His hands and feet being tied, and his mouth gagged, the men felt free to listen to the fakir as he told them their prisoner's history. Ahmed felt that that history would soon come to an end. Even if a friend should enter the hut, he was so well concealed that he might escape observation. He had no means of giving an alarm; he saw no way of escape: and when the lights were out and the fort was in darkness, it would be no difficult matter for the men to do as the fakir had suggested. And should the sound of his fall from the wall attract the notice of a sentry, and bring any one to the spot, he knew that Minghal would certainly dispatch him even though he should himself be seized. A knife-thrust would take but the fraction of a second; and Minghal was such an adept in cunning that he might make good his escape.
And so he lay helpless while his captors planned how they would lower him over the wall by a rope, so that no sound of falling should catch the sentry's ear. They agreed that they ran a risk; but there was greater risk in any other course. To dispose of him was imperative, or they themselves were doomed. The safest time would be two hours after "lights out," when the sentries had been changed; it would not be many minutes before the signal gun was fired.
Ahmed tried again and again to think of some way of escaping the impending doom. If only he could attract the attention of some of his friends in the corps, all might be well. He longed that Sherdil, or Dilawur, or Rasul, all good friends of his, might be brought by some lucky chance into the hut. There was a possibility that he might then raise himself above the charpoy and be seen. With all his heart he hoped that the men would not extinguish the lamp before the signal was given, and he felt that if no help should come while it still burned he was lost indeed.
With the thought of the imminent extinction of the light a wild chance suggested itself. On the charpoy, close to his feet, was a small bundle of straw which had apparently been used as a pillow. It was almost opposite to the lamp. Drawing up his feet slightly, he gently pushed the bundle to the edge of the charpoy. He was careful to move it slowly, for straw crackles, and he expected that the slight rustle he could not help making would be heard by the men. But if they heard the sound at all, they probably attributed it merely to his uneasy movements. He pushed the bundle inch by inch until it came to a position where in a few moments it must fall over the edge of the charpoy to the floor. Would it fall on the lamp? If it did, would it extinguish the flame? If it did not extinguish the flame, would it catch light quickly enough to prevent the men from quenching the flame? To all these questions was added another: Would the signal gun be fired before anything could be done?