CHAPTER XX.
THE FORCES OF NATURE.
THE days dragged slowly by in the beleaguered fort. The enemy’s extraordinary dislike of coming to close quarters, and the consequent absence of direct attacks, tried the endurance of the garrison sorely. It showed, no doubt, that the tribes retained a wholesome remembrance of past hand-to-hand encounters, and were now actuated rather by a desire for loot than by any fanatical hatred of British rule; but it showed also that their leaders believed they had abundance of time before them. Moreover, while Bahram Khan maintained the investment with a cynical contempt for the relieving force which did not appear, the numbers of the defenders were dwindling. The death-roll did not indeed increase by leaps and bounds, as would have been the case after a series of fierce assaults, but the relentless monotony of its daily growth was scarcely less terrible. Disease had obtained a firm foothold in the crowded courtyards and narrow passages, and the supply of medicines and disinfectants was as limited as that of food had proved to be. A sowar dropped here, a Sikh there, next two or three of the wretched Hindu refugees, then one of the wounded in the hospital, unable to resist the poisoned atmosphere of the place. The tiny patch of garden—once the despair of the Club committee, because nothing but weeds would grow in it—which had been used as a cemetery, was soon over-full, and now silent burying-parties stole down nightly to the water-gate, and were ferried across the canal to conduct a hasty funeral on the opposite bank. Mabel and Flora will never forget the night they stood on the south rampart to see Captain Leyward’s body carried out. He had been desperately wounded when he took command of the escort in the Akrab Pass, after Dick was struck down, and although Dr Tighe was hopeful at first, it was not long before the case took an unfavourable turn. In order that the enemy should not discover these sallies of the garrison, the funeral rites were maimed indeed. There was no question of a band or a firing-party, and as it was not allowable even to use a lantern, Mr Hardy repeated portions of the Burial Service from memory. The grave, which had been hastily dug as soon as darkness came on, was made absolutely level with the surrounding sand as soon as it had been filled up. Its bearings were taken by compass in the hope of happier days to come, but no mark was placed upon it, for to point out that a British officer lay there would have been to invite the desecration of the spot. The two girls watched the dark mass of figures melt into the blackness beyond the embankment, and strained their eyes in vain to catch a glimpse of the group round the grave. They could see and hear nothing until the sudden creaking of the ferry-wires announced that the burial-party was returning, and soon afterwards Colonel Graham came up to the rampart and ordered them down to bed.
Mabel wondered very much what Georgia’s thoughts were at this time. She never alluded to the wild impulse which had led her to try and leave the fort, but she seemed to shrink into herself, and liked to be left alone with the baby for hours. When her friends came to speak to her, she showed an impatience that surprised them, until at last, in a burst of contrition for the irritation she had shown, she explained that she was listening for Dick’s voice. She could hear it sometimes when the baby and she were alone together, but if there were other people in the room, their voices seemed to drown it. “What did he say?” Mabel ventured to ask, awed by her sister-in-law’s tone of absolute conviction, and Georgia confessed, with some disappointment, that he had not said anything particular. It was as if they were just talking together as usual about things in general, and the conversation would break off abruptly, as if she was waking out of a dream. Mabel was disappointed also. If Dick could really speak to his wife from the dead, surely he would communicate his wishes about the boy’s bringing-up, or some subject of similar importance; but this casual talk—what could it be but a delusion of Georgia’s troubled brain, which could not distinguish between dreams and realities?
In the meantime, the reconnaissance which Fitz had made in company with Sultan Jān was not entirely destitute of results. The news that a mine was in course of construction had alarmed Colonel Graham more than he cared to show, although the most careful investigations possible in the circumstances went to prove that the tunnel had not at present reached the neighbourhood of the walls. Runcorn, who took the matter very much to heart, regarding it as a sign that he had not been sufficiently on the alert, obtained permission to make a solitary reconnaissance on two successive nights, and managed on the second occasion to creep across the cleared space, and up to the very walls of General Keeling’s house. By dint of long and careful listening, with his ear to the ground, he satisfied himself that work was going on briskly, but that the tunnel was not yet nearly long enough to threaten the east curtain. After this, he held much consultation with Fitz, and the two formulated a desperate scheme. They proposed to creep into the enemy’s entrenchments, carrying with them a supply of explosives, and blow up the mine before it was carried any farther, destroying at the same time General Keeling’s house, in the compound of which was the entrance shown to Fitz. The Colonel vetoed the plan promptly, but its inventors were not to be discouraged, and produced a fresh modification of it every day, until circumstances intervened with decisive effect to prevent its execution.
