Part 34 (2/2)

”Sahib! Callnear hirandsons, who had been told to stand at a little distance off They clustered round the Risaldar in silence, and he looked them over and counted them

”All here?” he asked

”All here!”

”Whose sons and grandsons are ye?”

”Thine!” ca doneand delivered her ye rode to rescue, ye are no more bound to the Raj Ye may return to your hoht for the rebels, if ye wish!+ There will be a safe-perain there was no answer

”For whoht ye?”

”For the Raj!” The deep-throated answer rang out promptly from every one of them, and they stood with their sword-hilts thrust out toward the colonel He rose and touched each hilt in turn

”They are now thy servants!” said the Risaldar, laying his head back ”It is good! I go now Give my salaarowled the colonel, in an Anglo-Saxon effort to disguise eht hand that was stretched out on the ground beside him, but it was lifeless

Risaldar Mahoe, had gone to turn in his account of how he had remembered the salt which he had eaten

MACHassAN AH

I

Waist-held in the chains and soused in the fifty-foot-high spray, Joe Byng eyed his sounding lead that swung like a pendulue

”This 'ere navy ain't a navy no al proet your little trotters wet, that's what this is, so 'elp me two able seamen an' a red marine!”

From the moment that the lookout, lashed to the windlass drum up forward, had spied the little craft away to leeward and had bellowed his report of it through hollowed hands between the thunder of the waves, Joe Byng had had premonitory symptoms of uneasiness He had felt in his bones that the navy was about to be nose-led into shame

At the wheel, both eyes on the compass, as the sea law bids, but both ears on the more-even-than-usual-alert, Curley Crothers felt the same sensations but expressed them otherwise