IX

An hour later Terrington returned, and the march recommenced. The

bridge had been strengthened, but even so it looked perilous enough,

and Rose, after seeing one of the mules lurch over and burst to a pulp

on the rocks beneath, preferred to walk across with a rope about her

than to be carried in the doolie.

Afterwards she fell asleep and was only wakened when Terrington drew

aside the curtain and told her that it was time for dinner. The doolie

was on the ground again, but the night was black about it and a cold

air seemed to be pouring down out of the sky.

Rose shivered as she pushed the curtains aside and stepped out into the

darkness. Spaces of pitchy gloom on either side of her, and a

sparkling riband of stars overhead showed the force to be still in the

defile, but something ghostlike and pale seemed to come between the

stony blackness and the stars. It was the light of the snows.

A few yards beyond the doolie a fire flickered, over which Gholam was

leaning, peering into a pot; and further off some score of camp-fires

pierced the darkness with clear pointed cones of flame.

As she came into the circle of the firelight Terrington appeared beside

her, the poshteen in his hand.

"Sleep well?" he asked as he helped her arms into it, and turning her

round towards him by the collar, buttoned the frogs across her chest as

though she were a child.

"It fits you proper!" he proclaimed, surveying her at arm's length.

She smiled at his motherly vigilance, but felt with keen happiness its

protective care. He made her feel so completely in his charge that,

had he given her a kiss as he buttoned her coat, it would have seemed

no more than she had been accustomed to from others who had dressed her.

He drew a stool for her to the fire, recounted the humorous mischances

of the journey while she had been asleep, and jested over the

ingredients in the stew which Gholam was making them.

The frank fraternity in his manner increased her sense of a girlhood

which had come back to her. She sat listening to his talk with the

smiling happy-serious air of youth. And they ate together of the stew

with great relish despite the suggestions he proposed to find in its

bones. And when they had finished the modest little dinner, Terrington

spread a rug beside the fire, and they sat close to the red verge of

it, for comfort of the warmth; Rose, resting on her wrist, with her

feet tucked under her, girlishly erect, and with the big collar of the

poshteen turned up about her ears, but Terrington, at greater ease,

leaning upon his elbow with his body bent towards the flames.

Rose, however, did not have him altogether to herself. The approach of

action was signalled by a succession of orderlies, for whom brief notes

had to be written, and Hussain Shah arrived later for a consultation.

Still, despite its interruptions the time seemed to her the most

delightful she had ever spent. She was tasting for the first time what

it meant to feel.

The blazing fire pushed the night back from a brief circle about them,

and, when the flame fell, the darkness seemed to leap forward like a

black thing with wings trying to spring from behind upon their

shoulders.

In the darkness was the unknown morrow, and death, and the blood and

horror of battle; and in the firelight just the man and herself; the

man who was showing her a new unknown kind of manliness, and herself

with all her married days and ways forgot, listening like a girl to her

first discovery in heroes.

"Time to turn in," said Terrington, as he came back out of the darkness

on parting from Hussain. "We start at two; and no one can say when we

sleep again, so do all you know. I'll see if your doolie is ready."

She turned out one little hand to the flame with a shiver.

"Oh, I can't leave the fire," she said. "Mayn't I sleep here?"

He looked at her with the air of considering her request as a

reasonable proposition.

"I don't see why you shouldn't," he said; "I'll fetch your blankets."

He fetched the mattress as well, and the boots he had given her, which

he happened to find inside the doolie.

"You must wear these," he said, "if you sleep out."

She took them from him with a sigh of submission, sat down upon the

mattress and prepared to pull them on.

"Don't put your hand into them," he said warningly.

She opened her eyes in question.

"It may make you cry," he smiled.

She repaid his memory with a glance of pleased surprise, and shook her

head softly.

"Not now!" she said.

She held up the boot towards him, and thrust her arm down into its

depths.

"So warm," she purred.

She covered her shyness in pulling them on before him with the pretence

that they were much too tight.

Terrington smiled at her efforts.

"I'm afraid you'll grow out of them very soon," he said.

Then he tucked her in under the blankets and wrapping himself in his

cloak lay down beside her. She risked the comfort in which he had

arranged her to stretch out a small white hand to him to say

good-night; and he held it long enough to express to her the subtle

newness and nearness in their common knowledge that such a night might

mean.

