about midnight
`` This for Gooja Singh when I set eyes on him ! '' said not one trooper but every living man , licking a cartridge and slipping it into the breech chamber as we started . We did not take the track up which the Kurdish chief had galloped , but the ten guides led us by a dreadful route round almost the half of a circle , ever mounting upward . When night fell we camped without fires in a hollow among crags , and about midnight when the moon rose there was a challenge , and a short parley , and a Kurd rode in with a message from his chief for Ranjoor Singh . The message was verbal , and had to be translated by Abraham , but I did not get to hear the wording of it . I was on guard . `` It is well , '' said Ranjoor Singh to me , when he went the rounds and found me perched on a crag like a temple minaret , `` they are keeping faith .