Perched thus, as it were, upon the roof of the world, these two men
looked down upon it all with a calm sense of possession, and to him of
the dominant race standing there some thousands of miles from his native
land--alone--master of this great stretch of an alien shore, there must
have come some passing thought of the strangeness of it all.
There was something wrong--he knew that. His orders had been to press
forward and occupy this little ridge, which was vaguely marked on the
service maps as Mistley's Plateau, named after an adventurous soul, its
discoverer. He had been instructed to hold this against all comers, and
if possible to prevent communication between the two valleys, connected
only by this narrow pass. All this Agar had carried out to the letter;
but some one else had failed somewhere.
"It will be three days at the most," his chief had said, "and the main
body of the advance guard will join you!"
Jem Agar had been in occupation a week, and it seemed that he and his
little band of men were forgotten of the world.
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