Ahmed had enlisted in the Guides with two very definite purposes—the one closely connected with the other. The first was, to achieve something that would establish a claim on the sahibs; the second, to effect the release of Rahmut Khan, or at least to shorten his imprisonment. Since the possibility of the second depended on the first, he bent his whole energies, from the moment he donned the khaki, to the mastery of his duties. The circumstances of his admission to the corps were such that many eyes were watching him. Some of the men were curious; others, Sherdil's friends, were jealous that he should justify them; the British officers were interested, not merely in observing the result of the experiment of enlisting one much below the average age, but in the boy himself. There was in him a nameless something that attracted them, and all of them, from Lumsden downwards, kept a special eye upon his progress.

He showed himself quick at drill, and at exercise with the sword and lance. Assad had reported quite accurately about the goose-step; but Ahmed, so far from feeling any indignity in standing on one foot, found it amusing to watch the lines of men lifting and setting down their feet like automata at the word of the officers, and gravely balancing themselves like herons at a pond. He had nothing to learn in "stables" save some small matters of routine, and in three months passed as a thoroughly efficient sowar. Furthermore, he was on good terms with his comrades. Sherdil treated him as a show pupil, and one day took an opportunity of asking Lumsden Sahib whether his praise of Ahmed had not been well deserved.

"Do you want us to make him a risaldar at once?" said Lumsden, with a laugh.

"The heaven-born knows that I, Sherdil, am not yet a naik," said the man readily. Lumsden owed a great part of his influence with the men to the freedom he permitted in his intercourse with them. His attitude towards them was that of one brave man to another; it made for mutual respect; yet no man forgot that the commander was a hazur or presumed on his bonhomie.

Ahmed was one of the escort that accompanied Lumsden and Sir John Lawrence to their interview with Dost Muhammed, the Amir of Kabul, at the entrance to the Khaibar Pass on the first day of the New Year. He wondered whether Jan Larrens would recognize him, but the great man was too preoccupied to notice a trooper. When it became known that in pursuance of the agreement made at that meeting Lumsden was to go before long on a mission to Kandahar, Ahmed hoped that he would be chosen among the escort on that occasion. Proximity day after day to the British officers would provide him with many opportunities of picking up their language. But before the time came for the mission to start he had reason to change his mind.

One evening, as he was passing alone through the Pathan lines of the infantry, he heard through the kusskuss matting which formed the doorway of one of the huts, and which had been blown aside for a second by a gust of wind, a voice that sounded strangely familiar. It was not the voice of any of his comrades, and for a moment he could not remember to whom it belonged. Not greatly concerned, he was passing on when he recalled it in a flash; it was certainly very much like the voice of Minghal, ex-chief of Mandan, and his father's enemy. He paused; if the speaker was indeed Minghal, what had brought him to Hoti-Mardan? Ahmed wondered whether the defeated chief had heard of his enlistment in the Guides, and had come on his own or Dilasah's behalf to do him a mischief. It occurred to him that he might be mistaken; but it was as well to make sure.

The hut was one of a row, beneath the parapet of the wall, built of mud, and eight or ten feet apart. At first Ahmed thought of creeping up to the doorway and pushing aside the matting gently so as to get a view of the occupants. There was some risk in this, however; he might be seen by those inside the hut, or by some one passing outside, and then his purpose would be defeated. So he crept round to the back, trying to find a crack in the wall of the flimsily-built hut, such as were often caused by the shrinking of the mud under the sun's heat. But in this he was disappointed. The hut, being close against the wall of the fort, had been defended from the sun's rays. Nothing daunted, he proceeded with his knife to cut a hole, very gently, as his tribesmen were wont to do when stealing horses. He was so dexterous in this that he soon scratched away the dried mud until he had made a hole a little larger than his eye. Then, as he expected, he came upon the straw network with which the mud was held together. So far his movements had been almost soundless, but there was a considerable risk of being heard if he cut the straw which alone stood between him and the occupants of the hut. Every now and then a gust of wind came, whistling as it swept between the hut and the wall. Taking advantage of this slight noise, he inserted the point of his knife and gently severed the straw until he was able to see pretty clearly the interior of the hut, lit as it was by a small saucer-lamp.

The occupants appeared to be three in number. Two of them were Panjabis, whom, being infantrymen, he knew but slightly. In the third he did not recognize, as he expected to do, the figure of Minghal Khan. It was a fakir, with long matted grey hair and a straggling beard. Cold as the weather was, the fakir was almost entirely unclothed; his body was smeared with ashes.

