AWAKENED at sunrise by the festive sound of a steam-whistle, the fugitives from the Agency turned out to view the approach of a vessel identified by Captain Franks as the Galaxy. European soldiers clustered on her deck, and an officer waved greetings from the paddle-box. As the steamers neared one another, Eveleen recognised him as her old enemy Captain Crosse.
“Too late, I see!” he shouted lugubriously. “We start off ek dum to rescue you, and you’ve done the rescuing yourselves!”
“Why, what have you got on board?” asked Colonel Bayard.
“Fifty men and ten thousand rounds of ammunition, colonel—and despatches. You were to hold on until the General came to relieve you.”
“To relieve me? Sir Henry is close at hand, then?”
“Three hours’ steaming—certainly no more. We should have met you sooner if we could have got on in the dark. Here’s the General’s letter.” He held it out, and Brian, making a long arm from the Asteroid’s paddle-box, took it from him.
“Thanks. Come to breakfast, won’t you?” said Colonel Bayard shortly, and withdrew a pace or two—there was no possible privacy in the crowded ship—to read the despatch. Presently he beckoned to Richard.
“He is bent on fighting,” he said with a sigh. “Look here—this was written after receiving mine sent after our return from the durbar, when I said I feared we might be besieged, and asked for supplies. You see he bids me point-blank break off negotiations, and make no further efforts for peace.”
“Possibly he thought you had done all that could be done in that line——” with great seriousness. “That was the letter in which you urged him to send away the army and come to Qadirabad himself—eh?”
“Yes, I urged it most strongly. And what does he do? Destroys the last hope of accommodation—orders me to leave the Agency at once and rejoin him, or if that’s impossible, put up a good defence and wait for him there.”
“But what else could he have done?” asked Richard curiously.
“Waited—shown some patience, some forbearance, instead of hurrying things like this. The old man knows nothing of Oriental ways—that’s the sole excuse for him.”
“I shall begin to think the General ain’t so far wrong in his estimate of old Indians, when he says they have got more Oriental than the Orientals themselves!” grumbled Richard to himself as Colonel Bayard turned away from him abruptly to greet Captain Crosse as he came on board.
“And I have a special message for Mrs Ambrose,” the visitor was saying. “Sir Henry was highly displeased when he heard where she was, and is sharpening his tongue to give her the scolding she deserves.”
“Sharpening his tongue, is it?” cried Eveleen in high scorn. “Sure it’s hardening his heart he means—or trying to.”
“Have it your own way, ma’am,” said Captain Crosse pacifically. “No doubt the General will argue it out with you, but I know better.”
That the General was quite ready to deal with every one as he or she deserved was made plain when the steamers arrived level with his camp. It lay some little distance from the river, but he had sent horses to be ready for them, and as Colonel Bayard and his party rode on ahead of the troops, an approaching cloud of dust showed that he was welcoming them in person. In his usual breakneck style he dashed up with his staff, and shook hands all round with his left hand, for his right arm was in a sling.
“Ah, Mrs Ambrose! anywhere else I should have been proud to see you. Glad you’re safe, Bayard. You have made a fine defence, sir—I shall have much pleasure in reporting it in the proper quarter. A little bit out of conceit with the Khans now—eh? Three times in one day you wrote to me they hadn’t an armed man in Qadirabad save their own servants, and two days later they were besieging you with seven or eight thousand troops!”
“You are better informed than I, General.” Colonel Bayard spoke somewhat stiffly. “How you have arrived at that exact figure——”
“Spies, man, spies! Not being glued to steamers, they came on while you were all snoozing sweetly in the night, though they had to skirt round to flank the shikargahs, which you must have passed in happy innocence that a whole army was concealed there. I was taking their lowest estimate. What do you make the numbers, then—eh?”
“Anything up to eighteen thousand men, General, from what we saw when they tried to harass us from the bank.”
“H’m. My information suggests more than that. By the seven thousand I meant those only who beset the Residency. And in a nasty resolute temper—eh? You believe that now?”
“For the moment, nothing more. Believe me, their heart ain’t in it. If you could have met their Highnesses face to face——”
“Heavens, man! if I had taken your advice, the army would still be three days’ march away at least, and my reinforcement could never have reached you in time.”
“A reinforcement without ammunition, General!”
