CHAPTER XIV.
TO KEEP THE FLAG FLYING.
“MAB!” Mabel awoke from her uneasy slumbers to wonder where she was, and why Georgia was sitting there, her face silhouetted against the square of grey light that represented a window. “Mab! Dick is not dead.”
“Why—oh, Georgie!—have you heard anything?”
“No; but I know it. We always agreed that if either of us died when the other was not there, the one that was dead should come back to say good-bye. And I have waited for him all night, and he has not come.”
Mabel gazed at her in dismay. “Oh, but you are not building upon that, Georgie? How can it be any proof that he is alive? He might not be allowed to come.”
“He promised. Besides, I know he is alive,” persisted Georgia obstinately. “If he was dead, I should feel it.”
“Georgie dear, you mustn’t go on like this. You will make yourself ill. Come and lie down a little, and try to go to sleep. I will tell you if he comes.” Mabel ended with a sob.
“If he does, I shall know,” murmured Georgia, as she lay down. “Thanks, Mab; I am so tired.”
Mabel waited only until she was asleep, and then, summoning Rahah to watch beside her, went in search of Dr Tighe. It so happened that she met him in the passage which led into the courtyard.
“Bad business this, Miss North. We can ill spare your brother. How is his poor wife?”
“She has borne up wonderfully so far, but—oh, Dr Tighe, I’m afraid her mind is going. She will persist that Dick is not dead.”
“Poor thing! can’t realise it yet,” said the doctor compassionately.
“No; it is quite a delusion. She says he is still alive, or she would know it. What can we do? I thought perhaps if she could see his body——”
“No, no. Better that the delusion should last for ever than she should see his body after those fiends have had to do with it.”
“But she must give up hope soon, and it will be such a fearful disappointment——”
“If the hope keeps her up through the next few days, so much the better. Afterwards, please God, she’ll have more effectual comfort than we could give her.”
“But I can’t help hoping too, and it will make the reality so much worse,” confessed Mabel, with an irrepressible sob.
“Woman alive! who cares about you?” cried the doctor furiously. “What do your little bits of feelings matter compared with hers? No, no; I beg your pardon, Miss North,” his tone softening. “I’d get a fine wigging if the Commissioner heard me, wouldn’t I? But you must remember how much you have got left, and your sister has nothing. For God’s sake, let her please herself with thinking that he’s all right for the present, if that comforts her at all. By-and-by the truth will come to her gradually, but she will have the child to think of, and the worst bitterness will be gone. Come, now, you’re brave enough for that, aren’t you? How is she—asleep just now? I’ll look in again later on. Now make up your mind to be unselfish about this.”
“Does he mean that generally I am selfish?” mused Mabel. “It never struck me before. But nobody seems to care about me. They all think that I have Eustace left. As if he could ever make up to me for Dick!” she laughed mirthlessly at the mere idea. “He will be coming in presently and making appropriate remarks. Oh dear, oh dear! if he had gone to the durbar and been killed instead of Dick, I believe I should have been glad. How dreadful it is! How can I ever marry him? But I know I shall never have the courage to tell him I want to give him up. What can I do?”
“Mabel, my poor little girl!” Mr Burgrave emerged from the passage, and limped towards her as she stood listlessly on the verandah. “You have slept badly, I fear? How is Mrs North?”
“She won’t believe that he is dead.” And with her eyes full of tears, Mabel repeated to him Georgia’s words.
“Very touching, very touching!” remarked the Commissioner, his tone breathing the deepest sympathy. “Poor thing! it is unspeakably sad to see so strong a mind overthrown. You must find it very trying, poor child! I hope you are taking care of yourself?” His glance travelled over her, and Mabel remembered for the first time that she had slept in her clothes, and that her hair had not been touched since she had twisted it up roughly the night before on the first alarm.
“Oh, I know I’m not fit to be seen!” she cried impatiently. “But what does that signify?”
“It signifies very much. You must remember the natives in the fort. Their endurance—even their loyalty—may hang upon our success in keeping up appearances during the next few days. And we white men, also—surely it is a poor compliment to us to make such a sorry ob—figure—of yourself? Then there is your unfortunate sister. Is it likely to restore her mental balance to see you in such a dishevelled condition? Oblige me by changing your dress and doing something to your hair. It is a public duty at such a time.”
“I wish you wouldn’t bother!” said Mabel, weeping weakly. “I have no black things, and I can’t bear to put on colours.”
