Two days later the column marched into the fort, and Colonel Willcocks went out to meet it.
The colonel's reports had been sent in by a runner.

As the Sikhs came along, the colonel ordered them to halt and, as Lisle marched up at the head of his company, he made a sign to him to come up.
"Captain Bullen," he said, "I have much pleasure in congratulating you on the manner in which you saved the life of the Sikh soldier, who volunteered to swim that river in flood in order to carry a wire across; and still more for the manner in which you made what I should say was a record march, in this country, to bring in a man who had been wounded, in a fight with a small party of the enemy." Then he turned to the Sikhs.
"Soldiers," he said, "I cannot praise you too heartily for having volunteered, at the end of a long and exhausting march, to undertake another still longer and more fatiguing, in order to bring in a wounded comrade.

It is an act of which you may be proud; but not altogether a surprising one, for we know well that we can depend upon the Sikhs, on all and every occasion." Lisle had been carried into the fort.

His feet were so tender and swollen that he could not possibly walk farther, and he was consequently taken down by the carriers, during the last two days' march.

Hallett sauntered up, as soon as he was put into a hospital hut.
"Hillo, Bullen, so you have broken down! A nice example to set to your Hausas, isn't it ?" "I suppose it is," Lisle laughed; "but the Hausas did not march as far as I did." "No?
What were you doing?
Scouting half a mile ahead of them, on your own account ?" "Not exactly; I only went the width of a river, and yet, the result of that was that I had to do an extra march of some twenty miles." "Now you are speaking in riddles, Lisle; and if there is one thing I hate, it is riddles.