“My orders were that they should have sixty rounds apiece, but they were in such a hurry to be off they never took ’em.”
“Ah, with that sixty rounds we could have held out till you came. You, General—not the army. Your presence would have removed all difficulties.”
“Yes, and my head from my shoulders—as I said when I got your letter. What! you won’t believe a word against your dear gentle Khans, even now? D’ye know anything of an unfortunate white man—an American, so they tell me—called Thomas, who commanded their artillery?”
“Why, yes, General. We owe him much gratitude——”
“Well, you’ll never have the chance of repaying him in this world. Faced with the order to fire on persons of his own colour, he refused, and they cut off his nose and ears, and killed him.”
“And ’twas his warning saved all our lives!” cried Eveleen wildly. “Oh, poor Tom Carthew, poor poor Tom! And that was the man”—she faced round suddenly on her husband—“you wanted to forbid me to speak to!”
“I suppose there’s no doubt, sir——?” asked Richard.
“None whatever, I fear. The spy hesitated to tell me—because, so Munshi said, he didn’t like to bring such news about a sahib. I told him to say the only thing it would make me angry to hear would be that the Sahib had stooped to dishonour, and I gave the spy ten rupees when he had revealed the sad yet glorious truth. Not much doubt there. A word with you, Ambrose, if you please.”
For once Colonel Bayard had no defence to offer of the Khans’ action, and he dropped behind with Eveleen, pretending, with his usual kindness, not to notice the tears she was unable to conceal, while Richard took his place beside Sir Harry. The old soldier was perturbed.
“Is Bayard wilfully blind, or is he mad?” he demanded wrathfully as they drew ahead. “I have been mistaken in the man. Nothing but massacre will open his eyes.”
“I think he has been trying to force himself to retain confidence in the Khans, sir; but surely his eyes must be opened now! Did you hear that the attack on the Agency was directed by Khair Husain Khan, who had offered the day before to bring his troops to protect us? I saw him plainly with my telescope, leading his army industriously from the rear.”
The General laughed—a short hard laugh. “Well, they have come to the end of their tricks and evasions now! At nine to-morrow morning I lead my gallant troops against ’em.”
“Have you stipulated with the Khans that they shall await your onslaught, General?”
Sir Harry laughed again. “I think they will—I trust they will. Were their numbers double the eighteen thousand Bayard gives ’em, I would still advance, but they may well consider eighteen thousand fairly matched against two. They are awaiting us at Mahighar. We march at dawn, and they won’t find us backward in keeping the appointment.”
“Do you propose to attack ’em in front, sir?”
“I do. Look at this: I had the choice of two roads. By marching inland I might have come on ’em from the rear and turned their right flank, penning ’em up with their backs to the river. But if my plans miscarried, I in my turn should run the risk of being dispersed and cut off in detail, since I should have nothing behind me but the desert. True, if successful, I might annihilate ’em, but I ain’t a lover of bloodshed, though Bayard believes me one. Whereas, coming at ’em straight in front, if I am beat back I retreat on the river, where are my steamers, and where I entrench myself while waiting for the reinforcements I have ordered down from Sahar. Why don’t I wait for ’em? you’ll say. Because I have enough men to beat the Khans with, and I won’t rob my troops of their glory by bringing in others to share it.”
“’Pon my honour, General”—Richard spoke with unwonted enthusiasm—“I believe you’ll find ’em answer your expectations.”
“I know I shall. There ain’t a regiment in Her Majesty’s Army I would rather have with me than my dear uproarious Irish boys—as tumultuous in peace as they are terrible in fight. But what I wished to ask you was about Mrs Ambrose. Do you prefer her to return on board the Asteroid when we march, or to take the chances of the battle with us?”
“That must be as you decide, General.”
“Nay, I beg of you to make the choice. In Spain no one would have felt the least surprise at her remaining with you, but we do things differently nowadays.”
“Honestly, sir, I should infinitely prefer to leave her in the charge of Mr Franks, but I can’t flatter myself she would remain there unless she chose.”
“Precisely. And to embark on adventures of her own selection in a country swarming with enemies might entail consequences that would load us with remorse for the rest of our days—and none more than myself. She shall accompany you and the force, but I will give her a little good advice first.”