“My dear girl, is it for me to advise you as to your clothes?” The tone, half severe and half humorous, stung Mabel with a recollection of their conversation of ten days before. “Considering poor Mrs North’s delusion, might it not be advisable to humour her, in so far as not to insist upon wearing mourning immediately?”
“Oh, very well,” was the grudging reply, of which Mabel repented the next moment, adding contritely, “I’m sorry to have been so cross, Eustace. I will try to be brave.”
“That is what I expect of my little girl. She would never bring discredit upon my choice by showing the white feather. I rely upon her to set an example of cheerfulness to the whole garrison.”
He bestowed upon her what Mabel inwardly stigmatised as a lofty kiss of encouragement before departing, and she obeyed him meekly, going at once to her room to change her dress. She was so angry with herself for having deserved his rebuke that she forgot to be angry with him. After all, it was well for her to have this severe master to please, if she was in danger of bringing reproach upon her country by her faint-heartedness. She was taking herself to task in this strain, when the sound of voices in the outermost of Georgia’s two rooms, which was next to her own, interrupted her meditations.
“Oh dear! Georgie hasn’t slept long,” she lamented to herself. “Who is that talking to her, I wonder? Oh, Mr Anstruther, of course.”
“I came in to see if there was anything I could do for you,” she heard Fitz say. “I’m ashamed to have been so long in coming, but the fact is, I was up all night knocking down houses and setting coolies to cart away the remains, and when we had got the space all round pretty clear and came in, I was so dead tired that I just lay down and went to sleep where I was.”
“Oh, you should have gone on resting while you had the chance,” said Georgia. “Everybody is only too kind to me, and there’s nothing I want done. Then we are really besieged now?”
“I suppose we might say that we are in a state of siege. At present all the tribes are holding jirgahs to consider the matter. Our outer circle of vedettes was driven in soon after we got here last night, but we held the houses facing the fort against a few spasmodic rushes until we had got the zone of fire cleared. The enemy are too close for comfort as it is, but at any rate they have a space to cross before they can get up to the walls.”
“Then they are occupying the town?”
“Decidedly, if that means looting all the houses and firing most of them.”
“Is our house burnt?”
“Almost as soon as you were out of it. I noticed the fire when I looked round once as we were driving. But I don’t think the enemy can have been as close behind us as that. I fancy the servants who shirked coming with us were looting, and some one had knocked over a lamp.”
“And how are things going with us here?”
“So-so. But you know, Mrs North, if it hadn’t been for the Major and Colonel Graham, we might as well have taken refuge in a fowl-house as in this place. Long ago they got in all the stores they could without attracting attention, and everything else was ready to be moved at a moment’s notice. They had their plans all cut and dried, too, and every man found his post assigned to him. The walls are good against anything but artillery, and the towers and loopholes and gates have all been put into some sort of repair.”
“Yes,” said Georgia, “and that is the best of the situation. Now for the worst.”
“Well, you know, it would all have been worst but for the Major, and every soul inside the walls is blessing him. The worst is that we have scraped together a preposterous number of non-combatants—some of them the wives and children of the sowars, of course, but a good many of them Hindus and bazaar-people of that sort, whom it would have been sheer murder to leave outside, but who will be no good to us whatever. All the old soldiers have been re-enlisted, and the boys are to make themselves useful, but there is a helpless crowd of women and children and elderly people to dispose of somehow. That’s the secret of your close quarters here. We can’t have the poor wretches anywhere near the walls, so they are put away in the central courts, where we can keep an eye upon them, and overawe them if necessary.”
“Poor things! I must go and see after them,” murmured Georgia.
“Of course, with all these extra mouths, we are not provisioned for a regular siege, unless we eat the horses, which ought to be saved in case we have to cut our way out at last. But the worst thing is that we have no artillery, not so much as a field-gun, and very little of anything else. The regiment have their carbines, of course, but the Commissioner’s Sikhs are the only men with rifles—except those of us who go in for big game shooting. However, as a set-off against that, the enemy have no big guns either. And then, it’s about the best season of the year for moving troops on this frontier, so that we ought to be relieved before very long.”
“But that’s only if the enemy don’t cut the canals.”
“Yes, I’m afraid they’re too sharp not to do that. It looks as if a dust-storm was coming on, which would help them if they set to work at once.”
“Have they made any pretence of offering terms?”
“The Amir sent his mullah this morning with a flag of truce. He couldn’t be allowed inside, so the Commissioner and Colonel Graham spoke to him from the walls. But there was no accepting what he offered.”
