He knelt and began to grope through the dark on hands and knees, but gave that up presently because the dust from old sacks and piles of rubbish began to choke him. Then rats came to investigate him. He heard several of them scamper close, and one bit his leg; so he made ready to fight for his life against the worst enemy a man may have, praying a little in the Sikh way, that does not reckon God to be far off at any time.

Suddenly the trap-door opened, and the rats scampered away from the light and noise.

"Thus is a soldier answered!" muttered Ranjoor Singh.

"Is the risaldar-major sahib thirsty?" wondered Yasmini.

He could hear her pouring water out of a brass ewer into a dish, and pouring it back again. The metal rang and the water splashed deliriously, but he was not very thirsty yet; he had been thirstier on parade a hundred times.

When her head and shoulders darkened the aperture, he did not trouble this time to look at her.

"Is it dark down there?" she asked him; but he did not answer.

So she struck a match and lit a newspaper. In a moment a ball of fire was floating downward to him, and it was then that the smell of dust and kerosene entered his consciousness as pincers enter the flesh of men in torment. He stood up with hands upstretched to catch the fire—caught it—bore it downward—and smothered it in gunny-bags.

"Still dark?" she said, looking through the aperture once more. "I will send another one!"

So Ranjoor Singh found his tongue and cursed her with a force and comprehensiveness that only Asia can command; he gave her to understand that the next fire she dropped on him should be allowed to work God's will and burn her—her, her rats, her cobras, and her cutthroats. Two honest Sikhs, he swore, would die well to such an end.

"Drop thy fire and I will fan the flame!" he vowed, and she believed him.

"I will send my cobras down to keep the sahib company!" she mocked.

But Ranjoor Singh proposed to take one danger at a time, and he was quite sure that she wanted him alive, not dead, for otherwise he would have been dead already. He held his tongue and listened while she splashed the water.

"Thy trooper is very thirsty, sahib!"

She was on a warmer scent now, for that squadron of his and the men of his squadron were the one love of his warrior life. Some spirit of malice whispered her as much.

"The trooper shall have water when Ranjoor Singh sahib has promised on his Sikh honor."

"Promised what?" His voice betrayed interest at last; it suggested future possibilities instead of a grim present.

"That he will do what is required of him!"

"Is that the price of a drink for Jagut Singh?"

"Aye! Will the sahib pay, or will he let the trooper parch?"

"Ask Jagut Singh! Go, ask him! Let it be as he answers!"

He could hear her hurry away, although she slammed the trap-door shut. Evidently she was not satisfied to speak through the little hole, and he suspected that she was showing the man water, perhaps giving some to the Afridi for sweet suggestion's sake. She was back within five minutes, and by the way she opened the trap and grinned at him he knew what her answer would be.