“May I say, General, how deeply I deplore that Mrs Ambrose’s conduct should require to engage your attention at such a moment?”
“Nonsense, my good fellow! I have often thought you don’t half appreciate your good fortune in finding yourself linked to a lady happily endowed with perennial youth. Now don’t look for a nasty meaning when I intend a compliment of a sort, but do me the favour to find out whether Bayard has any more maggots in his brain.”
This meant that Eveleen became Sir Henry’s companion. She did so with a certain diffidence, for it had begun to dawn upon her that her presence was not precisely welcome. Possibly Captain Crosse had aided her to make the discovery by a muttered remark about charming ladies who would poke their noses in where they weren’t wanted. He had said from the first that European women had no business in Khemistan, she might remember? She did remember, but would not flatter him by acknowledging it, nor take any notice now when he murmured what sounded like “something like a wigging!” The news of Tom Carthew’s death had subdued her a good deal, so that the severe glance Sir Harry turned upon her did not, as it would generally have done, pique her to fresh flightiness.
“And pray, ma’am, why did you force yourself into Colonel Bayard’s mission to Qadirabad?” he asked her.
She scorned the quibble that the Colonel had said he would welcome her presence. “Ah, now, Sir Harry, wouldn’t you have found Sahar dull if you’d been me?”
“Was that your sole reason, pray?”
“Not a bit of it. Ambrose wouldn’t take me with him to Sultankot, so I told him the next time I’d come without asking. And I did.”
“I see. That you might boast a cheap triumph over your husband, you chose to double—or at least to add very largely to my anxieties at this time?”
“Well now, to tell you the truth, I never thought of that!”
The confession was so naïve and unexpected that Sir Harry nearly spoiled the effect of his lecture by laughing. But he managed to preserve a proper severity of demeanour as he said, “Let me assure you I have been a prey to the most serious apprehensions as to your safety.”
“Indeed, then, I ought to be flattered that Sir Harry Lennox would think of me at all at such a time.”
She must have scented the unreality of his last remark! “I fear,” he said smoothly, “Mrs Ambrose would hardly be flattered did she realise the nature of my thoughts. But if you have no consideration for me, is there none due to my good friend your excellent husband?”
“And don’t I show my consideration by wanting to be with him wherever he goes? Who could take better care of him, if he got hurt, than his own wife?”
“Whom he would infinitely prefer to know in safety at Sahar! Have some compassion on the poor fellow’s mind, ma’am—don’t keep it all for his body. Believe me, you have no right to inflict these additional anxieties on persons who have enough to think of already. You have had a tolerable example, surely, in the fate of the unfortunate man Thomas?”
“But sure it was for my sake he brought the warning, and saved all our lives!” cried Eveleen indignantly.
“Possibly, though some inkling of what was in hand would probably have reached Bayard in any case. But don’t it occur to you that the reason the test was proposed to the unhappy man was that his errand had been divined, and he was given the choice of proving his fidelity to his employers or expiating what they would consider his treachery?”
“Do you tell me he lost his own life by saving ours?”
“In consequence of saving them, as far as I see. The honour of your friendship, ma’am, ain’t without its penalties. Shocking rude old fellow, ain’t I?” as she gazed at him incredulously. “Believe me, I would withdraw that remark if I could, but what does your own conscience say about it?”
“It’s cruel y’are!” wept Eveleen. “When you know I would die for my friends!”
“Pardon me,” drily—“they die for you, you mean.”
“Ah, cruel, cruel! As if I’d ever, ever go where I wasn’t wanted again!”
“Come! now I have hopes of you. Does that mean that if I can find a safe place for you among the baggage to-morrow, you pledge your word to stay where you are put and do what you are bid?”
“Oh, and I’ll see the battle?” joyfully.
“Impossible to say, but I should think it unlikely. Will you do absolutely what you are told—whether you find yourself in a good place for seeing or not?”
“I will, I will! and I’ll be grateful to y’all my days.”
“May they be many!” Sir Harry’s tone was still dry. “If you don’t keep your word they won’t be—that’s all.”
“Ah, then, would y’have the heart to have me shot?”
“Quite unnecessary. The enemy will see to that if you go running about the country—or our own camp-followers, who are the choicest mob of rascals I ever saw. I know they’re capable of any enormity, because they treat their dumb beasts so abominably. I owe this to one of ’em”—he indicated his bandaged right hand.