Rose seemed only to have just ceased to watch the changing colour of

the flame on Terrington's face when a hand was laid on her shoulder and

his voice spoke in her ear. She jumped up, dreaming of battles, so

stiff that she would have fallen but for the arm which he put under

hers. The doolie suddenly appeared out of the darkness, he helped her

in, bade her good-bye with a clasp of the hand, dropped a sharp order

to the sentry who strode beside her, and was gone. The bearers moved

off at a quick amble, and when they halted she knew she was amongst

men. The night was still of an impenetrable black and she could see

nothing between her curtains, but she heard in the silence the shuffle

of feet, and the grunted "Huh!" of the Bakót men as they fell in half

awake and hitched up their accoutrements.

Then with a whisper the jampanis moved on, and to the swinging to and

fro of the doolie she fell asleep.

X

Rose woke to a sense of excitement which pierced her sleep.

"Tell him they're right down here in front of us," she heard Dore's

voice in a hard whisper. "And take that doolie back," he added angrily.

The doolie spun round, but before it was gone a hundred yards Rose

stopped the bearers.

The morning was gray, cold, and very still, just after dawn. A white

wet mist had come down upon the hills, and hung from cliff to cliff

like a ceiling cloth across the valley. Ahead, laid out behind

boulders of blue grey stone, she could see the yellowish attenuated

line of Dore's Sikhs spread like a fan on either side of the road.

A runner, naked but for his loin-cloth, and throwing up the dust from

the soles of his feet, went by towards the front, coming back somewhat

less hurriedly ten minutes later.

There was no further sound nor sign of life for half an hour, and then

Terrington with an orderly came in view round the bend of the road

riding slowly. He stopped with a smile of wonder where Rose was

sitting on a stone before her doolie at the side of the road.

"However did you get here?" he asked.

"Mr. Dore sent me back," she pouted.

"Sent you _back_!" he echoed. "I should think he did."

She came up to his horse's shoulder, and with a "Good morning," offered

him her hand.

"Is it going to be a fight?" she asked as he took it.

"It is," he answered, "and you're in front of the firing line. You

must wait here till I return to you."

She stood back demurely with her hands behind her, and he rode on with

some injunction to her sentry which she did not understand.

He was met, she saw, by Dore near the line of skirmishers, and in

obedience to some command the section on either side of the road turned

outwards and began to creep up the steep sides of the valley, taking

cover, when they halted, so effectively that not a man was to be seen.

Just as the last of them had disappeared a rifle rang out, faintly, far

ahead.

Rose, who had not taken her eyes from Terrington, stiffened at the

sound, and stood tensely listening with an ear towards it.

She had to wait a full five minutes till the shot was repeated, but

hard upon that followed the soft rattle of a fusillade. Though it

sounded vague and dull as the patter of rain on water, she knew it at

once for what it was, and started forward eagerly towards it along the

road.

The sentry, mindful of Terrington's injunction, tried to stop her, but

she ordered him to stand aside with such imperious authority that he

gave way, and Rose went on towards the spot where Terrington was posted

above the road with his glasses raised. He was so absorbed in the

scene they gave him that he did not hear Mrs. Chantry's approach, and

was only aware of her presence beside him when he turned to search for

the Sikhs upon the hill.

He lowered his glasses sharply and faced her with a frown.

"I told you to wait for me," he said reprovingly.

"I know," she murmured, "but I couldn't. I'm no good at waiting."

Then, as this information brought no softening to his eyes, she added

defiantly: "I don't see why you should treat me as a child. I don't

intend to be kept out of danger."

"There's no danger here to keep you out of," said Terrington, "except

the danger of your being seen." His eyes took in her troubled face and

his manner changed suddenly to a reasoning gentleness. "You see the

fight's right away over there, beyond the Gul. Mir Khan's pushing

Walcot back on Rashát, and we hope he thinks he's got us all. We're

hiding here, in case he sends any one to look for us along the road to

Sar, and the game would be up if he spotted us."

He helped her up on to a stone which gave her a view over the low ridge

in front of them, and handed her his glasses. Then, as she did not

know how to use them, he turned her round to him, and fitted them to

her eyes, and standing behind her with his hands over her shoulders,

shifted the lens till they suited her sight.

The mists had lifted, and she could see without assistance the entrance

to the double-headed valley where the gorge which brought the road from

Bewal joined that from Sar. Beyond their junction was the famous Gul,

showing as a dark cleft across the valley, and, again beyond that the

hills closed in about a defile more forbidding than that through which

they had come.

