n the toilers on
the middle slope, taking breath for a new effort and blinking the
sweat from their eyes, would catch sight of a horseman on a ridge far
overhead, silhouetted against the pale blue sky for a moment while he
scanned a plateau or gully unseen by them. Now and again, too, in
such pauses, the clear air pulsed with the tramp of the rearguard in
the lower folds of the hills--sepoys and comrades of the 78th and
94th.

Though with arms, legs and loins strained almost to cracking, the men
worked cheerfully. Their General had ridden forward with his staff:
they knew that close by the head of the pass their camp was already
being marked out for them, and before sleeping they would be fed as
they deserved.

They growled, indeed, but good-humouredly, when, for the tenth time
that day, they came to the edge of a gully into which the track
plunged steeply to mount almost as steeply on the farther side: and
their good humour did them the more credit since the General had
forbidden them to lock the wheels, on the ground that locking shook
and weakened the gun-carriages.

With a couple of drag-ropes then, and a dozen men upon each, digging
heels in the slope, slipping, cursing, back-hauling with all their
weight, the first gun was trailed down and run across the gully.
As the second began its descent a couple of horsemen came riding
slowly back from the advance-guard and drew rein above the farther
slope to watch the operation.

About a third of the way down, the track, which trended at first to
the left, bent abruptly away to the right, from the edge of a low
cliff of rock; and at this corner the men on the drag-ropes must
also fling themselves sharply to the right to check the wheels on
the verge of the fall. They did so, cleverly enough: but almost on
the instant were jerked out of their footholds like puppets.
Amid outcries of terror and warning, the outer wheel of the gun broke
through the crumbling soil on the verge, the ropes flew through their
hands, tearing away the flesh before the flesh could cast off its
grip; and with a clatter of stones the gun somersaulted over the
slope. With it, caught by the left-hand rope before he could spring
clear, went hurling a man. They saw his bent shoulders strike a slab
of rock ripped bare an instant before, and heard the thud as he
disappeared.

As they ran to view the damage, the two riders came cantering across
the gully and joined them. By good fortune, at the