Read Ebook: The Warden of the Marches by Grier Sydney C Pearse Alfred Illustrator

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Ebook has 1016 lines and 60714 words, and 21 pages

uct 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."

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."

"Why, Mrs North!" Disturbed in his task of supervising the proceedings of a nervous native assistant, whose mind was less occupied with his dispensing than with the bullets which flattened themselves occasionally upon the pavement outside the surgery, Dr Tighe had turned suddenly to find Georgia at his elbow. "Can I do anything for you?" he asked kindly, looking with professional disapproval at her pale face and weary eyes.

"I want you to let me help you in the hospital."

"And I thought you were a sensible woman! Will you tell me if you call this wise, now?"

"I think it would help me to have something to do."

"But not this. What am I to say to the Major when--if--when I see him again, if you overtask your strength?"

"A good idea!" said Dr Tighe, in his most matter-of-fact tones. "You shall relieve me of half my dressings, by all means, and I'll turn over to you the out-patient work among these unfortunate women and children. You can leave that dispensing, Babu"--the assistant, who had been listening for the thud of the bullets, started violently--"and go round the wards with the Memsahib."

From his own cases on the opposite side of the improvised wards Dr Tighe glanced across at Georgia several times, remarking with approval that her face and figure were losing their look of utter weariness as she went about her work. She was giving her whole mind to it, that was evident, and for the time her own anxiety was pushed into the background. The number of patients to be treated was considerable, for besides the men who had been wounded at the fight in the Akrab Pass, there were a good many casualties due to the enemy's fire since the siege had begun. The work was therefore heavy, but as soon as the dressings were finished Dr Tighe bustled up to Georgia and pointed out a new opening for her energies.

"The Colonel wants sacks made--millions of 'em--for sand-bags," he said. "He was at his wits' end about it this morning, tried to get the native women to sew them, and they wouldn't."

"Oh, why didn't he ask us?" cried Georgia. "We would have worked our fingers to the bone."

"I'm sure you would, and it's likely he'd ask it of you, isn't it? But why all the refugees should have board and lodging given them free, I don't know. Why, they wouldn't even make the sacks for payment! A lot of them said they couldn't sew, and the rest seemed to think they were being persecuted when they were asked to do it. But you know how to get round them, Mrs North. We can't very well say that if a woman doesn't sew a sack a day out she goes--sounds a bit brutal--but you'll manage to set them to work, I'm sure. I'll tell Colonel Graham you've taken the matter in hand, and he'll be for ever grateful."

"Down! down!" cried Georgia, setting the example herself, "and crawl round to the other verandah. They are firing from the hill, but they won't be able to see us there."

"We must get up a parados on that side," said Colonel Graham, when the wounded man had been sent to the hospital. "They command the inside of the whole east curtain from that hill. Your sand-bags will be made useful sooner than we expected, Mrs North."

"But what is to happen to us?" cried Mabel. "Are we to stay here to be shot at?"

"Calm yourself, my dear girl," said Mr Burgrave, in gently reproving tones. "You are in no danger at the present moment."

"You see, Miss North," said the Colonel, "I don't want to have to put you either in the hospital courtyard or among the native refugees, and there is nowhere else. After all, this court is so small that the enemy can't possibly command more than the east side, and we'll put that right by hanging curtains along the verandah."

"Why, what good would that be against bullets?"

"The curtain wouldn't stop them, certainly, but our friends up there are very careful of their ammunition, and never waste a shot. Not being able to see whether any one is in the verandah, they won't aim at it. It was the sight of a whole party assembled here that was irresistible."

"But is Georgia to live in darkness?" demanded Georgia's self-constituted champion.

"Nonsense, Mab! There are three other verandahs to sit in. After all, one expects bullets in a siege," said Georgia.

"That's the right spirit, Mrs North," said Colonel Graham heartily. "As soon as it's dusk we'll have the matting up from the club-house--messroom, I mean--floor, and nail it along the roof of this verandah and across the corner where the passage is. Then you'll be safe from anything but chance shots, and those, I'm afraid, we can none of us guard against."

"But are those fellows up there to pot at the ladies without our ever having a chance to pay them back, sir?" cried Fitz.

"I was coming to that. Of course the plan is to clear us off the east rampart so that a force from the town may rush it under cover of the fire from the hill, and therefore the parados must be our first care. Still, I think we can spare a few sand-bags for the two western towers, and if we arrange a little sangar on the top of each when it is dark, we can show our chivalrous friends the snipers to-morrow what it feels like to be sniped. Tell Winlock to set all the servants to work filling bags and baskets, and anything else they can find, with earth at once."