Here and there across the throat of it, like tufts of bog cotton, burst

little white puffs of smoke, where Walcot's men were holding back Mir

Khan's reconnaissance. The force they covered was so well concealed

that even the glass revealed no sign of it, but the Khan's advance

could be traced in specks and streaks of whitish yellow climbing out of

the Gul, which Walcot had made but a feint of defending, and creeping

dispersedly towards the puffs of smoke.

Down the valley towards Bewal the Khan's main body could be made out.

Dark masses of men divided by varying spaces and mingling in the

distance with driven flocks and herds. The dull morning glimmer of

steel wavered over it like the light upon a spider's web.

Near the centre was a body of horsemen tailing out along the road,

which made a gay tendril of colour even at that leaden hour, it was the

Khan's bodyguard in purple and fawn and gold.

As Rose Chantry moved the glasses from end to end of the enemy's

column, her certainty of a safe return to India collapsed utterly.

She looked round at Terrington, expecting to see the same despair on

his face that had seized upon her heart, but he was watching Mir Khan's

advance with an unaltered countenance.

"Oh, Captain Terrington!" she cried hopelessly, "there are thousands of

them: they'll eat us up."

He put a hand under each of her elbows and lifted her down from the

stone.

"Well!" he said smiling, "we're going to play the dickens with their

digestion."

They walked down to the road where Dore was standing with Terrington's

mare.

"You need send back word of nothing," said Terrington, "we overlook

your position. Keep your men where they are, no matter what force may

pass you, and don't fire a shot till you get the signal."

This laying of a line of fire across the neck of the defile had been

Terrington's last piece of daring, to cover the chance of Mir Khan's

detaching a force to search the Sar road strong enough to pen the

British troops in the defile and prevent their issuing to fall upon the

flank of the men engaging Walcot beyond the Gul.

Terrington realized the possibility of such a move on seeing the size

of the force which the Khan had so unexpectedly collected, and added at

once this risk the more to the many he was taking in order to make the

enemy's defeat sufficiently disastrous to deter him for a few hours

from pursuit.

He nodded a farewell to Dore, lifted Rose into the saddle, and walked

back beside her.

She leant forward to pat the mare's neck and get a side view of his

face.

"Are you awfully excited?" she asked shyly.

His thoughtful eyes came round to her.

"Awfully!" he said, smiling.

He signed to the doolie to follow them, and led the way back along the

road, which rose slowly for about a mile. There was nowhere any sign

of life, and the fight and the scene behind them seemed suddenly to

have passed out of being.

They went a little way in silence, and then Rose Chantry said gravely:

"Captain Terrington, do you _really_ think we shall beat them?"

He put a hand on the saddle behind her.

"Are you afraid, child?" he asked.

She nodded pensively.

"I can't help it," she broke out with a sort of petulance; "I do so

love being alive: and I've had so little of it; only just the last few

years."

He looked up into her face, with its gay air of beauty softened and

sobered by the thought of death.

"Yes," he said, "I understand."

She searched his expression doubtfully.

"Only for _me_?" she questioned.

"Oh, _I'm_ not a lovely woman," he smiled.

"Who told you that _I_ was?" she asked him.

"Ah! I've found it out for myself," he sighed.

"Have you?" she said without conviction. "And aren't _you_ afraid to

die?"

"A man has to be afraid of other things more," he told her quietly.

A sharp turn of the road brought them suddenly into the Dogra's camp.

Though no fires were burning the men were round their cooking-pots

finishing a meal; food and sleep in Terrington's conception going half

way always towards winning a fight.

He lifted Rose out of the saddle, asked her if she were equal to a

climb, and together they clambered up the ridge of shale on the north

of the valley at the head of which Hussain Shah had his post of

observation.

The track was steep and the stones slippery, so that for most of the

way Rose's hand was in his, and when they came to a spot where the

shale slope was half afloat in water he stooped, with the remark that

he must carry her, and lifted her on his arm; setting her feet down, an

instant later, upon a rock, in order to seat her for greater ease upon

his shoulder.

She sat erect, with one hand under his chin, rejoicing in the air of

mastery that never thought to ask her leave, and in his strength which

was more severely tried than she suspected by the shifting stone and

slush.

Hussain's post overlooked the ridge where Dore was lying, and commanded

a view of the valley towards Bewal; but the eastern trend of the road

hid Walcot's doings beyond the Gul.

Hussain at once began an elaborate explanation in Pukhtu, Terrington

nodding his head and following the indications of the other's hands,

but Rose could not tell by any outward sign how the recital affected

him. He turned to her when it ended, and told her they were going

higher for a wider view. She pleaded to go with him, but he merely

shook his head, smiling at the chaos of rocks above them, over which a

goat only could go in safety.

