faintest puff in all the world of stifling wind moved through them;
and a hundred thousand tiny squirrels kept up their aimless scampering
in search of food that was not there.

A coppersmith was about the only living thing that seemed to care
whether the sun went down or not. He seemed in a hurry to get a
job done, and his reiterated "Bong-bong-bong!"--that had never ceased
since sunrise, and had driven nearly mad the few humans who were
there to hear it--quickened and grew louder. At last Brown came
out of a square mud house, to see about the sunset.

He was nobody but plain Bill Brown--or Sergeant William Brown, to
give him his full name and entitlements--and the price of him was
two rupees per day.

He stared straight at the dull red disk of the sun, and spat with
eloquence. Then he wiped the sweat from his forehead, and scratched
a place where the prickly heat was bothering him. Next, he buttoned
up his tunic, and brushed it down neatly and precisely. There was
official business to be done, and a man did that with due formality,
heat or no heat.

"Guard, turn out!" he ordered.

Twelve men filed out, one behind the other, from the hut that he had
left. They seemed to feel the heat more than Brown did, as they fell
in line before Brown's sword. There was no flag, and no flag-pole
in that nameless health-resort, so the sword, without its scabbard,
was doing duty, point downward in the ground, as a totem-pole of Empire.
Brown had stuck it there, like Boanerges' boots, and there it stayed