"Don' know, sir," came from unseen hearers. "Part o' the 'orspital's down, but we can't see. It's a slide o' some sort, for there's a crack right across nigh under our feet. If we could get a light!" "_Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!_" The doctor's voice rang out again towards the camp-followers' lines, but the roar was deafening. And in the night, when all men are asleep, the news of disaster travels slowly. Yet without a light it was impossible even to realise what had happened, still less to help the sick who might lie crushed. "_Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee!_--thank God! there's a light at last." There was, in the far distance across the quadrangle. But it was not a torch; it was only an officer in a gorgeous sleeping-suit running with a bedroom candle. Still it was a light! "Come on, man!" shouted Terence O'Brien, as it slackened speed, paused, stopped dead. His was the only voice that seemed to carry through the roar. But the gay sleeping-suit stood still, waving its candle. "It's the crack, sir," called some one in Terence O'Brien's ear. "It goes right across, I expect--we'd best find out first." It did. A yawning fissure, twenty feet wide, had cut the hospital compound in two, and isolated one angle of the fort--that nearest the river--from the rest. Twenty feet wide, at least, judged by the glimmer of light! And how deep? Had the river cut it? Was it only a matter of time when the mud island on which they stood should be swept away? And what were the means of escape? There was more light now; more bedroom candles and sleeping-suits; a lamp or two, and others behind, as the boys--last to wake--came running, to pause like the first-comers, at the unpassable gulf; for the more it could be seen, the more difficult seemed the task of crossing it at once. By-and-by, perhaps, with ladders and ropes it would be possible--but now? Terence O'Brien, feeling the "now" imperative, skirted the crumbling edge almost too near for safety in his eagerness to find some foothold for a daring man; but there was none. True, the brick wall, built to strengthen the cracked mud one, still bridged the extreme end of the fissure, looking as if the mud had deliberately shrunk from its intrusion. It hung there half seen, on God knows what slender foundation--perhaps on none. But it could give no help. To trust it would be madness; a touch might send it down into the river below. No! Since none could cross the gap there must be more light on the farther side; torches, a bonfire, anything to pierce the dark and let men see how to help themselves and other men! "_Oh, masâl! Oh, masâl-jee-ân!_" The cry went out with all the force of his lungs. Surely the camp-followers must be awake by now.