On a certain night Mabel awoke with the impression that she was passing anew through the most disagreeable experience of her voyage out—a gale in the Bay of Biscay. She could feel the ship trembling—it had been rolling just now—the passengers were screaming, and the wind seemed to be howling on all sides at once.
“A mast gone!” she said to herself, with a vague recollection of sea-stories read in youth, as she heard a fearful crash; “but the wind howls just as if we were on land. I wonder whether I had better try to get on deck? Why!—but how can we be on land?”
It was most confusing. She was awake now, and realised that the voyage had ended long ago, but it seemed impossible not to believe that she was still on board ship, for the floor was shaking when she stood upon it, and the little square of grey darkness which marked the position of the window was wavering about just as a porthole would naturally do in rough weather.
“Am I going mad?” Mabel demanded of herself, yielding to a sudden lurch, and sitting down unsteadily on the side of her bed. “No, I am actually beginning to feel sea-sick—that must be real, at any rate. Why, it must be the mine!”—she sprang up, and threw on her dressing-gown and a cloak over it—“and what about Georgie and the boy?”
She tried to open her door, but the handle refused to act, and she was struggling with it frantically when she heard Mr Hardy’s voice calling to her from outside.
“Kick, please!” she cried through the keyhole. “I can’t get it open.”
A violent blow on the lower part of the door released the handle, at the same time that it sent Mabel staggering back into the room. In the semi-darkness she could dimly discern the old clergyman supporting himself by one of the pillars of the verandah, his white beard blown hither and thither by the wind.
“Your sister and the baby!” he cried. “We must get them out. My wife has sent me to see that they are safe.”
“What has happened?” gasped Mabel, as they made a dash side by side for Georgia’s verandah.
“Our roof has fallen in. My wife is partly buried, but she won’t let me do anything for her till Mrs North is safe. What’s this?”
A groan answered him, and the object over which he had stumbled proved to be Rahah, pinned to the ground by one of the beams from the verandah, which had struck her down and imprisoned her foot. Mr Hardy and Mabel succeeded in releasing the foot, not, however, in response to any appeal on Rahah’s part, for she entreated them incessantly to go and save the doctor lady and the Baba Sahib.
“We must carry her out on her bed,” panted Mabel, as they reached Georgia’s door, which had shut with a bang after Rahah had rushed out to see what was the matter. Mr Hardy forced it open with an effort of which Mabel would not have believed him capable, and they found Georgia sitting up in bed, with the baby clasped in her arms.
“Lie down again, Mrs North, and hold the child tight,” said Mr Hardy cheerily, and he and Mabel seized the bedstead, and succeeded in dragging it to the door. Here, however, it stuck fast, and in the darkness they could not see what was the matter. To add to the horror of this detention, the ominous shaking began again, and fragments of wood and tiles began to clatter down from the part of the verandah which remained standing.
“Oh, what shall we do?” cried Mabel in an agony, as she pulled and pushed, and Mr Hardy tugged and strained, without effect. “We must leave the bed, and help her to walk.”
“No, no,” said a voice behind her, and she felt herself moved gently aside. “Take the boy and carry him into the middle of the yard, and we will manage this.”
She obeyed unquestioningly, and saw Fitz strike a match, which shed a flickering light on the scene. Extinguishing the light carefully, he called to Mr Hardy to pull the bedstead back and turn it slightly, thus bringing it through the doorway without difficulty. They carried it out to the spot where Mabel was standing, and Fitz raced back immediately into the room, to return with an umbrella and all the rugs he could lay hands upon.
“Hold it over her head. We shall have torrents of rain in a minute or two!” he cried, as he went to the help of Mr Hardy, who was trying to lift Rahah away from the dangerous spot where she lay.
“Are there mines all round us?” asked Mabel in bewilderment, as they returned, just escaping the fall of another portion of the roof.
“Mines! This is an earthquake!” he called back, starting again to the relief of Mrs Hardy, of whose uncomfortable position her husband’s stammering and excited accents had only just made him aware.