Rose sat herself down in a corner of the sangar opposite the three

signallers, and watched Terrington and Hussain haul themselves up the

scarp, taking cover as warily as though they were stalking sambur, yet

never hesitating nor halting for an instant, the Risaldar a length in

front, and Terrington swinging hand and foot after him in absolute

accord.

They disappeared behind a buttress, and Rose fell to watching the

signallers, two bronzed and splendid sepoys and a havildar of the

Guides, whose blue and white flag slapped ceaselessly in the air.

Far away upon a spur above the road by which they had come she could

make out the flutter of an answering signal, and, while she tried to

follow it, suddenly a star of light winked like a sunlit window on the

hill-side far down the defile.

It stirred the little group like the fall of a shell. The havildar

thrust his paper and pencil on the unoccupied sepoy, hoisted the

heliograph over his shoulder, and scrambled out of the sangar with his

head turning as he went for a glimpse of the unexpected sun. He had

his tripod settled, and an answering shaft of light was flying from his

mirror down the valley before the flag had ceased its flapping behind

him, but not before the nearer station had also found the sunlight and

set a second star in the gray sameness of the hills. The flag fell,

the click of the mirror took up the speech of its shaken folds, and

dazzling lances of sunlight flung from ten miles away began tilting

with the lashes of Rose Chantry's eyes. She was so absorbed by the

strangeness of their silent language, that she was startled to find

that Terrington had dropped alone and unnoticed from the rocks above

her, and was scribbling a message which he handed as he finished it to

the havildar.

He stood watching intently the answering flashes, twice prompting the

reader when he was at fault. Rose, conscious of a certain still

determination which had come into his manner, went over and stood

beside him.

"Has anything happened?" she asked, as the answer to his order sparkled

in the air.

He wrote a second message before replying; then he put his hand in her

arm and walked her back to the sangar.

"Yes," he said; "Mir Khan is proving himself to be a good soldier.

He's going to take no risks."

"Are you taking any?" she asked.

"Oh, yes!" he smiled; "I'm taking them all. That's the worst of being

the weaker side."

He stopped, and looked out again over the Bewal valley, where the

enemy's forces could be seen dividing in the form of a Y, one arm

leading towards the Sorágh Gul and the other towards the entrance of

the Sar defile, where Dore was lying.

"He's coming this way?" she suggested.

"Yes," he assented, "he's coming this way--half of him. He's either

found out our little game, or he's going to make sure we're not playing

it. So we've got to fight him here."

"Is that worse for us?" she enquired anxiously.

He nodded.

"And who's over there?" she asked, with a tilt of her head towards the

distant hills.

"Subadar Afzul Singh and the Guides," he said; "but thanks to Mir Khan,

they can move up now, which is a point to us. And now we must go down

to lunch."

It was all so evidently the playing of a game to him, though the stakes

were life and death, that she was infected for the moment by his

incentive to the forgetfulness of her own fears, and asked eagerly of

Afzul's march as they went down the hill together.

Terrington expected the Guides in three hours, and though he had no

fear of being unable to hold out until they joined him, it was a

question if he could delay his counter attack so long without rendering

Dore's position too precarious. Everything would depend on the pace at

which the enemy advanced and the force employed for his first attack.

When they came again to the water, Terrington knelt down without a

word, and Rose seated herself with a laugh upon his shoulder.

But he did not set her down when the wet space was crossed, but carried

her on to the little green tent which Gholam had pitched above the

road, laughing to her protests that it was one of the disadvantages of

being so light that people would insist on carrying her.

The signal which had dropped from the ridge had set all the camp in

motion.

Men were building sangars; boxes of ammunition were being unloaded from

mules and carried up the hill; all signs of a camp had disappeared and

the transport was slowly toiling back by the way it had come.

Rose declared herself to be too excited to eat, but Terrington insisted

on her finishing what he thought sufficient, and set her an example in

appetite in spite of numerous interruptions.

No one could say, he reminded her, where nor of what their next meal

might be.

Then he found her a place from which she could see, as she insisted,

the progress of the fight in the greatest safety, posted her doolie

with its bearers behind, and left the faithful Gholam in charge of her.

"I mayn't see you again," he said, taking her hand, "but word will be

sent to him, and you must do as he tells you, as we may have to make a

dash to get over to the Gul."

"And if we're beaten will we go back?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"If we're beaten we shall die here," he said quietly.