And then Ahmed blessed the caution which had prevented him from creeping up to the doorway of matting in front. Just behind it, so much in shadow that Ahmed had not at first perceived him, stood a fourth man, who peeped through now and again, as if to see that nobody approached without warning. At the same time he lent an ear to the conversation going on among his comrades, who were seated, cross-legged, on the floor. There was something suspicious in the attitude of the man on guard. Ahmed had once or twice lately noticed a certain restlessness among some of the Musalman members of the corps. He felt quite sure that the men were after no good, and removing his eye from the aperture, he turned his ear towards it The meeting was evidently a secret one, and it seemed to him important to know what was going on. The strange resemblance of the voice of one of the men to that of his enemy Minghal still disturbed him, and, as was perhaps natural in the circumstances, he still had a suspicion that he was himself the subject of their discussion; but as he listened, he soon found that they were talking about matters far more weighty than the latest recruit of the Guides.

"The Feringhis are attacking our religion," were the first words he heard. "Is it not a time when all good Musalmans should lay aside their little personal quarrels and join hands against the common foe?"

It was evidently the fakir who was speaking, and Ahmed was again struck by the likeness of his voice to Minghal's.

"The time is at hand when all the Feringhis shall be smitten," the voice continued. "Why have the infidels enlisted so many followers of Islam in their army? Why are they making this new cartridge? To turn the sons of the Prophet from the true faith."

"Bah!" said one of the group. "The Feringhis' religion has nought to do with the eating of pigs. They are men of the Book. They eat pigs, it is true; but that concerns not their religion."

"Foolish one, dost thou not see? This cartridge is smeared with the fat of pigs, and when a true believer bites off the top, as the need is, does he not lose his caste and become a pariah? Will his father speak to him? Will his brother eat with him? Nay, he loses father, brother, all his kin; and then the Feringhi comes and says, 'Dog, thou art outcast. Embrace my religion, or thou art friendless in this world as well as damned in the next.'"

"That may be so, O holy one," said the second man; "but what does it concern us? We have not the new cartridge of which you speak. Our sahibs are honourable; they would do nothing in despite of our religion; Lumsden Sahib told me when I became a Guide that he would not permit any man to interfere with that."

"Hai! Remember the saying, 'What is the goat, what is its flavour?' The goat can never become a camel, nor can its milk ever taste like the buffalo's. Your sahibs are kafirs; they hold not the faith; they but bide the time, and then assuredly you will be defiled."

"But didst thou not say that nothing can be done without the help of the accursed Hindus? I for one will not join hands with the dogs."

"Nay, nay, in this matter Islam and Shiva are at one. The Hindu by tasting the fat of the sacred cow, the Musalman by tasting the fat of the loathed swine, become alike defiled. The Feringhis are powerful. They are in the saddle. If the Hindus will aid us in tearing them out of the saddle, shall we despise their help? Have you not a saying, 'Buffalo! though we are not of one mountain, we belong to one thicket'? We Musalmans have our horns in the thicket; shall not Hindus help to disentangle them? When the Feringhis are smitten and sent to perdition, then will be the time for us true believers to deal fitly with the Hindu dogs. Will it not be then as it was in the days of the great Shah Nadir? Once more the Afghans, men of your race and faithful sons of the Prophet, will pour into the plains and set up a new and glorious kingdom. Who reigns now in Delhi? Bahadur Shah, toothless, feeble-kneed, a puppet in the hands of the Feringhis, doing nought from sunrise to sunset but invent foolish verses. We will change that; we will restore him to his dignities, or set up another in his room. As in the old days, every soldier in our host shall become a zamindar. There will be no goose-step to learn; no useless drill; none of the humiliation of obeying the commands of the white-faced dogs."

Though the fakir spoke in low tones, there was an intensity in his utterance that had its effect upon the listeners. This news of the fat-smeared cartridge troubled them in spite of themselves. They had heard nothing of it before; as a matter of fact, it had not yet been issued from the factory at Dam-dam; and but for the insolence of a Lascar, probably no suspicion of it would have arisen. The Lascar asked a Hindu one day for a drink of water from his brass lotah, which the Hindu indignantly refused, since he could not himself use the vessel again without losing caste. Upon this the Lascar retorted that he would soon have no caste to lose, since he would have to bite a cartridge smeared with the fat of pigs and cows. The news spread like wild-fire through the native army; and the terrible fear that the introduction of the new cartridge was a cunning device to make them pariahs, acting on superstitious minds which had other causes of disaffection, wrought the sepoys to a dangerous state of unrest.

But the fakir, besides appealing to his hearers' religious feelings, appealed also to their cupidity. He knew his men well. Like many of the Guides, they were by nature and training robbers. The prospect of unlimited plunder fired their imagination, and they received his last speech with a grunt of approval. He was quick to seize his advantage.