“Where is the Baba Sahib?” cried a frantic voice, and Ismail Bakhsh crawled up, bruised and dishevelled; “and what of my Memsahib?”
“Safe, fool!” answered Rahah contemptuously, as she sat nursing her injured foot, “and no thanks to thee.”
“Peace, woman! Did not the verandah roof descend upon me as I sat beneath it, and did I not lie there senseless until I came to myself and fought my way out to help the Baba Sahib and his mother?”
“If you are able to move, Ismail Bakhsh, go and help the sahibs to dig out the Padri’s Mem,” said Georgia faintly, cutting short the squabble, and Ismail Bakhsh obeyed. Before very long the rescuers came back triumphant, in company with Anand Masih, who had refused to leave his mistress, even at her express command, and had succeeded before help came in removing a good deal of the weight that pressed upon her.
“Well, my dear, all’s well that ends well,” said Mrs Hardy, hobbling up and dropping stiffly on a rug beside Georgia. “Hurt? Oh, nonsense!” in response to the anxious inquiries showered upon her; “bruised and knocked about a little, but that’s all, and we ought to be very thankful that it’s no worse. If those roofs hadn’t been jerry-built, probably none of us would have escaped with our lives, but the beams were not solid enough, as I have often said. And now the worst is over, so we had better make ourselves as comfortable as we can here for the rest of the night.”
But this consoling view of things proved to be premature, for even as Mrs Hardy spoke, there came another long-drawn, moaning gust of wind, and the ground trembled slightly, then rocked.
“Couldn’t we move to a safer place?” asked Mabel, for whom the sight of the shaking buildings round the little courtyard had an awful fascination. They seemed to her to be actually leaning towards her.
“There is no safer place inside the walls,” said Fitz quickly.
“Will the wall over the canal stand this?” asked Mr Hardy, in a low voice, of Fitz, who shook his head and raised his eyebrows, just as a stentorian voice rang out from the nearest tower.
“Come down, you fools! Don’t you see that wall will go in a minute?”
“That’s Woodworth calling down the Sikhs,” explained Fitz, with a smile that did him credit. “If a volcano opened at their very feet, they would stay where they were until they received orders to retire. How will it fall?” he muttered to Mr Hardy.
“If it falls inwards, that will be the end of us,” was the calm reply of Mrs Hardy, who had caught the words.
“Heaven is as near to Khemistan as to England,” said Mr Hardy, laying his hand gently on Georgia’s shoulder. She had started up wildly.
“I don’t mind for myself; it’s the boy!” she cried. “Oh, won’t some one save him? What will Dick do when he comes back and finds no one left?”
“I would take him, Mrs North, indeed I would, if I thought there was a better chance anywhere else,” said Fitz, to whom her agonised eyes appealed; “but it would be much worse in the passages, or under any roof. We are safer here than in most places.”
“May God have mercy upon us all!” said Mr Hardy solemnly, as the ground began to rock so violently that they found it impossible to keep their feet. Half-kneeling, half-crouching, they waited. There was a moment of awful expectation, then a crash louder than any that had come before. To Mabel’s eyes, the dark line of wall visible above the roofs was slowly but surely descending upon them, and horror seemed to freeze her blood. Without knowing it, she seized Fitz’s hand, and clung to it desperately. It was a support to have any companionship at that dreadful moment, but she did not trouble to ask herself why she should suddenly feel safe, almost happy. And still the mass of wall hung poised above them for a long, long time—at least, so it seemed, for no appreciable interval can in reality have elapsed; but at the same moment that it struck Mabel that the line against the sky was becoming lower instead of higher, some one called out: “It’s falling the other way!” There was a sound which could only be likened to the simultaneous discharge of a whole battery of 81-ton guns, a shock which threw them all down, and immediately the air was thick with dust and pieces of brick and stone. When it had cleared a little they rubbed their eyes. The line of wall was gone.