“What was it?”
“Poor old Ashraf Ali was awfully cut up about—what happened yesterday. He explained through the mullah that he arranged the ambuscade entirely for the benefit of the Commissioner, whom he really was anxious to have out of the way. It was a pure accident that the very last thing he could have wished happened instead. However, in order that his trouble mightn’t be wasted, he suggested that we should hand him over the Commissioner now. He will see that he gives no more trouble on this frontier, and it is open to the rest of us either to stay here unmolested, or to return to civilisation under a safe-conduct, just as we like.”
“You mean that he actually offers to guarantee the safety of every one else if the Commissioner gives himself up?”
“Practically that. Doesn’t it strike you as a little quaint?”
“Was that the Commissioner’s view of it?”
“I believe so. He remarked what a preposterous demand it was, when he had the responsibility of the fort and the whole community on his shoulders. He doesn’t intend to shirk his duty. The Colonel said it was a tremendous relief to hear how sensibly he took it. Some men would have insisted on giving themselves up forthwith, but he has too much to think of.”
A wan smile showed itself on Georgia’s face. “Well, if he intends to interpret his duty very strictly, we may wish he had gone,” she said.
“I don’t believe he is even technically in the right, and certainly I think the Colonel will have to organise a little mutiny if he insists upon bossing the show. Couldn’t you turn on Miss North to induce him to moderate his pretensions a bit?” Mabel, in the next room, shook her fist unseen at the speaker.
“After all,” said Georgia, “it’s most unlikely that they would have kept their promise to protect us, even if he had given himself up.”
“Very little doubt about that. From what the mullah said, it’s clear that there are two parties in their camp, and I shouldn’t care to say which is the stronger. Bahram Khan’s following, besides his own men, who did all the looting last night, comprises the more troublesome of the frontier tribes and the chiefs who have grudges against the Amir, while Ashraf Ali has his loyal Sardars and the tribes which have always been friendly to us. If only we had the Major here!”
“You mean that he would play them off against one another?”
“Yes, and there’s no one else to do it. Beltring and I wanted to try, because there’s just the chance that the tribes would listen to us, as we have been with him so much, but the Colonel won’t let us leave the fort.”
“No, it would be no good. You would only be risking your lives uselessly,” said Georgia. “He has more influence over them than any man I ever knew, except my father.”
“Ah, but, Mrs North, there’s no time to lose. As soon as we have killed two or three of the lot, they’ll all be against us, and the longer we hold out the worse it will be. Even if Bahram Khan doesn’t succeed in bringing them over to his side at once, he will be intriguing against his uncle in secret.”
“I know, but what can we do? I dare not make inquiries about Dick, for if the Amir is keeping him safe somewhere, it might put him into Bahram Khan’s power. We can only wait.”
“Oh, Mrs North, don’t count on that,” pleaded Fitz sorrowfully. “It’s no good, believe me. Ashraf Ali knows he is dead as well as we do.”
“But I know that he is not dead,” said Georgia, and Fitz went out hastily. In the verandah he met Mabel.
“Oh, Miss North, I wanted to speak to you,” he said, but she beckoned him imperiously aside.
“You seem to think it rather a fine thing to abuse a man who isn’t there to defend himself,” she said.
“Indeed?” he said, in astonishment. “I wasn’t aware of it.”
“Perhaps you didn’t know that I could hear you when you were laughing at Mr Burgrave?”
“I certainly didn’t know you were listening, but I was not laughing at him. I merely said that he hadn’t given himself up. Would you wish me to say that he had?”
“You hinted that it was wrong and cowardly of him, and that he was saving himself at the expense of every one else here, when you ought to know it was only his strong sense of duty that kept him back. Would you have gone?”
“Certainly not, if the burden of the defence rested on me, as the Commissioner fancies it does on him.”
“You see! And you said yourself it would probably have been no good.”
“So I say still. Bahram Khan has more on hand than a piece of private revenge. If we trusted to his safe-conduct, we should be in for Cawnpore over again.”
“And after that you still make fun of Mr Burgrave for not going! It’s a shame! I know he has made mistakes in the past, from our point of view, but I won’t hear him called a coward. He is the most noble, lofty-minded man in the world, and I only wish I was more worthy of him!”