“Why, did y’interpose to prevent a blow and receive it yourself, Sir Harry?” with interest.
“Not precisely. A scoundrel was knocking his poor camel about, and my fist found its way to his forehead. The fellow had a head like a rock! It was my hand that was smashed; he remained unhurt. Munshi tells me that the rascals have a game of running at one another with their heads down, butting like rams, and I believe it—save that the sport must be too harmless to be profitable.”
“I’m glad ’twas for a camel you did it,” said Eveleen. “Anybody would defend a horse, but y’are the only one that’s really fond of camels, don’t you know?”
Sir Henry looked at her suspiciously, and took advantage of circumstances to change the subject with finality. “Here we are, you see. We have managed to find a tent for you, but furniture was beyond us. I call it the one advantage of Indian travelling, that each visitor brings his own four-poster along with him.”
He dismounted with amazing agility, and came to help Eveleen from her saddle, but was interrupted by Colonel Bayard.
“Ambrose has been telling me your plans, General, and I can’t say how glad I am to find you share my view that it ain’t bloodshed, but a moral effect, that’s called for. May I be permitted to do my part? Lend me a couple of hundred Europeans and the steamers, and give me one more day, and we will fire the shikargahs and drive the game towards you. No Orientals can stand being taken in flank, and where they would fight desperately if assailed in front, it would not surprise me did they surrender without fighting at all.”
“H’m!” grunted Sir Harry. “Presently, presently! We don’t hold councils of war in public, my good fellow. But Europeans? Certainly not. I have but four hundred in my whole army, and each man is worth his weight in diamonds to me. And no more delay—not an hour! You must be back in time. Can’t put off the battle to suit you. Sorry to keep you waiting, ma’am.”
The day wore itself away slowly enough. Eveleen was tired after the excitements of the last forty-eight hours, but she found it difficult to rest. It was the cold weather, but at midday the heat made a tent a very inadequate shelter, and the many sounds of a camp suggested such interesting things which might be happening that she was for ever jumping up to look out. Richard and Brian were busy outside the General’s little tent close by. It was pitched under a rather inadequate tree, in the shade of which the office work was necessarily done, since it could not possibly have been accomplished inside. Messengers came and went, officers arrived with reports of various kinds, deputations of men with representations to make, offenders to receive admonition—and the General dealt with them in patriarchal style. Late in the afternoon Colonel Bayard and his two hundred Native Infantry left for the steamers, the officers not disguising their dissatisfaction at the possibility of missing the battle. At sunset there was a far more picturesque spectacle, when the Khemistan Horse rode out to reconnoitre from the land side the hunting-forest in which the enemy was supposed to be concealed, and thus distract their attention from Colonel Bayard’s operations by water. The camp woke up as the sun went down. Fires were lighted, and the men who had grumbled at the heat in their tents all day came out gladly to enjoy the warmth. Sitting round the fires, they watched their meal cooking, and exulted in the thought of the morrow. The British Army groused in those days as in these, but the nil admirari pose had not yet become fashionable—or if it had, it had passed by these Irish lads and left them unscathed. The General had a wood fire in front of his tent like the rest, and its smoke served as a much-needed deterrent from the attentions of the mosquitoes. He and Eveleen and his staff sat on small boxes round a large box for a table, and when the resources of his two canteens were exhausted, shared tumblers and even plates. Sir Henry was in a reminiscent mood. He talked about his parents—his father a giant both in mind and body, who would have been the greatest General of the age had a bat-like Government but taken advantage of his powers; his mother at once the best and the most beautiful woman of her time. Then he turned to his brothers, of whom there were several, each remarkable in his particular sphere, but none to compare with the two who were soldiers like himself, and like him, had fought and bled in the Peninsula. They had attained a certain measure of recognition, but nothing to what they should have received had they been treated fairly: there was a cross-grained fate pursuing every Lennox which robbed him of the due reward of his deeds. In all this he called upon his nephew—son to one of the ill-used soldiers—for confirmation, which was dutifully given. But when the General’s attention was distracted for a moment by the arrival of a message, Frederick Lennox spoke in a hollow whisper to Eveleen.