"Listen, brothers," he said in a mysterious whisper which Ahmed could barely catch. "'Tis nigh a hundred years since the Feringhi Clive, that son of perdition, defeated the host of Siraj-uddaula at Plassey. A holy man foretold that when the evil dominion of the Feringhis had endured for a hundred years, it should fade and vanish as a dream. The time is at hand, my brothers. Have I not lately received the sign from the hands of the Maulavi himself, the saint who now goes to and fro to stir the hearts of the faithful? Behold!"

Ahmed turned his eye quickly to the hole, and saw the fakir produce from his loin-cloth a chapati—a flat cake of unleavened bread—which he handed with a solemn gesture to one of the Guides. The man took it as though it were a sacred object.

"That is the sign chosen by the holy Maulavi Ahmed Ullah of Faizabad. Pass it to your comrades, brother, such of them as are true. I myself may no longer stay: I have far to go. Work in silence and discreetly, but with no loss of time. The hour is at hand; no man knoweth when the Maulavi may give the word. The train is laid from Meerut to Calcutta. The prize—wealth in this world and bliss in the world to come—is for him who leads, not for him who follows, in the blessed work. I will record your names, so that the Maulavi may have you in remembrance."

Ahmed had been so intently watching, that, being unable to hear and see at the same time, he lost part of this address. When he put his ear again to the hole, he could not catch the whispered words. With his knife he slightly enlarged the opening, and was straining his ears when he heard a light footfall behind him. Before he could turn, an arm was flung round his neck, a hand was pressed over his mouth, and in spite of his struggles to free himself he was held there until his captor, joined by others, securely gagged and trussed him. The man nearest him in the hut had heard the scratching of his knife, and crept out; his companions had followed him; and Ahmed was a prisoner.

While one of the men was scouting to make sure that nobody approached, the others dragged their captive round the hut and in at the doorway. As he entered, the fakir rose to his feet, and a glare of triumph lit his eyes.

"A spy!" he cried in a whisper. "Allah protects the faithful."

"Shall it be a knife, holy one?" asked one of the men.

"Nay, nay," said another, "a knife means blood on the floor. And how could we carry him from the lines? Within a little the gun will signal for 'lights out,' and the gates will be closed. We could not carry a dead man without being seen by the sentry. 'Tis easier to carry a man alive than dead."

"But we cannot keep him here," said the third. "'Tis Ahmed, the child who puts his elders to shame at man's work, and licks the boots of the sahibs. Search will be made for him; the braggart Sherdil, who shares his hut, will raise a cry when he is missed. This is evil work: he will betray us."

"Listen to me," said the fakir. "When the gun fires I go. But I will remain without, at the foot of the wall. When the night is far spent, do you lift him and throw him over the wall. Then will I take him and cast him into the river, and none will know."

"But the sentry!" said one of the men.

"Bah! has he eyes all round? The night is dark; none will see. Brothers, he is a kafir; he is a Feringhi who has come among you to learn your secrets and betray you. He shall die. So may all perish that stand in the way of the faithful."

And then Ahmed knew that the fakir was in very truth his enemy, Minghal. The voice, the glance of hate, the knowledge that he was an Englishman—all proved that his first suspicion was just. At the fakir's words one of the men spat upon him; then he was cast to the floor behind a charpoy that lay on one side of the entrance. Another charpoy was on the opposite side. It was near this that the conspirators had been squatting. The charpoy behind which he had been flung concealed him from the view of any one who should enter the doorway, and one of the men now placed the little lamp on the floor near the end of the charpoy, so that a shadow was cast on the place where Ahmed lay.

His hands and feet being tied, and his mouth gagged, the men felt free to listen to the fakir as he told them their prisoner's history. Ahmed felt that that history would soon come to an end. Even if a friend should enter the hut, he was so well concealed that he might escape observation. He had no means of giving an alarm; he saw no way of escape: and when the lights were out and the fort was in darkness, it would be no difficult matter for the men to do as the fakir had suggested. And should the sound of his fall from the wall attract the notice of a sentry, and bring any one to the spot, he knew that Minghal would certainly dispatch him even though he should himself be seized. A knife-thrust would take but the fraction of a second; and Minghal was such an adept in cunning that he might make good his escape.

And so he lay helpless while his captors planned how they would lower him over the wall by a rope, so that no sound of falling should catch the sentry's ear. They agreed that they ran a risk; but there was greater risk in any other course. To dispose of him was imperative, or they themselves were doomed. The safest time would be two hours after "lights out," when the sentries had been changed; it would not be many minutes before the signal gun was fired.

Ahmed tried again and again to think of some way of escaping the impending doom. If only he could attract the attention of some of his friends in the corps, all might be well. He longed that Sherdil, or Dilawur, or Rasul, all good friends of his, might be brought by some lucky chance into the hut. There was a possibility that he might then raise himself above the charpoy and be seen. With all his heart he hoped that the men would not extinguish the lamp before the signal was given, and he felt that if no help should come while it still burned he was lost indeed.