"We seem to hold our own fairly well at present," said Mr Burgrave, as Fitz departed, and the Colonel stood looking narrowly at the threatened verandah and the scattered work-materials with which it was strewn.

"We seem to--yes, but it is simply because we have not been tried as yet. There is far too great a length of wall for us to hold against a well-planned attack--say from two sides at once. Why they haven't put us to the test before I can't imagine. It's not like their usual tactics to let things drag on in this way."

"I am of opinion that they dislike crossing the cleared space, and intend to remain at a discreet distance and starve us out. If only they stick to that, we ought to be relieved long before matters come to a crisis."

"No, it's not that!" cried the Colonel irritably. "There's something behind that we don't see. If there was any possibility of their having guns, I should say they were waiting for them. But where are they to get them from unless they have surprised Rahmat-Ullah, which we have no reason to suppose? They have some dodge on hand, though, I'm certain."

"Is there any weak point at which they could be aiming?"

Mr Burgrave understood the pause to mean that the consequences would probably be very uncomfortable for the holder of the rifle, and said no more. The night passed without further alarm, save that Georgia found it would be dangerous to have a light in her rooms unless door and shutters were both closed. The glimmer from the window, even when only seen through the matting curtain, attracted two or three bullets immediately, and it was evident that the choice must be made between air and light. During the hours of darkness the besieged worked hard at their defences, and succeeded in erecting a more or less effectual shelter along the inside of the east rampart, and also a sand-bag parapet at the summit of the two western towers. The gateway turrets on the north-east, which were now exposed to the fire from the hill in the rear as well as to that from General Keeling's house in front, were strengthened in the same way. Behind these shelters the best marksmen of the garrison took up their posts, and as soon as the bullets began to fly from the hill, seized the opportunity of pointing out to the enemy that the state of things had altered to some extent in the night. Since it was impossible for a man on either side to fire without exposing himself slightly, a return shot was the instant comment on this imprudence, and hence, before the morning was over, both parties were lying low and glaring at their opponents' sangars, ready to shoot but not caring to be shot. Helmets on the one side and turbans on the other, raised cautiously on rifle-barrels above the breastwork, drew a few shots, but the nature of the trick was quickly perceived by both parties, and the sniping continued to languish.

"Their rifles seem to carry as far as ours," remarked Mr Burgrave to Colonel Graham.

"So they ought," was the grim reply. "Most of them, if not all, are ours. They are stolen and smuggled wholesale into Ethiopia, and Bahram Khan has borrowed them to arm his followers with. That's how they manage to give us so much trouble. In the matchlock days, when this place was built, we could have laughed at their shooting from the hill."

"What is that?" said the Commissioner suddenly, putting up his eye-glass; "a pile of cannon-balls? It was not there last night."

They were standing in one of the gateway turrets, and the heap to which he pointed was visible upon the cleared space, in front of the entrance to a lane between two of the houses occupied by the enemy. Colonel Graham laid down his field-glass with an exclamation of disgust.

As the light grew stronger the sickening trophy was perceived from other parts of the fort, and the men of the Khemistan Horse began to become impatient. It appeared that a deserter had ventured close under the walls in the night, in order to taunt the garrison with some unexplained reverse, the nature of which was now made manifest. They were asked how long Sinj?j K?lin's sowars had been content to hide behind stone walls, instead of coming out to fight on horseback in the open, and a variety of interesting and savoury information was added as to the precise nature of the tortures in store for all, whether officers or men, who fell into Bahram Khan's hands. To the men who had so long dominated the frontier, this abuse was intolerably galling, and the troopers were gathering in corners with sullen faces, and asking one another why they were kept back from washing out the disgrace in blood. They had now been in the fort the best part of a week, no attack in force had been made, and yet there had not been the slightest attempt to drive off the enemy or inflict any loss upon him. Ressaldar Badullah Khan voiced this feeling to Colonel Graham a little later, when the Colonel had passed with a judicious lack of apparent notice the scowling groups of men who were discussing the state of affairs.

"Is the regiment complaining of the course I choose to take, Ressaldar?"

"Nay, sahib; the sowars say that it is the will of the Kumpsioner Sahib which is being done."

"They are wrong. It is mine. What could the regiment do on horseback in the streets of the town, with the enemy firing from roofs and loopholes? We have not a man too many in the fort now, and yet, Ressaldar, I anticipate a sortie in force before long, though not in review order."

The Ressaldar's eyes gleamed. "May the news be told to the regiment, sahib?" he asked.

"Could they refrain from shouting it to the next man who taunts them? No, Ressaldar; tell them to trust me as they have always done hitherto. There will be work to be done before many days, but I cannot set mutinous men to do it."

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