Before any one could utter a word, down came the rain in torrents, and the baby relieved the strain of the situation by expressing his dissatisfaction at the very top of his voice. Every one else became conscious at once of a sense of guilt, and Ismail Bakhsh and Fitz, jumping up, set to work to contrive a shelter for his royal highness. Before very long, he and his mother were packed away underneath the bed, with all the rugs and umbrellas that could be found arranged over, under, or around them; and when he had permitted himself to be comforted, the rest felt easier in their minds. Uncertain whether any further shocks were likely to occur, they durst not return to their rooms; but the matting which had been hung along the front of the verandah was supported on sticks to form a sort of tent, and under this they sat, wishing for the day. Fitz hurried away when he had helped to erect the tent, saying that he might be needed elsewhere, and Mabel was left to wonder whether his arm had really been round her when the wall fell. He had sheltered her afterwards from the flying fragments, that she knew, but her mind was not quite clear as to what had happened first.
Fortunately for the dwellers in the inner court, they did not in the least realise the full extent of the damage caused by the earthquake, alarming though their own experiences had been. The whole south front of the fort now lay open to the enemy, for both lines of defence had disappeared simultaneously. Not only had the wall given way, tearing down with it half of the south-western tower, which had been partially undermined by the flood at the beginning of the siege, but in its fall it had completely choked the canal as far as the south-eastern angle. The other walls and towers, the bases of which were sound, had resisted the shocks with wonderful tenacity, but the temporary defences built up of stones and sand-bags, as also the shelters erected as a protection against a cross-fire, were absolutely wrecked. A portion of the materials used had fallen inside the fort, but the greater part was scattered about on the cleared space round. This was the situation at three o’clock in the morning.
“If only the enemy knew the state we are in!” said Colonel Graham, when the extent of the disaster had been roughly estimated.
“I rather hope their own troubles are giving them enough to do, sir,” said Beltring. “I am certain I heard an explosion in their lines just before our wall fell, and there were screams enough for anything.”
“Let us hope they are too busy to attend to us, then. What is it, Runcorn? I see you have something to propose.”
“May I suggest, sir, that we should set to work at once to clear out the canal, even before repairing the walls? If the flow continues to be stopped, we shall soon have a marsh all round us, and yet there will be no way of getting water but by digging.”
The Colonel looked doubtful. “But surely it is impossible to move all that mass of rubbish with the means we have?”
“Yes, sir; we can’t hope to restore the whole channel. But I think we could clear a passage just wide enough to keep the water running, and perhaps to check the enemy’s rush for a moment, and the current itself will soon make it wider.”
“It’s worth thinking of. But while the canal is being cleared out we must build a breastwork behind it, or there will be no cover against a fire from the opposite bank; and we must restore our traverses and sangars on the other walls and the towers. Every man in the fort must set to work, for we can only count on two hours or so more of darkness. See that the men are mustered by word of mouth, Woodworth. We don’t want to force the fact of our wakefulness on the enemy.”
In a very few minutes the fort and its surroundings presented a scene of intense activity. In the cleared space men were collecting the stones and sand-bags dashed from the parapets, and sending them up again by means of ropes, while beyond them were several scouts, lying flat on the ground, and trying hard to pierce with their eyes the darkness and the pouring rain in the direction of the enemy. At the back of the fort Runcorn, with a number of volunteers and a large fatigue party, was levering away huge masses of mud-brick, and digging through heaps of broken rubbish, while behind him Colonel Graham was superintending the construction of the work which was to replace the vanished rampart. There was no attempt to build anything at all answering to the curtain which had been destroyed, for weeks of labour would be needed to clear the canal-bed of the rubbish that choked it up; but such stones and bricks as could be found were piled together, and backed by heaps of earth, and then the work ceased perforce for want of material. There was no time to burrow into the muddy chaos for suitable fragments, and the remaining masses of brickwork were too large to be moved with the means at hand. But the pause was only a short one. All the empty boxes in the fort were requisitioned, filled with earth, and built into the wall, but still more were needed. Officers rushed to their quarters, hurled their possessions on the floor, and reappeared with portmanteaus and uniform-cases. Fitz brought the tin boxes that had held the documents of which he was guardian, and the refugees were forced to resign the gaily painted wooden chests some of them had succeeded in bringing in with them. Before very long the excitement penetrated to the Memsahibs’ courtyard, the inmates of which had now returned to their rooms.
“Georgie, let us give them our boxes!” cried Mabel.
“Yes, anything!” returned Georgia, sitting up with flushed cheeks. “Turn all the things out, Mab. Oh, I wish I could come and help!”
