The rifle
creaked and bent and split. Then the stone leaned farther back,
reached the wall and stayed there!
"A near thing that!" said Brown. "That fakir's a bright beauty,
isn't he!"
"Shall I kick him, sir?" asked one of Brown's men.
"Kick him? No! What good'd that do? What next, Juggut Khan?"
But Juggut Khan was bending down, and listening at the hole laid bare
by the huge hinged trap.
"Silence!" commanded Brown.
The men held their breath, even, but not a sound came up from the
darkness down below.
"Are they dead, d'you suppose?" asked Brown.
And, even as he asked it, some one in the darkness snuffled, and
he heard a woman's voice that moaned.
"Snff-snff-snff! I wonder if I'm dead yet! I wouldn't be, I know,
if Bill were here! He'd ha' got us out!"
"There is one of them alive!" said Juggut Khan.
"So I notice!" answered Brown, with a strange dry quaver in his voice.
"Go down and bring her up, please! Take three or four men with you.
It won't do to bring women and a child up here and let 'em see this
awful fakir and these corpses.
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