The Air Patrol Part 29

Highly offended, the man walked away, descended the steps within the wall, and retired to sulk, like Achilles, in his tent.

About an hour later the dafadar and his men, who had scarcely changed their position, were again hailed from the roof.

"A speck on the track, dafadar," cried the sentinel; "moving this way, like a fly crawling, very far off."

"Hai! that is news," said the dafadar, slowly rising to his feet. "A speck on the ground is worth looking at; in the sky it proceeds from overeating." Raising his voice, he called to the sentinel: "Hai, Selim, I come to see."

Followed by several of the troopers, he mounted to the roof, and taking the telescope from Selim's hand, examined the track, tracing it back for miles until he discerned the moving object. So remote was it that even with the telescope he could distinguish it only as a human being: whether shepherd, mendicant, or fakir he could not tell, and a single pedestrian must, he thought, be one of these three.

"Perhaps he is a dak runner from Ennicott Sahib," suggested one of the men. "The sahib went in that direction."

"Wah! a dak runner would run, not crawl," said another. "Let us look through the long gla.s.s, dafadar."

The telescope was pa.s.sed round. No one could as yet identify the figure. They were all keenly interested. For several days they had not seen a solitary man outside the walls, though they had kept unremitting watch, having been instructed to be on the alert to discover any movements of men in that region. The figure approached slowly--too slowly for their impatience. All eyes were riveted upon it, and when Selim with the telescope reported that it was completely clad in khaki uniform and not in shepherd's choga, or the scanty tatters of a mendicant, the troopers' excitement grew.

"Hai! he stops!" cried Selim presently. "He waves a white cloth. It is a signal, dafadar."

Narrain Khan took the telescope and gazed at the figure. He felt a little perplexed as to what he ought to do. In time of peace he would not have hesitated to send out a couple of men to discover who the stranger was; but there were rumours of war, and the Captain Sahib had given orders that no man should be allowed to leave the post except under the gravest circ.u.mstances. He wondered whether the present case came within his licence. The man was clad in khaki: that was something in his favour. He was waving a white flag: that was rea.s.suring. He had seated himself on a knoll beside the track: perhaps he wanted help.

The dafadar lowered the telescope and turned to his men.

"Go, you two," he said, "ride out on your ponies and see who the stranger is, and what his business. Have a care, lest there are badmashes lurking near. The stranger may be a decoy. Have a care, I say, for when you have ridden down the slope we cannot protect you."

The men descended through the tower, and were presently seen trotting down the track. Every yard of their progress was followed intently by the garrison. Their diminis.h.i.+ng forms were lost to the watchers at intervals through the windings of the track and the inequalities of the ground. Presently they were seen, little more than dots, moving side by side along the straight stretch at the farther end of which the solitary stranger could still be discerned.

They approached him, came to a halt, and dismounted. After a minute or two the party separated. Two men proceeded northward along the track, one on horseback, the other on foot. The third man rode in the opposite direction towards the house.

The whole garrison of eighteen men were now mustered, some on the roof, some on the wall, silent, their eyes fixed on the slowly approaching horseman. By and by it was seen that he was not either of the two who had lately ridden down. Then the dafadar, who had the telescope at his eyes, suddenly exclaimed:

"Mashallah! It is Ennicott Sahib!"

Amid a chorus of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns he hurried down to the courtyard, mounted his horse, and galloped down the track to meet the officer. The strangeness of that meeting formed the theme of a discourse to the men of the garrison later in the day.

"When I came near enough to see the face of the huzur," said Narrain Khan, "I beheld that it was the face of a sick man. His left arm hung straight at his side like the broken leg of a sheep. I was on the point of invoking the mercy of Allah upon the huzur--is he not the light of our eyes?--when his great voice sounded in my ears like the voice of a trumpet, and before even I could make my salaam he cried--what think you were the words of the great one?"

"'Water, for I am athirst,'" suggested one man.

"Wah! does the huzur think of himself? You speak as a witless babe."

"'Is all well?'" said another.

"Wah!" cried the dafadar with scorn and indignation. "Could the heaven-born ask so foolish a question knowing that I, Narrain Khan, am in charge of this house? No: the words of the huzur--and they were very strange--were these: 'Hai, dafadar! have you got any paraffin?'"

"Inshallah! what is paraffin to the heaven-born? And what said you, dafadar?"

"I was so astonished that I could but speak out the simple truth.

'Truly, sahib!' said I, 'we have some few tins with which to replenish our lamps.' And then the huzur commanded me to send six men with one large tin, that one man might easily carry, along the track to the foot of the hills yonder, and give it to a sahib they would find reclining there."

"Another sahib! Who is he?"

"And for what purpose the paraffin, dafadar?"

"That I know not. The huzur did not tell me that, but told me that he had already sent to the sahib those two young men I had ordered to meet him. And you saw how, when the huzur dismounted at the gate, he staggered, and caught me to prop him: and when I asked him to lie down and let us see to his hurt, he made that sound with the lips that the sahibs make when they are impatient, as if I had said some foolish thing, and bade me lead him straightway to the clicking-room, and there he is now: you can hear the clicking-devil, like little hammers tapping.

