Ten minutes later a dull roar rose up through a steel-shot dust-cloud, and three thousand helmets whirled upward, flashing in the sun. Three thousand weary men had given him his answer! There was no kind of handle to it; no reserve--nothing but generous and unconditional allegiance unto hunger, thirst, pain, weariness, disease or death. It takes a real commander to draw that kind of answer from a tired-out column, but it is a kind of answer, too, that makes commanders! It is not mere talk, on either side. It means that by some sixth sense a strong man and his men have discovered something that is good in each other. XI. “You've made good time, friend Juggut Khan!” said Brown, advancing to meet him where the men and the fakir and the interpreter would not be able to Overhear. “Sahib, I killed one horse--the horse you looted for me--and I brought away two from Bholat. One of them carried me more than fifty miles, and then I changed to this one, leaving the other on the road. I have orders for you, sahib.” “Hand 'em over then,” said Brown. “Orders first, and talk afterward, when there's time!” The Rajput drew out a sealed envelope, and passed it to him. Brown tore it open, and read the message, scowling at the half-sheet of paper as though it were a death-sentence. “Where's the general?” “With his column-twenty or thirty miles away to the northward by now!” “And he's left me, with this handful, in the lurch?” “Nay, sahib! As I understood the orders, he has left you with a very honorable mission to fulfil!” Brown stared hard at the half-sheet of notepaper again. Reading was not his longest suit by any means, and at that he infinitely preferred to wrestle with printed characters. “Have you read it, Juggut Khan?” he asked. “Nay, sahib. I can speak English, but not read it.” “Then we're near to being in the same boat, we two!” said Brown with a grin. “I'll have another try! It looks like a good-by message to me--here's the word 'good-by' written at the end above his signature.” “There were other matters, sahib. There was an order. I can not read, but I know what is in the message.” “Well?” “You, and your twelve--” “Nine!” corrected Brown. “Three dead?” Brown nodded. “Your nine, then, sahib, and you and I are to proceed immediately to Jailpore, and to gain an entrance if we can, rescue those whom I concealed there and bring them to Harumpore, or to the northward of Harumpore, wherever we can find the column.” “Eleven men are to attempt that?” Brown was studying out the letter word by word, and discovering to his amazement that its purport was exactly what Juggut Khan pretended. “If there are no more than eleven of us, then yes, eleven! And, sahib, since you seem to hold at least an island here where a man may lie down unmolested, I propose to sleep for an hour or two, before proceeding. I have had no sleep since I left Jailpore.”