On the Face of the Waters Part 34

Helpless!

The masters were helpless. Past two o'clock and not a blow in revenge.

Helpless! The word made cowards brave, and brave folk cowards. And many who had spent the long hours in peeping from their closed doors at each fresh clatter in the street, hoping it was the master, looked at each other with startled eyes.

Helpless! Helpless!

The echo of the thought reached the main-guard, still in touch with the outside world, whence, as the day dragged by, fresh tidings of danger drifted down from the Ridge, where men, women, and children lay huddled helplessly in the Flagstaff Tower, watching the white streak of road. It seems like a bad dream, that hopeless, paralyzing strain of the eyes for a cloud of dust.

But the echo won no way into the magazine, for the simple reason that it knew it was not hopeless. It could hold its own.

"Shoot that man Kureem Buksh, please, Forrest, if he comes bothering round the gate again. He is really very annoying. I have told him several times to keep back; so it is no use his trying to give information to the people outside."

For the Head-of-the-nine was very courteous. "Scaling ladders?" he echoed, when a native superintendent told him that the princes, finding him obdurate, had gone to send some down from the Palace. "Oh!

by all means let them scale if they like."

Some of the Eight, hearing the reply, smiled grimly. By all means let the flies walk into the parlor; for if that straight streak of road was really going to remain empty, the fuller the four square walls round the lemon bush could be, the better.

"That's them, sir," said one of the Eight cheerfully, as a grating noise rose above the hum outside. "That's the grapnels." And as he turned to his particular gun of the ten, he told himself that he would nick the first head or two with his rifle and keep the grape for the bunches. So he smiled at his own little joke and waited. All the Nine waited, each to a gun, and of course there was one gun over, but, as the head of them had said, that could not be helped. And so the rifle-triggers clicked, and the stocks came up to the shoulders; and then?--then there was a sort of laugh, and someone said under his breath, "Well, I'm blowed!" And his mind went back to the streets of London, and he wondered how many years it was since he had seen a lamplighter. For up ropes and poles, on roofs and outhouses, somehow, clinging like limpets, running like squirrels along the top of the wall, upsetting the besiegers, monopolizing the ladders, was a rush, not of attack but of escape! Let what fool who liked scale the wall and come into the parlor of the Nine, those who knew the secret of the lemon-bush were off. No safety there beside the Nine! No life-insurance possible while that lay ready to their hand!

Would he ever see a lamplighter again? The trivial thought was with the bearded man who stood by his gun, the real self in him, hidden behind the reserve of courage, asking other questions too, as he waited for the upward rush of fugitives to change into a downward rush of foes worthy of good powder and shot.

It came at last--and the grape came too, mowing the intruders down in bunches. And these were no mere rabble of the city. They were the pick of the trained mutineers swarming over the wall to stand on the outhouse roofs and fire at the Nine; and so, pressed in gradually from behind, coming nearer and nearer, dropping to the ground in solid ranks, firing in platoons; so by degrees hemming in the Nine, hemming in the lemon-bush.

But the Nine were busy with the guns. They had to be served quickly, and that left no time for thought. Then the smoke, and the flashes, and the yells, and the curses, filled up the rest of the world for the present.

"This is the last round, I'm afraid, sir; we shan't have time for another," said a warning voice from the Nine, and the Head of them looked round quietly. Not more than forty yards now from the guns; barely time, certainly, unless they had had that other man! So he nodded. And the last round pealed out as recklessly, as defiantly, as if there had been a hundred to follow--and a hundred thousand--a hundred million. But one of the gunners threw down his fuse ere his gun recoiled, and ran in lightly toward the lemon-tree, so as to be ready for the favor he had begged.

"We're about full up, sir," came the warning voice again, as the rest of the Nine fell back amid a desultory rattle of small arms. The tinkle of the last church bell, as it were, warning folk to hurry up--a last invitation to walk into the parlor of the Nine.

"We're about full up, sir," came that one voice.

"Wait half a second," came another, and the Head-of-the-nine ran lightly to that river bastion for a last look down the white streak for that cloud of dust.

How sunny it was! How clear! How still! that world beyond the smoke, beyond the flashes, beyond the deafening yells and curses. He gave one look at it, one short look--only one--then turned to face his own world, the world he had to keep. Full up indeed! No pyrotechnist could hope for better audience in so small a place.

"Now, if you please!"

Someone in the thick of the smoke and the flashes heard the yells and curses and raised his cap--a last salute, as it were, to the school and schoolmaster. A final dismissal to the scholars--a thousand of them or so--about to finish their lesson of what men can do to hold their own. And someone else, standing beside the lemon-bush, bent over that faithful black streak, then ran for dear life from the hissing of that snake of fire flas.h.i.+ng to the powder magazine.