“Give them that plate-box, Anand Masih,” said Mrs Hardy to the faithful bearer, who was sitting stolidly upon the piece of property in question, which was his own particular charge. He obeyed with a heart-rending sigh, tying up the silver carefully in a blanket before he surrendered the box.
“Georgie, they want more!” cried Mabel, flying back into the court. “They are filling greatcoats with earth and tying them up by the sleeves. What can we give them?—pillow-cases?—mattresses?”
“Skirts,” said Georgia, with the ardour of a sudden discovery. “They would make beautiful sacks if they were sewn up at the hem.”
“Oh, my poor tailor-mades!” groaned Mabel; “but for my country’s sake—” and she dashed into her own room, and reappeared with two or three tweed skirts and a supply of needles and thread.
“Oh, really, Miss North, I haven’t asked for this sacrifice,” said Colonel Graham, unable to restrain a smile when he found himself solemnly presented with the results of her handiwork.
“No, but it’s made now, and Flora will bring you some of hers in a minute. She hasn’t quite finished sewing them up. Oh, do use them quickly, please, or I shall repent, and lose the credit of the self-denial after all.”
“The shape is a little unusual,” said Colonel Graham, considering the skirts gravely, “but we can certainly use the—the contribution for strengthening the breastwork. You ladies deserve well of your country, I am sure.”
“The women of Carthage are quite outdone,” said Mr Burgrave, who was standing by; but at the sound of his voice Mabel fled back into the court. Her own feelings during the past few days had taught her to understand something of the pain she had inflicted on him, and she could not face his eyes.
“All the scattered material collected and brought in, sir,” reported Haycraft, who had been in command of the party at work on the cleared space, “and I have recalled the scouts. It’s a queer thing, but the enemy have had a mounted man patrolling between their lines and ours the whole time. It was too dark to see him, but I heard him distinctly. He was riding round the fort, or rather round three sides of it, from one point on the canal to the other.”
“That encourages one to hope that they have suffered as much as we have,” said the Colonel. “Very likely, if we only knew it, they are in deadly fear of an attack from us; but I couldn’t venture to leave our rear exposed while we made a sortie.”
“The water runs, sir,” said Runcorn, coming up, “and with a few poles and some canvas I could make a shelter for the water-carriers at a point where it’s fairly easy to get down to the edge.”
“Take them, by all means. What about the south-west tower?”
“I have tested it in every way I can, sir, and I think what’s left of it will stand all right, but there’s no hope of patching it up at present.”
“I foresee that this breastwork will be the burden of our lives,” said Colonel Graham to the Commissioner, as Runcorn departed. “We shall have to keep the guard there always under arms, and extra sentries in the tower ruins, for the enemy could take it with a rush at any moment, even if it didn’t topple down under their weight.”
“Yes, it strikes one that there is a certain lack of privacy about the new arrangement as compared with the old,” said Mr Burgrave. “It is like finding the public suddenly in possession of one’s back garden.”
“I should very much like to know what damage the enemy have sustained. Do you care to come with me to the gateway? It ought soon to be light enough to see.”
An exclamation broke from both men as the dawn revealed to them the outlines of the enemy’s position. Half-way across the cleared space extended a curious fissure, and when this was traced back, it lost itself in a heap of ruins to the right of General Keeling’s house. The house itself still stood, although the stone sangars on its roof were destroyed, but the loopholed buildings which had faced it were gone.
“The mine!” was the cry that leaped to the lips of both Colonel Graham and Mr Burgrave, and the former added, “It must have exploded prematurely when Beltring heard the noise, but in the crash of our own wall the rest of us did not notice it.”
“This explains the enemy’s anxiety to keep us at a distance,” said the Commissioner. “But why employ a mounted patrol, and only one man?”
“It was simply to give an impression of watchfulness, I suppose. Can you suggest any other explanation, Ressaldar?” and the Colonel turned to Badullah Khan, who stood beside them.
“That was no enemy, sahib. It was Sinjāj Kīlin Sahib Bahadar.”
“Nonsense!” cried Mr Burgrave. The native officer drew himself up.
“We who knew Kīlin Sahib can judge better than the Kumpsioner Sahib what he would do. When we have heard him riding all night between us and the enemy, preventing them from attacking us, are we to doubt the witness of our own ears—nay, our eyes, since certain of the sowars swear that they beheld him?”
