"Hai! but they have red blood in their veins. They are of the race of the Sirkar: they will never yield. Think you of what they have done in these last days. Are they not quick and ready? Are not their eyes keen and their minds swift? They fear nothing, and overlook nothing. Fyz Ali told me how the chota sahib rode back to help him when he was alone and beset by the Kalmucks, and the chota sahib is no man of war. Of a truth, the sahibs know not what fear is. And Bob Sahib carried food to the Pathans up the river; he thinks of their welfare, and they love him. What is to come we know not, but be sure there will be very great doings here." "Hark, havildar! What is that?" Chunda Beg sprang off the wall, and bent over it with the havildar, straining his eyes into the darkness. A faint cry reached them from the other side of the ravine. They listened in silence, waiting for a repetition of the sound. In a few seconds they heard it again. "A trick of the Kalmucks maybe!" murmured Gur Buksh. "Get you swiftly to the house, khansaman, and rouse the sahib. Say nothing but that I wish to speak with him." The khansaman hurried away. Passing noiselessly into the boys’ bedroom, he touched Bob on the shoulder and gave his message. Bob was awake in an instant. "Tell him I’m coming," he said. He slipped on his dressing-gown and boots quietly, so as not to disturb Lawrence, and followed the man across the compound. As he reached the havildar’s side, the cry was repeated again. "What are the sahib’s orders?" said Gur Buksh. "Did you hear what he said?" asked Bob. "No, sahib; it was like the cry of a man for help." "Are the Kalmucks playing a trick on us? Have you heard anything of them?" "Nothing, sahib." "Let down the bridge. We had better see." "The sahib will without doubt take lamps?" "Yes, and your men." The Sikhs had already been awakened. In a few minutes four of them accompanied Bob across the bridge, the first carrying a candle lamp. The far side of the bridge rested on a platform constructed on a rock in mid-stream. The rock was connected with the farther bank by a short bridge supported on timbers and resembling a rough wooden jetty. Gur Buksh had said that the cry seemed to have come from the end of the bridge, and Bob searched for some time up and down the track for a few yards in each direction, listening again for the sound. It was not repeated. He proceeded to range the space once occupied by the Pathans’ huts, but made no discovery. Puzzled, and still half suspecting that the cry had been a ruse to decoy him from the mine, he returned to the bridge, and was about to cross, when the man who held the lamp uttered a sudden exclamation. "Behold, sahib; here he is!"