With the thought of the imminent extinction of the light a wild chance suggested itself. On the charpoy, close to his feet, was a small bundle of straw which had apparently been used as a pillow. It was almost opposite to the lamp. Drawing up his feet slightly, he gently pushed the bundle to the edge of the charpoy. He was careful to move it slowly, for straw crackles, and he expected that the slight rustle he could not help making would be heard by the men. But if they heard the sound at all, they probably attributed it merely to his uneasy movements. He pushed the bundle inch by inch until it came to a position where in a few moments it must fall over the edge of the charpoy to the floor. Would it fall on the lamp? If it did, would it extinguish the flame? If it did not extinguish the flame, would it catch light quickly enough to prevent the men from quenching the flame? To all these questions was added another: Would the signal gun be fired before anything could be done?

Ahmed saw that the men were so near to the lamp that even if the bundle caught fire they could stamp out the flames before they made such a glare as would raise an alarm. By some means this must be prevented. The very signal he had dreaded lent him aid. The gun was fired. The fakir rose to go. In another moment the lamp would be put out. Ahmed gave the little bundle the last tilt necessary to cause it to overbalance, and next instant he drew his feet up, stuck them under the charpoy, and, suddenly shooting them out, kicked it directly upon the three men, who were still squatting on the floor, looking towards the fakir as they bade him farewell. The three or four seconds thus gained achieved his object. The straw was ignited, a huge flame shot up in an instant to the roof. This, as in all Indian huts, was low. Being made of thatch it caught fire readily. The hut was ablaze.

For the moment the conspirators were thrown so completely off their balance that they knew not how to act. But it soon dawned on them that the fire must bring the whole camp down on them; already there were cries from without. The discovery of Ahmed bound, dead or alive, would be fatal to them. They could not get rid of him. Safety lay in flight alone. Barely five seconds after the sudden outbreak of flame they dashed out of the hut, rushed among the men who were flocking up, and in the confusion made for the gate and disappeared.

But the fakir was not with them. On the point of departing when the straw caught fire, he too had been dazed for a moment by the sudden glare, and took a step forward to flee. But then he turned, whipped out his knife, and ran to where Ahmed lay. Ahmed saw him coming, saw the knife in his hand, knew his fell purpose. Quick as thought he wriggled against the wall and drew up his knees. Minghal came swiftly towards him, intent only on his murderous design. Suddenly out shot the prisoner's bound feet; they caught the stooping fakir square on the knees. He reeled back against the loose matting of the doorway, and stumbled against one of the crowd whom the fire had summoned.

The man hurled him aside. He fell and was trampled by the feet of others. There were cries all around; some were shouting for water, others were beating at the burning roof with their swords; no one paid heed to the man on the ground. Bruised with kicks he wriggled through the press until he came near the gate; then, in full sight of the sentry, he raised his hands and piously besought the aid of Allah to save the dwellings of the faithful.

Meanwhile the British officers had run up to the scene of the conflagration. First of them was Lieutenant Hawes, the adjutant. The men fell back from him as he pushed his way towards the blazing hut.

"Where are the men?" he cried. "Is any one inside?"

"That we know not, sahib," replied a Gurkha.

"We cannot see through the smoke, sahib," added a tall Afridi; "we are beating out the flames."

"Idiots!" cried the lieutenant. "Out of the way!"

He rushed through the entrance. The hut was so full of smoke that for a moment he could see nothing. Then he caught sight of a figure against the wall: a trooper with his arms crossed on his face to defend it from the shreds of burning thatch that were falling. His legs were drawn up to avoid the flames from a charpoy already half consumed. Thinking he was unconscious, Lieutenant Hawes seized him by the feet and hauled him by main force into the open air.

"Who is it?" asked Lumsden, standing there with Dr. Bellew.

The prostrate trooper moved his arms.

"Ahmed!" cried the adjutant. "You had no business in the hut. Get up!"

Ahmed wriggled, but could neither stand nor speak.

"Let me see," said the doctor, stooping. "Why, God bless me, he is gagged and tied up!"

He slit the cords and removed the gag, and Ahmed got up on his feet. He was half suffocated, and his eyes were red, and watering with the smoke.

"There's some devilry here," cried Lumsden. "Bellew, take him to my quarters. Hawes, see that nobody leaves the fort. Some of you men put out the fire and then go quietly to your beds."

The gates were by this time shut. When Lieutenant Hawes asked the sentry whether he had noticed any suspicious characters leaving the fort, he replied—

"No, sahib. The last to go before I shut the gate was a holy fakir, who besought Allah that we might be saved from the fire."