Now, the gist of the thing is--Be silent.

Be calm.
Be awake.

Be on hand on the day.
Be instant to heed the first note of alarm.
And--precisely--exactly--Obey.
AT Howrah, while Mahommed Gunga was employing each chance circumstance to test the pluck and decision and reliability of Cunningham at almost every resting-place along the Grand Trunk Road, the armed squire he had left behind with a little handful of gold mohurs and three horses was finding time heavy on his hands.
Like his master, Ali Partab was a man of action, to whom the purlieus of a caravansary were well enough on rare occasions.

He could ruffle it with the best of them; like any of his race, he could lounge with dignity and listen to the tales that hum wherever many horsemen congregate; and he was no mean raconteur--he had a tale or two to tell himself, of women and the chase and of the laugh that he, too, had flung in the teeth of fear when opportunity arose.
But each new story of the paid taletellers, who squat and drone and reach a climax, and then pass the begging bowl before they finish it--each merrily related jest brought in by members of the constantly arriving trading parties--each neigh of his three chargers--every new phase of the kaleidoscopic life he watched stirred new ambition in him to be up, and away, and doing.

Many a dozen times he had to remind himself that "there had been a trust imposed." He exercised the horses daily, riding each in turn until he was as lean and lithe and hard beneath the skin as they were.