“Allah requite thee, my brother,” he said, “I can never hope to.”

“I have done nothing,” said Isaacs.  “Shall believers languish and perish in the hands of swine without faith?  Verily it is Allah’s doing, whose name is great and powerful.  He will not suffer the followers of His prophet to be devoured of jackals and unclean beasts.  Masallah!  There is no God but God.”

Therefore, when they had eaten some food, Ram Lal and Shere Ali departed, journeying north-east towards Thibet, and Isaacs and I remained sleeping in the tent until past noon.  Then we arose and went our way, having packed up the little canvas house and the utensils and the pole into a neat bundle which we carried by turns along the steep rough paths, until we found the dooly-bearers squatting round the embers after their mid-day meal.  As we journeyed we talked of the events of the night.  It seemed to me that the whole thing might have been managed very much more simply.  Isaacs did things in his own way, however, and, after all, he generally had a good reason for his actions.

“I think not,” he said in reply to my question.  “While you were throwing that ruffian, who would have overmatched me in an instant, Shere Ali and I disposed of the sowars who ran up at the captain’s signal.  Shere Ali says he killed one of them with his hands, and my little knife here seems to have done some damage.”  He produced the vicious-looking dagger, stained above the hilt with dark blood, which he began to scrape off with a bit of stick.

“My dear fellow,” I objected, “I am delighted to have served you, and I see that since Shere Ali could not be warned of the signal, I was the only person there who could tackle that Punjabi man; yet I am completely at a loss to explain why, if Ram Lal can command the forces of nature to the extent of calling down a thick mist under the cover of which we might escape, he could not have calmly destroyed the whole band by lightning, or indigestion, or some simple and efficacious means, so that we need not have risked our lives in supplementing what he only half did.”

“There are plenty of answers to that question,” Isaacs answered.  “In the first place, how do you know that Ram Lal could do anything more than discover the preconcerted signal and bring down that fog?  He pretends to no supernatural power; he only asserts that he understands the workings of nature better than you do.  How do you know that the fog was his doing at all?  Your excited imagination, developed suddenly by the tussle with the captain, which undoubtedly sent the blood to your head, made you think you saw Ram Lal’s figure magnified beyond human proportion.  If there had been no mist at all, we should most likely have got away unhurt all the same.  Those fellows would not fight after their leader was down.  Again, I like to let Ram Lal feel that I am able to do something for myself, and that I have other friends as powerful.  He aims at obtaining too much ascendency over me.  I do not like it.”