“It’s all quite true, and yet there ain’t a word of it true! What’s wrong with us Lennoxes is that we are all of us such queer cross-grained fellows that we make our own enemies.”
Eveleen was greatly interested, for the Lennox temperament seemed to have an affinity with her own—as Richard had once hinted,—and she would fain have pursued the subject, but the General’s eye was upon them again. The message had apparently recalled him from the past to the present.
“They tell me now that if the Khans bring up all their forces, they will put sixty thousand Arabits into the field against us to-morrow,” he said. “Well, be they sixty or a hundred thousand, I’ll fight ’em! It shall be do or die. No Ethiopian muddle for me! I would never show my face again. Well, Heaven grant me to be worthy of my wife and girls, and not disgrace ’em!”
“Sure y’are the first ever mentioned disgrace in the same breath with yourself, Sir Harry,” said Eveleen earnestly. He glowered at her.
“Young troops—never saw a fight before, and a leader with no experience of high command! The Duke’s battles were ended when he was ten years younger than I—Napoleon’s the same. Yet there’s a kind of elation in the delightful anxiety of leading an army—and such an army—against a force twenty times its number. How many proud Arabits will have bit the dust by this hour to-morrow! But who am I, to dare to rejoice in the prospect of taking life, instead of lamenting the grievous necessity? At least I have done my utmost to avoid bloodshed—even Bayard admits it.” He had been talking as if to himself, but his tone changed suddenly. “Well, well; a bit more writing and a visit to the outposts, then three hours’ sleep, for I had none last night—some foolish report or other coming in all night long. Get what rest you can, Mrs Ambrose, and you, gentlemen. We march at four.”
The night felt very short to Eveleen, though she must have had at least two hours’ more sleep than the General. It was in that most uncomfortable hour before dawn that she was waked, and it seemed impossible ever to get ready in the cold and the confined space and by the light of a dimly burning lantern. But she was outside at last, in a chill grey light in which figures moved like shadows at first, but gradually became more distinct. Richard brought her a cup of coffee, which was hot and sweet and strong—the very stimulant she needed,—and Brian presented her with a chunk of meat balanced on a biscuit, which required all her attention to get it conveyed safely to her mouth. When it was disposed of, she had leisure to look about. The camp was disappearing amid cracks and creaks; soldiers, servants, camp-followers were running about like ants in a threatened ant-hill. The General, in a sheepskin coat which combined with his spectacles to give him the look of a philosopher turned bandit, was receiving a report from a dark-faced officer with a bushy black beard—Captain Keeling of the Khemistan Horse,—which seemed to make him very angry.
“No sign of the enemy in the shikargahs? Then where on earth have they got to? If their hearts have failed ’em again, I’ll chase ’em to the gate of Qadirabad and out at t’other end! Then Bayard’s expedition will be no use, and I can’t get at him! I wish I had never let him go—robbing me of two hundred of my best sepoys and three invaluable officers. Well, many thanks for the information, Keeling. You are advanced guard now, you know. I needn’t tell you to keep a sharp look-out for the rascals, with all these woods and nullahs about.”
Captain Keeling saluted and rode away, and somehow or other, from a mob falling aimlessly over each other’s feet, the army sorted itself out and into column of route, and the march began. The cavalry ahead and on the flanks may have been able to see where they were going, but the dust they stirred up made a gritty fog in which the infantry toiled along blindly. It was full daylight now, and the sun was growing hot. The General had discarded his woolly coat and carried it before him on the saddle, and Eveleen threw back the veil she had worn to protect her face from the dust, that she might at least be able to breathe. In a brief halt about seven o’clock, Sir Henry conferred with Captain Keeling again, and the Khemistan Horse trotted off briskly on another reconnaissance, their place in the van being taken by a Bengal Cavalry regiment. The army had not long got into motion again before a gun was heard in front, then a regular fusillade, which was repeated at brief intervals.
“He’s found ’em this time!” chuckled Sir Henry, and presently a sowar, his horse in a lather, galloped back and presented a note. The General read it with visible pleasure.
“The Arabits have kept the appointment right enough, gentlemen,” he said to his staff. “They are drawn up behind Mahighar—the very place I fixed on,—a strong position, so Keeling says, with both flanks protected by shikargahs and the front by a deep dry watercourse. He estimates them at twenty thousand at least, with fifteen guns. The Khans are in camp behind a fortified village on their right. He remains under fire to reconnoitre more closely, which will give us time for our part of the business.”
