blindly into the twilight.
“All right, sar! All right! Don’t shoot. I go to rescue,” and Hurree, pounding down the slope, cast himself bodily upon the delighted and astonished Kim, who was banging his breathless foe’s head against a boulder.
“Go back to the coolies,” whispered the Babu in his ear. “They have the baggage. The papers are in the kilta with the red top, but look through all. Take their papers, and specially the murasla . Go! The other man comes!”
Kim tore uphill. A revolver-bullet rang on a rock by his side, and he cowered partridge-wise.
“If you shoot,” shouted Hurree, “they will descend and annihilate us. I have rescued the gentleman, sar. This is par tic ularly dangerous.”
“By Jove!” Kim was thinking hard in English. “This is dam’-tight place, but I think it is self-defence.” He felt in his bosom for Mahbub’s gift, and uncertainly—save for a few practice shots in the Bikanir desert, he had never used the little gun—pulled the trigger.