“You can’t expect me to indorse that, any more than the Commissioner himself would,” said Fitz. “If anything I have said about him has pained you, Miss North, I humbly beg your pardon; but please remember that I should never speak against him intentionally, simply because you think so highly of him.”
“I only want you to understand that I am not going to ask him to moderate his pretensions, as you call it,” went on Mabel, rather confused. “For one thing, he wouldn’t do it, and for another, now that Dick is gone, I must be guided by him.”
“Quite so,” said Fitz, somewhat dryly. Then his tone changed. “I wanted to ask you what you thought about telling poor Mrs North something the mullah said this morning. It struck me that perhaps we ought to keep it dark for a bit, as the doctor thinks it a good thing she can’t believe that the worst has happened. The poor old Amir wept as if for his own son when he heard that the Major was dead, and went himself to look for the body, intending to give it a state funeral. But when they got to the pass, it was gone. The Hasrat Ali Begum, who was in camp near, had broken pardah with her women as soon as the fight was over, and carried off the body and buried it. They were afraid of what Bahram Khan would do with it, you see, and at present they won’t tell even the Amir where the grave is, but he sent word that he meant to build a tomb over it later on. Now, ought Mrs North to know?”
“I shouldn’t think so, should you? I have never been much with people in trouble—I don’t know how to deal with them. But I think it will be better not to tell her unless she asks.”
“But she isn’t likely to ask, is she? Oh, Miss North, if she might only be right! I don’t believe there’s a man in the fort that wouldn’t gladly die to bring him back.”
The expected dust-storm did not begin until the afternoon, and in the interval the besieged continued to strengthen their defences, disturbed only by an intermittent rifle-fire. A party of the enemy had taken possession of General Keeling’s old house, and lying down behind the low wall which surrounded the roof, were firing at any one they saw on the ramparts. Thanks to the efforts of Colonel Graham and Dick, the ruined parapet here had been repaired, but when there were messages to be sent from one point to another, the cry was “Heads down!” So skilfully were the enemy posted that no response to their annoying attentions was possible until a party of Sikhs, at considerable risk to life and limb, scaled the turrets flanking the gateway, the repair of which had not been completed owing to lack of time, and succeeded in commanding the roof of the old house. They had scarcely cleared it before the storm came on, and they were ordered down again, since it was generally believed that an assault would be attempted under cover of the wind and darkness. Nothing of the kind took place, however, and the garrison, who were kept under arms, chafed at their enforced inaction, and tried in vain to pierce the obscurity which surrounded them, while the wind howled and the dust rattled on the roofs. When, last of all, the rain poured down in sheets, and the air cleared sufficiently to allow the buildings beyond the zone of fire to become dimly visible, it was seen that the enemy had taken advantage of the storm for a different purpose. On the roof of General Keeling’s house was now a rough stone breastwork, so constructed as to shelter its occupants even against the fire from the towers, and provided with loopholes so arranged as to allow the barrel of a rifle to be pointed through them in any direction.
“It looks to me as though we should have to rush the General’s house and blow it up,” said the Commissioner to Colonel Graham, as they stood in one of the turrets, peering into the sweeping rain, during the last few minutes of daylight. “That sangar makes our walls untenable.”
“Then we shall have to raise them,” was the laconic reply, as Colonel Graham passed his field-glass to his companion. “You may not have noticed that though the General’s old stone house is the only one strong enough to support a sangar on the roof, the brick houses on both sides of it have been loop-holed. The place is a regular death-trap.”
“Do you mean to say that in this short time they have prepared a position impregnable to our whole force?” asked Mr Burgrave incredulously.
“Quite possibly, but that isn’t the question. Their numbers are practically unlimited; ours are not. I should be glad if you and I could come to an understanding at once. We are not here to exhibit feats of arms, but to keep the flag flying until we can be relieved, and to protect the unfortunate women and children down below there. Nothing would please me better than to lead an assault on the house yonder, but who’s to defend the fort when the butcher’s bill is paid? If we had only ourselves to consider, I might cut my way out with the troops, and make a historic march to Rahmat-Ullah, but with the non-combatants it would be impossible. You see this?—or perhaps you don’t see it, but I do. Well, are we to work together, or not?”
“You are asking me to subordinate my judgment to yours?”
“Politically, you are supreme here. From a military point of view——”
“You think you ought to be? Considering the office I hold, doesn’t that strike you as rather a large order?”