She held out her other hand to him.

"I'm not afraid now," she said under her breath.

An hour of anxious waiting followed, then the enemy's scouts began to

appear on the road in the gap of the ridge that Dore was holding.

As the ridge offered them no advantages and the searching of it

entailed exposure, they kept to the lower ground and came on slowly on

either side of the road. An advance-guard followed, and then a body of

horsemen, the valley growing slowly brown with them.

They halted with evident suspicion of Terrington's tactics, but came on

again, reassured by the safety of the scouts, who were within a few

yards of the lower sangars, before, following the signal stammer of the

Maxim from the road, fire opened from the whole line at once upon the

packed mass in the valley.

The result should have been disastrous to the attackers had the

shooting been even fairly accurate, which unfortunately it was not.

The Dogras included a very small proportion of marksmen, and the Bakót

men had not outlived their remembrance of the matchlock, and probably

fired over the heads of everything. Some score of the scouts were

turned over, and a few men and horses fell in the main body, chiefly to

the Maxim. The remainder scampered for cover in all directions,

followed by an independent fusillade which did very little harm. At

the sound of the firing, reinforcements began to pour through the gap

above which the Sikhs lay, silent but excited spectators, and in a very

short time the attack was more cautiously renewed.

The high ground which Terrington was holding on either wing converged

forward from his centre, so that the Saris in trying to force the road

found themselves exposed to a crescent of fire, and after a vain

attempt to rush the Maxim, fell back, and by creeping up the sides of

the valley began a movement to outflank him from above.

For this they only needed time to be successful, as the defenders' line

was already stretched beyond the limits of safety, and Terrington

watched with varying anxiety the progress of this movement, the

gathering mass of the enemy on the road beneath him, and the slow

closing up of the Guides in his rear.

He gained some time by a sortie from either flank, cutting off the men

who were climbing above him, but this only forced them to make a wider

circuit and postponed their eventual success. He returned from this

sally, a smoking carbine in his hand, his face smeared with heat and

dust, and a bullet-hole through his helmet, to find Rose standing in

the sangar which he had quitted, watching him with proud admiration.

The enemy's centre was following the sortie back with every rifle that

could bear upon it, and bullets were striking in front of the sangar

and flying over it like brazen winged bees. Two or three men had been

hit, and Terrington stooped to lift one of them into safety before he

could speak to Rose.

"Go back!" he said almost angrily. "What are you doing here?"

"I shan't!" she returned defiantly. "I'm going to be with you."

Terrington turned to direct the carrying of the wounded down to the

road: then he put his hand upon her shoulder and said quietly.

"Go back, please, for my sake, to the doolie, we're all going forward

in a few minutes."

Gholam, who had been standing beside her, with an expression, turned

towards Terrington, of absolute impotence, gave a little jump and

clapped his hand to his elbow.

"Are you hit?" said Terrington.

The man withdrew his hand, looked at it, all smeared with blood, and

salaamed.

"The Sahib's servant has the honour," he replied gravely.

Terrington placed himself more completely between Rose and the enemy's

fire.

"Take him down, dear, will you, and tie him up?" he said.

The little endearing word moved her more than the command.

"Come!" she said, as though it were rather the servant than herself

that was responsible for the trouble, and walked straight down to the

doolie.

The enemy had made another dash on the centre after the sortie, and as

it was driven back the signal was given Dore for which he had so

eagerly been waiting, Terrington's hand having been forced by the

increasing number of the enemy in front of him, the Guides being still

a long way to the rear.

A bugle call replied to the signal, and Dore's men opened fire

instantly on the crowded road beneath them.

The Saris turned at the sound, to find themselves penned between two

lines of fire and the precipices of the defile.

It was little wonder that panic seized them; the long deferred

disclosure of the trap adding to their apprehensions. Those nearest

Dore's ridge dashed for the gap without an attempt at resistance, and

those in front, seeing their supports in flight, fell back, firing

wildly in both directions.

The Bakót men finding the foe in retreat began to shoot with more

effect, but Terrington, trusting rather to their knives for slaughter

and feeling that the decisive moment was come, signalled to the Guides,

still three miles away, to press forward, and ordered a general advance.

The Dogras, being on the lower ground, were the first to get within

thrusting distance, and closed on a terrified huddle of men swinging

this way and that in frenzied efforts to escape like a frightened flock

of sheep, and crying out for mercy from the bayonets that pierced them

from behind. The mercy meted out to them was the mercy of the

Durbar--a swift end, and the scorn of born fighters in their ears; and,

as the Bakót levies descended with their crooked knives upon the

scurrying flanks, the Saris flung away their arms and fought with each

other to escape the avengers.

