We all surged after them, but there was a sudden check, followed by a babel worse than when a dozen pi-dogs fight over a rubbish-heap.  You couldn’t make head or tail of it, except that something desperate was happening in front, until suddenly a man with a knife in his hand, too wild with fear to use it, came leaping and scrambling over the backs of Sikhs, like a forward bucking the line.  The Sikh in front of me knelt upright and collared him round the knees.  The two went down together, I on top of both of them with blood running down my arm, for the man had started to use his knife at last, slashing out at random, and I rather think that slight cut he gave me saved the Sikh’s life.  But you can make any kind of calculation afterwards, about what took place in absolute darkness, without the least fear of being proven wrong.  And since the Sikh and I agreed on that point no other opinion matters.

I think that between the two of us we had that man about nonplused, although we couldn’t see.  I had his knife, and the Sikh was kneeling on his stomach, when a hundred and eighty pounds of bone and muscle catapulted at us from the rear and sprawled on us headlong, saved by only a miracle from skewering some one with a bayonet as he fell.

He laughed while he fought, this newcomer, and even asked questions in the Sikh tongue.  He had my arm in a grip like a vise and wrenched at it until I cursed him.  Then he found a leg in the dark and nearly broke that, only to discover it was the other Sikh’s.  Still laughing, as if blindfolded fighting was his meat and drink, he reached again, and this time his fingers closed on enemy flesh.  Judging by the yells, they hurt, too.

There must have been at least another minute of cat-and-dog-fight struggling—­hands being stepped on and throats clutched—­before Goodenough rolled himself free from an antagonist in front and, groping for the flashlight, found it and flashed it on.  The first thing I recognized by its light was the face of Narayan Singh, with wonderful white teeth grinning through his black beard within six inches of my nose.

“Damn you!” I laughed.  “You weigh a ton.  Get off—­you nearly killed me!”

“Nearly, in war-time, means a whole new life to lose, sahib.  Be pleased to make the most of it!” he answered.

Within two minutes after that we had eight prisoners disarmed and subdued, some of them rather the worse for battery.  The amazing thing was that we hadn’t a serious casualty among the lot of us.  We could have totaled a square yard of skin, no doubt, and a bushel of bruises (if that is the way you measure them) but mine was the only knife-wound.  I felt beastly proud.

By the light of the electric torch we dragged and prodded the prisoners back whence they had come, and presently Grim or somebody found a lantern and lit it.  We found ourselves in a square cavern—­a perfect cube it looked like—­about thirty feet wide each way.