“Would you propose to occupy an independent and superior position from which to criticise my measures? Surely you must see that is out of the question? You may be Commissioner for the province, but I am commandant of this fort, and the troops are under my orders. The conclusion is pretty obvious, isn’t it? In such a situation as this, a single head is essential, and there must be no hint of divided counsels. You and I have both got everything we prize in the world at stake here. Can we squabble over our relative positions in face of what lies before us?”
“The question would come more gracefully from me to you, in the circumstances,” said Mr Burgrave, “but I see your point. Let it be understood that the conduct of all military operations is vested in you, then. I reserve, of course, the right of private criticism, and of offering advice.”
“And of putting the blame on me if things go wrong!” thought Colonel Graham, but he was too wise to give utterance to the remark. “Do you care to make the round of the defences with me?” he asked. “I should like to see how the new brickwork stands this deluge.”
As they emerged from the shelter of the tower into the rainy dusk, they were met by Fitz, who, like the other civilians in the place, had enrolled himself as a volunteer. When he first spoke, his voice was inaudible, owing to a rushing, roaring sound which filled the air.
“Why, what’s this?” shouted the Colonel.
“The canal, sir,” answered Fitz, as loudly. “Winlock sent me to ask you to come and look at it.”
“Is it in flood? Can the reservoir have burst?”
“We think the enemy have opened the sluices. The dead body of a white man was washed down just now. We saw it, though we couldn’t reach it, and some one said it was Western, who was in charge at the canal works.”
The Colonel and Mr Burgrave hurried along the rampart, sheltered from the enemy’s fire by the gathering darkness, to the rear wall of the fort, the base of which was washed by the canal. The canal itself was part of the great system of irrigation-works by means of which, as the Commissioner had once complained, General Keeling had made Khemistan. A huge reservoir was constructed in the hills to receive the torrents of water which rushed down every ravine after a storm, and which, after carrying ruin and destruction in their path, ran fruitlessly to waste. By means of sluices the outflow was regulated with the minutest care, and the precious water husbanded so jealously that even in the hottest seasons it was possible to supply the canal which, with its many effluents, had converted the immediate surroundings of Alibad from a sandy waste into a garden. In view of the possible necessity of coping with an occasional rush of water, the banks were artificially raised, and the one opposite the south-west angle of the fort, where the canal took a sudden bend, had been strengthened to a considerable height with masonry, to protect the cultivated land beyond it from inundation. This change in its course largely increased the force of the current at this point.
After a storm the placid canal always became a rushing torrent, on account of the accessions it received after leaving the reservoir, but none of those in the fort had ever seen it rise to the height it had reached on the present occasion. Colonel Graham uttered an exclamation of dismay when he looked out over the turbid stream, which seemed to be flung back from the opposite bank against the fort wall with even increased violence. Presently there was a lull in the storm, and by the aid of a lantern, which was lowered from the rampart, he was able to see that the current was actually scouring away the lower courses of the wall. The next moment the lantern was violently swept from the hand of the man who held the cord, as another rush of water came swirling round the tower at the angle of the wall, dashing its spray into the faces of the watchers. Every one of them felt the wall shake under the blow, and there was a murmur of uneasiness. Colonel Graham recovered himself first.
“Turn out all the servants and coolies, Winlock,” he said, “and shore up the wall with props and sand-bags as far as possible. We will stay here and watch whether the water rises any higher. It’s clear they hope that this south curtain will go,” he added to Mr Burgrave, “and that then they will only have to walk in.”
“They must have a clever head among them,” said the Commissioner; “for they are evidently letting the water out a little at a time.”
“Ah, that’s the native engineer, no doubt. They would keep him alive to manage the machinery for them when they murdered poor Western. Look out, here’s another!”
Again the wall trembled perceptibly, but by this time the courtyard was full of eager workers, piling up earth and stones and beams and bags of sand, and anything else that could be found. Presently the Colonel called out to them to stop, for there was now the danger that the wall might fall outwards instead of inwards, and they waited in unwilling idleness, while the two men on the rampart watched the current anxiously, and measured the distance of its surface from the parapet. Then came a more violent rush of water than any before, and to Colonel Graham and Mr Burgrave the wall seemed to rock backwards and forwards under them. When they looked into each other’s faces once more, they could scarcely believe that it was still standing.
“That’s the last, evidently,” said the Colonel, “a final effort. The water’s getting lower already. We’re safe for to-night, but if they had only had the patience to wait till this rain was over, we could never have stood the force of water they could have turned on. And as it is, a child’s popgun might almost account for this bit of wall now.”