A brief order sent Brian back with the sowar, to bring the latest news, and orderlies were despatched down the column to hurry the loiterers and prevent straggling. Stewart rode ahead with the Engineer officers, who knew exactly what they had to do, and presently the General and his companions arrived at a clump of scraggy trees, round which the ground was being neatly marked out with flags.
“Headquarters,” said Sir Henry laconically. “Ambrose, I shan’t want you at present. You had better find out a nice sheltered place for Mrs Ambrose here on the right somewhere. You won’t be disturbed. That’s where the hospital tents will be, and there are no invalids to-day—as yet. Dare say he don’t want to do anything of the kind,” he added, more audibly than he intended, to Brian; “but hang it! a man does owe some duty to his wife.”
Absurdly embarrassed, and not a little angry, Richard obeyed, and Eveleen, lifted from her saddle, led the way into the grateful shade of the little wood. The air was full of the thunder of the guns, and her husband had to shout when he warned her of a projecting root that might have made her trip. They paused in sight of the tents in course of erection, where the surgeons—with what looked like, but doubtless was not, unholy joy—were setting out in order objects of gruesome aspect, and Eveleen turned with a smile.
“How cross y’are, Ambrose! Y’ought be giving me all sorts of farewell messages, don’t you know?”
“I don’t know that there’s much to tell you,” he said gruffly. “Stay near your tent, and do what you are told. If—if things go wrong, old Abdul Qaiyam will take care of you, and get you away if it can be done. You promise to do exactly as he says?”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d consider it dignified to take orders from the bearer, but if it’ll ease your mind, I’ll do it by all means.”
“And—if the worst comes to the worst, you know what to do? You have a pistol?”
“I have that. Sure it’s a pleasure to find you think me capable of doing the proper thing sometimes—if it’s only once in the world.”
“You appear to be in excellent spirits. I congratulate you.”
“Yes, and it is appearance, and nothing else——” furiously. “D’ y’ask me why? Because if I didn’t I’d howl—there! and how would you like that?”
Horribly ashamed, and even more embarrassed than before, Richard felt the absolute necessity of making some acknowledgment, and forced a “Thank you!” from his reluctant lips. Reading rather than hearing it, Eveleen laughed with the tears in her eyes.
“Y’are so English, Ambrose! But don’t let us tease one another any more at all. I’ll be quite happy making a garland to crown you with when you come back victorious. And you’ll be happy knowing I’m quite safe.”
“I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “This spot is shockingly exposed—no defence of any kind—— Oh, look there! I might have known Sir Henry would have some plan of his own. This is what they do at the Cape in repelling Kaffir attacks—but there they have waggons for their breastwork. D’ye see—between those two tents—the camels kneeling with their heads outwards, and the baggage piled up between ’em, to make a barricade to fire over? A regular fortification! The Arabits will think twice before they try to spread panic among our camp-followers now—all herded inside, and a strong guard—though it reduces our numbers——”
“Never mind! The fewer the greater honour,” said Eveleen, and after a time they walked back towards the spot designated as headquarters, where Sir Henry and the staff were just preparing to mount. A cloud of dust to the right showed where the artillery was taking up its position, while on the left the Bengal Cavalry were moving off to support the Khemistan Horse. In front, drawn up in serried ranks, as if on parade, was the infantry—the Queen’s —th in the post of honour next to the guns.
“Hanged if I’d let my enemy take up his position as calmly as at a review, if I was an Arabit commander,” said the General. “I wonder if they have anything in the watercourse that Keeling did not see—any sort of trap. We shall soon find out for ourselves.”
“A frontal attack, General?” asked Richard.
“Necessarily. Keeling sends word that he tried to ride round their left, but the jungle is full of nullahs, all scarped, and matchlockmen in the trees. I myself reconnoitred to the right just now with the Bengalis, and it’s equally bad there—thick woods on either bank of the watercourse, which is deep in wet mud. No matchlockmen showed their noses, but that’s their cunning. They must be there, they would be fools if they didn’t hold that shikargah, and worse fools if they told me they were doing it. We c