About noon
Stalky had been out of the fort twice before , somewhere or other , accordin ' to him . He said Stalky ` ud come back unchipped , and gave me to understand that Stalky was an invulnerable _ Guru _ of sorts . All the same , I put the whole command on half rations , and set 'em to pickin ' out loopholes . `` About noon there was no end of a snow-storm , and the enemy stopped firing . We replied gingerly , because we were awfully short of ammunition . Do n't suppose we fired five shots an hour , but we generally got our man . Well , while I was talking with Rutton Singh I saw Stalky coming down from the watch-tower , rather puffy about the eyes , his poshteen coated with claret-colored ice .