Nor was the way he took the corner by the barrack gate, on one
wheel, any criterion; he always did it, just as he never failed to
acknowledge the sentry's salute by raising his whip. It needed the
observant eyes of Outram's Own to detect the rather strained calmness
and the almost inhumanly active eye.

"Beware!" called the sentry, while he was yet three hundred yards
away. "Be awake!"

"Be awake! Be awake! Beware!"

The warning went from lip to lip, troop to troop, from squadron
stables on to squadron stables, until six hundred men were ready for
all contingencies. A civilian might not have recognized the
difference, but Kirby's soldier servant awakened from his nap on the
colonel's door-mat and straightened his turban in a hurry, perfectly
well aware that there was something in the wind.

It was too early to dress for dinner yet; too late to dress for
games of any kind. The servant was nonplussed. He stood in silence,
awaiting orders that under ordinary circumstances, or at an ordinary
hour, would have been unnecessary. But for a while no orders came.
The only sound in those extremely unmarried quarters was the steady
drip of water into a flat tin bath that the servant had put beneath a
spot where the roof leaked; the rain had ceased but the ceiling cloth
still drooped and drooled.

Suddenly Kirby threw himself backward into a long chair, and the
servant made ready for swift action.