Ismail ever grumbling into his long beard, and King consumed by a
fiercer enthusiasm than ever had yet burned in him,

"Forward! Forward! Cast hounds forward! Forward in any event!"
says Cocker. It is only regular generals in command of troops in
the field who must keep their rear open for retreat. The Secret
Service thinks only of the goal ahead.

It was ten of a blazing forenoon, and the sun had heated up the
rocks until it was pain to walk on them and agony to sit, when they
topped the last escarpment and came in sight of Khinjan's walls,
across a mile-wide rock ravine--Khinjan the unregenerate, that has
no other human habitation within a march because none dare build.

They stood on a ridge and leaned against the wind. Beneath them
a path like a rope ladder descended in zigzags to the valley that
is Khinjan's dry moat; it needed courage as well as imagination
to believe that the animals could be guided down it.

"Is there no other way?" asked King. He knew well of one other,
but one does not tell all one knows in the "Hills," and there might
have been a third way.

"None from this side," said Ismail.

"And on the other side?"

"There is a rather better path--that by which the sirkar's troops
once came--although it has been greatly obstructed since. It is
two days' march from here to reach it. Be warned a last time,