A faint sob, a whispering gasp of horror, came from the thousand and odd; but above it came a roar, a rush, a rending. A little puff of white smoke went skyward first, and then slowly, majestically, a great cloud of rose-red dust grew above the ruins, to hang--a corona glittering in the slant sunbeams--over the school, the schoolmasters, and the scholars.

It hung there for hours. To those who know the story it seems to hang there still--a b.l.o.o.d.y pall for the many; for the Nine, a crown indeed.

CHAPTER V.

SUNSET.

"What's that?"

The question sprung to every lip; yet all knew the answer. The magazine had saved itself.

But in the main-guard, not six hundred yards off, where the very ground rocked and the walls shook, the men and women, pent up since noon, looked at each other when the first shock was over, feeling that here was the end of inaction. Here was a distinct, definite challenge to Fate, and what would come of it? It was now close on to four o'clock; the day was over, the darkness at hand. What would it bring them? If Meerut, with its two thousand, was so sore bested that it could not spare one man to Delhi, what could they, a mere handful, hope for save annihilation?

Yet even Mrs. Seymour only clasped her baby closer, and said nothing.

For there was no lack of courage anywhere. And Kate, with another child in her arms, paused as she laid it down, asleep at last, upon an officer's coat, to feel a certain relief. If they were to fare thus, that bitter self-reproach and agonizing doubt for vanished Sonny was unavailing. His chance might well be better than theirs.

Well indeed, pent up as they were cheek-by-jowl with four hundred unstable sepoys, and with the ominously rising hum of the unstable city on their unprotected rear. Up on the Flagstaff Tower crowning the extreme northern end of the Ridge, away from this hum, where Brigadier Graves had gathered together the remaining women and children, so as to guard them as best he could with such troops as he had remaining--many of them too unstable to be trusted cityward--they were in better plight. For they had the open country round them--a country where folk could still go and come with a fair chance of safety, since even the predatory tribes, always ready to take advantage of disorder, were still waiting to see what master the day would bring forth. And they had also the knowledge that something was being done, that they were not absolutely pa.s.sive in the hands of Fate, after Dr. Batson started in disguise to summon that aid from Meerut which would not come of itself. Above all, they had the decision, they had the power to act; while down in the main-guard they could but obey orders. Not that the Flagstaff Tower did much with this advantage; for it was paralyzed by that straining of the eyes for a cloud of dust upon the Meerut road which was the d.a.m.nation of Delhi.

Yet even here that decisive roar, that corona of red dust brightening every instant as the sun dipped to the horizon, brought the conviction that something must be done at last. But what? Hampered by women and children, what could they do? If, earlier in the day, they had sent all the non-combatants off toward Kurnal or Meerut, with as many faithful sepoys as they could spare, arming everybody from the a.r.s.enal down by the river, they would have been free to make some forlorn hope--free, for instance, to go down _en-ma.s.se_ to the main-guard and hold it, if they could. That was what one man thought, who, seven miles out from Delhi--returning from a reconnaissance of his own to see if help were on the way--saw that little puff of smoke, heard the roar, and watched the red corona grow to brightness.

But on the Ridge, men thought differently. The claims of those patient women and children seemed paramount, and so it was decided to get back the guns from the main-guard as a first step toward intrenching themselves for the night at the tower. But the men in the main-guard looked at each other in doubt when the order reached them. Was the garrison going to be withdrawn altogether, leaving merely a forlorn hope to keep the gate closed as long as possible against the outburst of rabble, to whom it would be the natural and shortest route to cantonments? If so, surely it would have been better to send the women away first? Still the orders were clear, and so the gate was set wide and the guns rumbled over the drawbridge under escort of a guard of the 38th. That, at any rate, was good riddance of bad rubbish; though the wisdom of sending the guns in such charge was doubtful. Yet how could the little garrison have afforded to give up a single man even of the still loyal 74th?--a company of whom had actually followed their captain to the ruins of the magazine to see if they could do anything, and returned, without a defaulter, to say that all was confusion--the dead lying about in hundreds, the enemy nowhere.

"How did the men behave, Gordon?" asked their commandant anxiously, getting his Captain into a quiet corner. And the two men, both beloved of their regiment, both believing in it, both with a fierce, wild hope in their hearts that such belief would be justified, looked into each other's faces for a moment in silence. There was a shadowing branch of neem overhead as they stood in the sunlight. A squirrel upon it was chippering at the glitter of their buckles; a kite overhead was watching the squirrel.

"I think they hesitated, sir," said Captain Gordon quietly.

Major Abbott turned hastily, and looked through the open gate, past the lumbering guns, to the open country lying peaceful, absolutely peaceful, beyond. If he could only have got his men there--away from the disloyalty of the 38th guard, the sullen silence of the 54th--if he could only have given them something to do! If he could only have said "Follow me!" they would have followed.

