Midnight
They had been given an earnest against their long delinquent wages ; and they were in a happy frame of mind . Their dead comrades were dead and mourning was for widows ; but for them would be the pleasures of swift reprisals . The fugitives had gone toward the desert , and in that bleak stretch of treeless land it would not be difficult to find them , once they started in pursuit . Midnight . In the compound the moonlight lay upon everything ; upon the fat sides and back of the sacred white elephant , upon the three low caste keepers , now free of the vigilant eye of their Brahmin chief . The gates were barred and closed ; all inside the house of Bala Khan were asleep . Far away a sentry dozed on his rifle , on the wall .