Truly I begin to think there are many strange things to tell the Sirkar far away."

"Hai! I did see a speck in the sky," said Coja solemnly.

Major Endicott, though half fainting with pain and exhaustion, had gone straight to the room in which the telegraph instruments were kept, and shut himself in. For nearly an hour he worked at the keys with a rapidity acquired by much practice. Before he had finished, the second instrument at his side was mechanically recording the answers to his message. Having read these off, he staggered to the door and summoned the dafadar.

"Fenton Sahib will be here in three hours," he said. "There will be also the sahib from the hills. Get some food and a bath ready for him, and tell Hosein to come and see to my arm."

Some two hours later the Major was awakened from a profound sleep by a hubbub among the men on the wall. Going out to them, he found them excitedly watching an aeroplane soaring rapidly towards them from the hills. Coja was loudly proclaiming that the flying object proved his truthfulness: no one could any longer deny that he had seen a speck in the sky.

A few minutes after it had been sighted the aeroplane sank to rest on the open s.p.a.ce in front of the tower. Loud cries of wonder broke from the men when there stepped out of it a young sahib, limping slightly, followed by one of the two sowars who had gone out to meet the major.

The trooper greeted his comrades with an air of triumph, and swaggered up to them with an ineffable look of importance. They surrounded him, and listened with admiring envy while he detailed his first impressions of flight through the air.

Meanwhile the Major took Lawrence into the officers' room, where he bathed, and ate the lunch Narrain Khan had provided. He had just finished when there was the clatter of hoofs outside, and in a few minutes entered Captain Fenton, who had ridden up with half a dozen sowars from the fort fifteen miles to the south.

"Hullo, major, you look pretty d.i.c.ky!" said the newcomer, glancing curiously from the major's bandaged arm to Lawrence.

"Yes, I've had a knock. Let me introduce you. Lawrence Appleton--you've heard of Harry Appleton--Captain Fenton."

"I see they've sent us an aeroplane, Endicott," said the captain, shaking hands with Lawrence. "An unexpected gift! I thought all the aeroplanes were scouting Kabul way--all there are; they've got a dozen or so, on paper, and a regiment of airmen, also on paper: most of us believed they weren't born yet! Which way did you come, Mr. Appleton?"

"You'd better sit down and listen, Fenton," the major interposed.

"There's a lot to say, and not much time to say it in. We're in for the hottest time since the Mutiny--and if I'm not mistaken, hotter than the Mutiny at its worst: I mean generally, for there won't be any Cawnpores or Lucknows, I hope. You know that the Afghans are up?"

"Yes: we've mobilized along the frontier: they won't get across."

The Major smiled grimly.

"After I'd wired you to come in," he said, "I got into communication with the Chief at Peshawar and the Viceroy at Delhi. The Amir has just fled to Peshawar: Kabul's in the hands of the Mongols."

"By Jove!"

"The cat's out of the bag at last. That huge concentration about Bokhara was not to be launched at Russia after all. I suppose we were too self-a.s.sured to twig it--just as in the Mutiny time. Plenty of information, little imagination. But we have it now. There are pretty nearly half a million of the fiercest ruffians in Central Asia marching down on us--almost all mounted, and they're fellows who live on horseback, and are moving with amazing speed. They've cajoled or bought over the best part of the Afghans--silly fools, for if the Mongols beat us they'd swallow Afghanistan for dessert. There are a hundred thousand in and about Kabul."

"It's astonis.h.i.+ng that they managed to keep things so quiet. They must have been intriguing and negotiating for months."

"Again, just as in the Mutiny. I've not heard of chapattis pa.s.sing round, but they've had their secret signs, without doubt. The one good thing about the present circ.u.mstances is that the Afghans are not actually on the march yet. They're probably waiting to see how the cat jumps. Of course we've always relied on them more or less as a buffer against Russia, calculating that they'd hold up the invaders at Herat until we'd had time to line the frontier. Anyway, we can't expect any help from them now, for if they're not actually hand in glove with the Mongols they're neutral, for a time. You said we'd mobilized, didn't you? I've been away a fortnight."

"Yes. With the most tremendous exertions we've got 100,000 men across the frontier, and they're holding the pa.s.ses. Only just in time, evidently. It ought to have been an easy job: and so it was--on paper.

But it's years since the paper scheme was drawn up, and they've been paring down in the usual British way--economizing, they call it. The result is that arrangements for transport and supplies are all at sixes and sevens. They've had to reduce the frontier garrisons to mere skeletons in order to make up the strength of the field army."

"The Chief wired me just now that troops are being pushed up from all parts, but the railways are so horribly congested that it'll be weeks before they're on the spot. I fancy I made him jump with my news."

"You've got something fresh then?"

"There are twenty thousand Kalmucks marching up the Nogi valley."