"What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue!" sighed Ditta Lal. "After mountainous travail I produce splendiferous line; I rack my cranium for colleague or successor; but final word, whose function is to charm attentive ear, eludes, evades, crumps. To wit: ’And batters blackguards with his boisterous bomb!’--line perfect in harmony and melody and all that; but when I run through alphabet for rhyme--_com, dom, fom, gom, hom_, and so on till I come to blank wall at _zom_: not a word, sir, that fulfils mutual demand of sound and sense--not one word." "What on earth are you gassing about, Babu?" asked Lawrence, who had not heard of his previous conversation with Bob. "Of what, sir, but task entrusted to unworthy servant by honourable brother, to compose song of victory, ode, epic, or what not, in celebration of happy and glorious achievement about to be consummated! But I will not despair; nil desperandum; as you truly remark, we can but do our best; resources of civilisation as represented by B.A. degree of Calcutta University are not exhausted; something attempted, something done, shall earn my night’s repose, of which I shall be jolly and unmistakably glad, for agony of expressing thoughts too deep for tears wrings honest brow, sir." Lawrence feared that the stress of the situation was making the Babu mad; but he spoke a sympathetic word, and passed on. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH THE DEATH TRAP There was no alarm from beyond the bend during the night. But in the small hours the sentry at the bridge gave a loud shout, and fired southward up the track. When Lawrence rushed from the house to discover what had happened, he learnt that the sentry had seen a number of dim figures creeping towards the mine. They had now disappeared. Lawrence conjectured that Nurla Bai and his friends, who must now be nearly famished, had been attracted by the sound of guns, and stolen down in the hope of eluding the vigilance of the garrison, and gaining the path that led above their old quarters and descended on the track on the nearer side of the bend. Even if they had got thus far undetected, they could not but have fallen into the hands of the defenders of the breastwork. It was an attempt they were not likely to repeat. There was no chance of their rejoining the Kalmuck army until the defence was broken.