"When one has been dead eight years, it is wiser, before coming to life again, to make sure that one’s resurrection will be a benefit." Bethune fell back into his place, with a grey shade about the lips. English dropped his eyes and there came silence between them. After a pause, he began to mend the fire from the scuttle; and, placing the lumps of coals one by one, he spoke again: "It was all a story of waiting, you see, from beginning to end." "Rajab—Rajab is gone, by the way, poor old chap. He swore he’d seen you fall, more dead than the prophet himself," said Bethune, with the harsh laugh that covers strong emotion. "And from the fort, through the glass, we watched those devils chucking the bodies into the torrent—dead and wounded, too. We thought the great river was your grave with many another’s! Never a bone could we find of all the good chaps." Harry English straightened himself and laughed, too, not very mirthfully. Then he pulled open the loose collar of his shirt and laid bare a jagged scar that ran from the column of the throat across the collar bone. "I’m confoundedly hard to kill, you know. Just missed the jugular. I must have been spouting blood like a fountain. And then I got a blow on the head from a hilt that knocked me into nothingness. Rajab was about right—I was as dead as the prophet for the time being. If I had not had nine lives——" Again the silence. Then Bethune inquired, casually, fumbling in his pocket for a pipe: "And how is it you weren’t chucked overboard with the rest?" "Old Yufzul had a fancy for keeping me alive. Ah, if he could have caught the chap that cut me down, he would not have left much skin on him. He’d given stringent orders to spare mine. The old beggar took a notion that I was a sort of mascot, or something, that I carried luck—that it was the influence of my precious person kept things going so triumphantly at the fort.... You may remember he was always sending envoys to me with flattering offers? By the Lord, Ray, I believe it was half to get me that he stuck to the business so long. So much for my carrying luck!" The speaker smiled, with a bitter twist of the lip, and poked the fire unnecessarily. "Remember," he added, "that business about the flag on the roof, when the bullets were going so lively? It seems our friend was watching and was much struck to see that I was not." "I remember," answered Bethune’s deep bass. Did he not remember? Had he been of the nationality of M. Châtelard, with what a hand-clasp, with what a flow of rhetoric would he not now emphasise his vivid recollection of that hour! English, lying back in his armchair, with his head resting on the top, closed his eyes wearily. His face looked very pallid and sharp-featured thus upturned and relaxed from its usual stern control; and Bethune shot many an anxious look at it as he sat silent, the pipe he forgot to draw hanging loosely between his teeth.