"Pukka" Cunningham, who had hacked the name deeper yet in the
crisscrossed annals of a land of war. It was strange--it was queer
--uncanny--for the third of the Cunninghams to be sitting on the
stone. It was unexpected, yet it seemed to have a place in the scheme
of things, for he caught himself searching his memory backward.

He received an impression that something was expected of him. He knew,
by instinct and reasoning he could not have explained, that neither
Mahommed Gunga nor the other men would say a word until he spoke. They
were waiting--he knew they were--for a word, or a sign, or an order
(he did not know which), on which would hang the future of all three of
them.

Yet there was no hurry--no earthly hurry. He felt sure of it. In
the silence and the blackness--in the tense, steamy atmosphere of
expectancy--he felt perfectly at ease, although he knew, too, that
there was superstition to be reckoned with--and that is something
which a white man finds hard to weigh and cope with, as a rule.

The sweat ran down his face in little streams a the prickly heat began
to move across his skin, like a fiery-footed centiped beneath his
undershirt, but he noticed, neither. He began to be unconscious
anything except the knowledge that the bones of his grandsire lay
underneath him and that Mahommed Gunga waited for the word that would
fit into the scheme and solve a problem.

"Are there any tigers here now?" he asked presently, in a perfectly
normal voice. He spoke as he had done when his servant asked him which
suit he would wear.