“I beg your pardon, Ressaldar,” said the Commissioner, with marked politeness. “I suppose it will now be an article of faith all along the frontier that General Keeling saved the fort last night?”
“Without doubt, sahib. Is it not the truth?”
“I must say I wish my faith was as robust as the regiment’s!” said the Commissioner with a smile, as they turned to descend the steps.
“A white flag, sir!” reported Winlock, who was on guard at the gateway, when they reached the ground.
“Who is carrying it?”
“A Hindu with two servants. The sowars say that it is Bahram Khan’s diwan, Narayan Singh.”
“Let him come within speaking distance—no farther.”
“Perhaps I ought to say, sir, if you are thinking that he wants to see what state we are in, that they have found that out already. A scout on a swift camel rode along the opposite bank of the canal a few minutes ago. He was near enough to see what we were doing, but he came and went like the wind, before the men could take up their carbines. Since he was gone so quickly, I did not call you.”
“I wish we could have caught him, but we can’t expect to keep them from discovering our plight. But certainly we won’t have them spying about under the walls. Let the Sikhs have their rifles ready, in case of treachery.”
Before inviting Mr Burgrave to return with him to the turret, Colonel Graham went the round of the defences, to make sure that the sentries were all on the alert. He had in his mind more than one occasion on which the tribes had advanced to the attack under cover of a parley, and with the rear of the fort in its present condition he could not neglect any precautions. The heaps of rubbish on the opposite bank of the narrow channel which Runcorn had cleared for the water were a cause for constant anxiety, since a small force of resolute men posted behind them might render the new breastwork untenable, but nothing could be done to them at present.
“I would give ten years of my life for a forty-eight hours’ armistice!” said the Colonel to Mr Burgrave, as they mounted the steps to the loophole of the turret, below which the Hindu was waiting, his two attendants having paused at a respectful distance.
“What message do you bring?” asked Colonel Graham, after the usual salutations had been exchanged.
“This unworthy one brings to your lordship the words of Syad Bahram Khan, Sword-of-the-Faith: ‘Who can stand against the will of Allah? This night His hand has been heavy upon my army, even as upon that of the sahibs, and many men are killed, and many also buried while yet alive under the ruins of their quarters. Let there then be peace between us for three days. We will continue to hold our lines from the bridge to the godowns, but we will not cross the canal, nor come out upon the open space; and I would have the sahibs swear also that they will keep to their fort and the other bank of the canal, and not cross it on either side to attack us. Then shall the dead be buried and the injured cared for, and both sides may also repair their damaged defences, but it is forbidden to raise any new ones. What is the answer of the Colonel Sahib?’”
“Can’t be much doubt, can there?” said Colonel Graham to the Commissioner.
“I suppose not. But how coolly they talk of wasting three days! It seems as if they thought they had a lifetime before them to spend on this siege.”
“Well, so much the better for us—on this occasion, at any rate. When is the armistice to begin?” he asked of Narayan Singh; “now, or to-morrow morning?”
“At daybreak to-morrow, sahib,” was the answer, after a moment’s consideration.
“So be it,” said Colonel Graham. “Then they have something on hand!” he added to Mr Burgrave. “If Bahram Khan were all anxiety for his wounded, as he would like us to think, of course he would want the armistice to begin at once. But he knows we shan’t fire at his men if they begin digging out the poor wretches now, and he would like three clear days for some plot of his own. What can it be?”
“Perhaps he merely hopes to catch us off our guard to-day,” suggested the Commissioner.
“But if that’s his game, no scruples of conscience would have kept him from making use of the armistice for the purpose. No, he’s up to something, and I should very much like to know what it is. I shall post a lookout at the top of the north-west tower with the best field-glass we have, to keep an eye on all that goes on in their camp.”
The Colonel’s prevision was justified early the next morning, when the lookout announced that a small body of fully armed men, all mounted, among whom he believed he could distinguish Bahram Khan himself, had left the town and were proceeding towards the north-east, apparently in the direction of Nalapur.
“I am very much afraid that bodes ill to poor old Ashraf Ali,” said the Colonel. “I only wish we could warn him.”
“After all, sir,” said Haycraft, to whom he had spoken, “Bahram Khan may only be off to see how the blockade of Rahmat-Ullah is going on. It’s evident he thi