in front, and they were gaining fast, just as I rode into a large deserted temple. In the center was a huge stone figure. I jumped off my horse with the lady, and as I did so she said, "blow out my brains, Edward; don't let me fall into their hands." "'Instead of answering, I hurried her round behind the idol, pushed against one of the leaves of a flower in the carving, and the stone swung back, and showed a hole just large enough to get through, with a stone staircase inside the body of the idol, made, no doubt, for the priest to go up and give responses through the mouth. I hurried the girl through, crept in after her, and closed the stone, just as our pursuers came clattering into the courtyard. That is all I remember.' "'Well, it is monstrously rum,' Charley said, after a pause. 'Did you understand what the old fellow was singing about before he gave us the pipes?' "'Yes; I caught the general drift. It was an entreaty to Siva to give us some glimpse of futurity which might benefit us.'