[4] There are still men in India who can testify that this exploit, marvellous as it may appear to outsiders, has had more than one parallel.--D. K.
Like a stone through a pane of glass, they broke through the straggling line of their enemies. Crushed beneath the horse-hoofs fell grim Ali Shere; Mulhar Rao's strong right hand spun six feet from his body, hewn off like a twig; gasping on the ground lay fierce Haji Ismail, cloven through neck and shoulder; and by him, with his whole side laid open, writhed his brother Abd'-Allah.
Lal Singh and the Rajput had each killed his man; and the three, slashing right and left like giants, were already almost clear of their foes, when there came a sudden crackle of shots from the rear, and Lal Singh dropped dead without a cry, while the Rajput's horse sank under him, mortally wounded!
Quick as thought, Colonel Hardman turned in his saddle, and, seizing his trusty follower's arm, dragged him up on to his own horse.
A tall bandit sprang at them both with uplifted weapon, only to fall dead instantly, cut down through cap and skull to the very teeth; but Hardman's sword snapped with the force of the blow, and the robber-chief himself, the terrible "Black Tiger," thinking him disarmed and at his mercy, flew at the Englishman's throat with a laugh of savage joy.
The two men met like conflicting whirlwinds. A flash of steel--a whiz--a red stain on the colonel's white sleeve--a dull thud--a crunch like the breaking of a snow-crust--and Kala Bagh, the most dreaded bandit of the district, lay dead on the trampled earth, with his skull smashed in like an egg-shell, while over his corpse the colonel's horse and its double burden dashed away into the deeper shadows beyond.
[Illustration: "The two men met like conflicting whirlwinds."]
For many a day after, the superstitious Mussulmans of Kalipur told to their friends, with bated breath and looks of awe, how, in the first grey of dawn, the Angel of Death had come rushing through their town in the likeness of an English warrior--stained with blood, and with a dead man behind him on his black horse--and had carried away the _Hakeem Ingrez_ (English doctor) along with him. But, in the end, their angel of death proved to be an angel of life; for the new doctor did his work well, and the sick boy was saved!