Then there was silence, broken only by the clicking of the
compass-needles and snapping of watch-cases, as the heads of
columns compared bearings and made appointments for the
rendezvous. Five minutes later the parade-ground was empty; the
green coats of the Goorkhas and the overcoats of the English
troops had faded into the darkness, and the cavalry were cantering
away in the face of a blinding drizzle.

What the Goorkhas and the English did will be seen later on. The
heavy work lay with the horses, for they had to go far and pick
their way clear of habitations. Many of the troopers were natives
of that part of the world, ready and anxious to fight against
their kin, and some of the officers had made private and
unofficial excursions into those hills before. They crossed the
border, found a dried river-bed, cantered up that, walked through
a stony gorge, risked crossing a low hill under cover of the
darkness, skirted another hill, leaving their hoof-marks deep in
some ploughed ground, felt their way along another water-course,
ran over the neck of a spur praying that no one would hear their
horses grunting, and so worked on in the rain and the darkness
till they had left Bersund and its crater of hills a little behind
them, and to the left, and it was time to swing round. The ascent
commanding the back of Bersund was steep, and they halted to draw
breath in a broad level valley below the height. That is to say,
the men reined up, but the horses, blown as they were, refused to
halt. There was unchristian language, the worse for being
delivered in a whisper, and you heard the saddles squeaking in the
darkness as the horses plunged.