And Kate Erlton, who, weary of the deadly inaction in the room above, had drifted down to the courtyard, stood close to the archway looking through it also, thinking, not for the first time that weary day, of Alice Gissing's swift, heroic death with envy. It was something to die so that brave men turned away without a word when they heard of it.

But as she thought this, the look on young Mainwaring's face as he stood with others listening to her story, came back to her. It had haunted her all day, and more than once she had sought him out, not for condolence--he was beyond that--but for a trivial word or two; just a human word or two to show him remembered by the living. And now the impulse came to her again, and she drifted back--for there was no hurry in that deadly, deadly inaction--to find him leaning listlessly against a wall digging holes in the dry dust idly with the point of his drawn sword for want of something better whereupon to use it. Such a young face, she thought, to be so old in its chill anger and despair! She went over to him swiftly, her reserve gone, and laid her hand upon his holding the sword.

"Don't fret so, dear boy," she said, and the fine curves of her mouth quivered. "She is at peace."

He looked at her in a blaze of fierce reproach. "At peace! How dare you say so? How dare you think so--when she lies--there."

He paused, impotent for speech before his unbridled hatred, then strode away indignantly from her pity, her consolation. And as she looked after him her own gentler nature was conscious of a pride, almost a pleasure in the thought of the revenge which would surely be taken sooner or later, by such as he, for every woman, every child killed, wounded--even touched. She was conscious of it, even though she stood aghast before a vision of the years stretching away into an eternity of division and mutual hate.

A fresh stir at the gate roused her, a quick stir among a group of senior officers, recruited now by two juniors who had earned their right to have their say in any council of war. These were two artillery subalterns, begrimed from head to foot, deafened, disfigured, hardly believing in their own safety as yet. Looking at each other queerly, wondering if indeed they could be the Head-of-the-nine and his second in command, escaped by a miracle through the sally port in the outer wall of the magazine, and so come back by the drawbridge, as Kate Erlton had come, to join the refugees in the main-guard. Was it possible? And--and--what would the world say? That thought must have been in their minds. And, no doubt, a vain regret that they were under orders now, as they listened while Major Abbott read out those just received from cantonments. Briefly, to take back the whole of the loyal 74th and leave the post to the 38th and the 54th--about a hundred and fifty openly disloyal men.

A sort of stunned silence fell on the little group, till Major Paterson of the 54th said quietly, officially to Major Abbott. "If you leave, sir, I shall have to abandon the post; I could not possibly hold it. Some of my men who have returned to the colors here might possibly fight were we to stick together. But with retreat, and the example of the 38th before them, they would not. I have, or I should have, lives in my charge when you are gone, and I warn you that I must use my own discretion in doing the best I can to protect them."

"Paterson is right, Abbott," put in the civil officer, who had stuck to his charge of the Treasury all day, and repelled the only attack made by the enemy during all those long hours. "If I am to do any good, I must have men who will fight. I don't trust the 54th; and the 38th are clearly just biding their time. This retreat might have done six hours ago--might do now if it were general; but I doubt it."

"Anyhow," put in another voice, "if the 74th are to go, they should take the women with them--they couldn't fare worse than they are sure to do here. I don't think the Brigadier can realize----"

"Couldn't you refer it?" asked someone; but the Major shook his head.

The orders were clear; no doubt there was good cause for them. Anyhow they must be obeyed.

"Then as civil officer in charge of the Government Treasury, I ask for quarter-of-an-hour's law. If by then----"

The eager voice paused. Whether the owner thought once more of that expected cloud of dust, or whether he meant to gallop to cantonments in hope of getting the order rescinded is doubtful. Whether he went or stayed doubtful also. But the fifteen minutes of respite were given, during which the preparations for departure went on, the men of the 38th aiding in them with a new alacrity. Their time had come. Only a few minutes now before the last fear of a hand-to-hand fight would be over, the last chance of the master turning and rending them gone. It lingered a bit, though, for rumbling wheels came over the drawbridge once more, and voices clamored to be let in. The guns had returned.

The gunners had deserted, said the escort insolently, and guns being in such case useless, they had preferred to rejoin their brethren; as for their officer, he had preferred to go on.

Kate Erlton, drawn from the inner room once again by the creaking of the gates, saw a look pa.s.s between one or two of the officers. And there stood the 74th, smart and steady, waiting for marching orders.

No need to close the gates again, since time was up; the fifteen minutes had slipped by, bringing no help, just as the long hours had dragged by uselessly. So the gate stood open to the familiar, friendly landscape, all aglow with the rays of the setting sun. Close at hand, within a stone's throw, lay the tall trees and dense flowering thickets of the Koodsia gardens, where fugitives might have found cover. To the left were the ravines and rocks of the Ridge, fatal to mounted pursuit, and in the center lay the road northward, leading straight to the Punjab, straight from that increasing roar of the city. There had been no attack as yet; but every soul within the main-guard knew for a certainty that the first hint of retreat would bring it.