A slight breeze was blowing from the north-west, carrying the smoke up the valley. In a few more seconds Bob saw that the conflagration was confined to the Pathan portion of the camp. As he turned a slight bend and had a view of the whole settlement, a hasty glance assured him that there was no sign of injury in the mine compounds. Flying on, he noticed a number of figures in the compounds below, apparently the Sikhs on guard. The Kalmuck camp was deserted; between it and the burning huts of the Pathans, and up the bank of the river, he caught sight of a number of prostrate forms here and there. Then above the whirr of the propeller he heard, far in the distance, the sound of firing. It came from up the river. At that moment Bob felt as a small schoolboy feels when suddenly plunged into a new subject--say the binomial theorem before he has mastered quadratic equations. Here was a fresh problem before the others were solved. But he held on his course, wheeled round at the usual place, and flying back alighted once more on his platform. "Just see to things while I go on," he said to Fazl. When he was half-way along the cantilever pathway he caught sight of Ditta Lal waddling towards him at a pace dangerous to a man of apoplectic habit. "Oh, sir," gasped the Babu as they met, "horrors upon horror’s head accumulate. Pelion is heaped on Ossa. Misfortunes come, not as single spies, but in battalions." "What has happened?" said Bob shortly: he was always impatient of the Babu’s determination that no one should forget he was a Calcutta B.A. And then Ditta Lal, driven to brevity by shortness of breath and the difficulty of keeping pace with Bob’s long strides, related the occurrences of the past hour. Very shortly after Bob had left the mine in his aeroplane, when the domestic staff were at breakfast, and the Sikhs were engaged in carrying out his instructions, a clamour had suddenly broken out on the other side of the river. Looking across, they had seen the whole body of Kalmuck miners rushing tumultuously over the neutral ground into the Pathans’ quarters. Before Gur Buksh could order his men to fire, the two parties were inextricably mixed. For a few seconds there had been a wild, fierce conflict; then the Pathans, taken by surprise and hopelessly outnumbered, fled like deer up the track, pursued by the Kalmucks. Some of these paused for a little to fire and plunder the Pathans’ huts, then sped after their comrades. By this time Gur Buksh had lined his men up near the drawbridge and ordered them to fire at the Kalmucks. Several of them dropped, and there lay with them on the ground a few of the Pathans who, unable to get away in time, had fallen to their enemies’ knives.