urs,

R. CHARTERIS."

Charteris wrote the message in Greek characters, forming the letters
stiffly with unaccustomed fingers, and pausing now and then for
recollection. Gerrard would be able to read it, but no native in India
could do so. He made three copies, and despatched them by separate
messengers along different routes--by the river-bank, to the south and
to the south-east respectively--in the hope that one of them would
succeed in reaching his friend.

Charteris looked older and thinner than when he had parted from Gerrard
a fortnight before, and his face was tanned to a more pronounced red
than ever. Many hours of gloom had been encountered in the fulfilment
of the task willed in that hour of insight. Unforeseen difficulties of
various kinds had hindered him, and it was also quite certain that he
had underestimated the time necessary for Gerrard's arrival from
Habshiabad with the reinforcements. On returning to his camp that
first evening, he had mounted a fresh horse, and ridden on at once
towards his headquarters at Dera Galib Khan, whither his messengers had
preceded him, warning the Granthi troops there to be ready to take the
field at once. Fast though he travelled, however, reaching Dera Galib
in two nights of hard riding, he had been outstripped. Emissaries from
Sher Singh had already been at work among the Granthis, calling upon
them to join their brethren who had betrayed Nisbet and Cowper, and
fight the English for the sake of God and the Guru. Valuable gifts,
and the promise of doubled pay and unlimited loot, strengthened the
effect of the appeal, and the men were seething with disaffection when
Charteris came to them. They had not quite arrived at the point of
murdering him and his lieutenants and marching to join Sher Singh, but
the thing was openly discussed, and very little was needed to
precipitate matters. In face of this heavy blow, Charteris acted with
his customary despatch. The disaffected infantry he took with him,
deciding that under his own eye they would be as safe on active service
as anywhere, but the artillery he left with a heavy heart at Dera
Galib. He had counted much on their services, but he durst not take
the gunners where a bribe or two would double Sher Singh's present
strength, and there was no time to extemporise artillerists from among
the Darwanis. These wild men rushed to his standard joyfully as soon
as they heard he needed recruits, and the robbers who