Terrington stopped the pursuit with the utmost difficulty as it came

under the fire which Dore was pouring upon the fugitives, and sent

volley after volley with deadly effect into the maddened wedge of men

penned in the gap. It was absolute butchery, and the struggling men

fell to the bullets in sheaves across the road, the life blown out of

them at three hundred paces.

The Sikhs continued to fire despite Terrington's attempt to stop them

so long as any of the flying mob remained beneath them, and then,

scampering over to the other side of the ridge, opened on the runaways

as they emerged from the defile.

Terrington pushed the Dogras forward into the gap as soon as the

bullets of the Sikhs had ceased to search it, and discovered at once,

in spite of his advantage, the greatness of the task in front of him.

Mir Khan, realizing from the sound of battle in the defile the trick

which had been played him, was throwing forward every man he could

spare to shut Terrington within it till he could extricate the force

which Walcot had skilfully drawn after him up the road to Rashát.

Terrington gathered at a glance that the disorder which the flight of

the panic-stricken Saris was creating in the ranks of the

reinforcements offered him the one chance of getting his transport out

of the defile and of holding a fighting position on the ground beyond

it.

So, though the Guides were not yet in sight, and his force utterly

inadequate to the task before it, he pressed on upon the heels of the

fugitives which were blinding the enemy's front, in order to give

Dore's men on the south of the road an opening to descend from the

ridge and crumple the broken flank back upon the centre. So soon as he

saw that the Sikhs were in motion he pushed the Dogras forward in the

centre to maintain touch with them, and cover the egress of his

transport from the defile, taking the Bakót men along himself to

prevent an enveloping movement on the other flank. This, the extreme

right, was the weak point in his advance, since he had not sufficient

men for an extension to gain the support of the hill-side, and the

enemy's line was long enough to overlap him, and, by passing round his

right, to force him off the road and close the entrance to the defile

behind him while the Guides were still within it. This was the

critical hour of the day, for Mir Khan, who had hurried back from the

Gul to direct the attack, at once realized his advantage, and leaving

his right to take care of itself, swung all his horsemen round to the

other wing, and sent them dismounted clambering over the further slopes

of the valley, while he himself advanced against Terrington in front.

Sending word to the half of Dore's force, which still lined the ridge

on the north of the gap, to get still higher up the hill and threaten

in turn to outflank the enemy's flankers, Terrington set himself to

hold the half-trained Bakót levies in a position which would have tried

the morale of the best disciplined troops.

In this, without the special help of Heaven, he certainly would not

have succeeded, since in order to keep his men together he had to

expose himself in a fashion that should have brought death to him

twenty times in the day.

Rose Chantry who, with the rest of the transport, had been hurried

through the gap and left to find what cover they could in the open

ground beyond it, watched him through her glasses, standing erect

amongst the men who were crawling and slithering at his feet, with a

growing wonderment of appreciation for the manner of man he was. She

saw him pounce upon one skulker who was trying to slink away, lift him

like a dog by the neck to his full length, march him forward in the

face of the bullets, and fling him down again in the firing line.

The charmed life which he seemed to wear had its effect at last upon

the superstitions of the men he was leading, and a fatalist spirit took

the place of their fears. This improved their pluck if it did not mend

their shooting; yet Terrington was compelled none the less to retire

them, leaving his dead and badly wounded behind him, as the enemy's

flankers had worked round far enough to enfilade him. He was thus

compelled to fall back slowly for the better part of a mile, until his

supports became entangled with the head of the transport column. This

caused the officer in charge of the transport to attempt an immediate

withdrawal, forgetting that the ground over which they had reached

their present cover was now swept by the bullets which were passing

over Terrington's head. The first two mules to emerge from the shelter

of the rocks fell dead with their driver, and the significance of the

little spirts of dust that barred the way was brought home to those

that followed. The head of the column halted, the rest of it continued

to advance, the mules becoming jammed into a huddled mass. Rose

Chantry's bearers had picked her up when the retirement was ordered,

and when it ceased and the crowding beasts began to accumulate round

the doolie she put her head through the curtains and asked Gholam what

had happened. He explained apologetically that the leaders of the

transport were smitten with great fear.

"Go on," she shouted to her bearers, "and show them the way."

Gholam interpreted the order and the jampanis had shuffled timorously

along for a few paces, when the enemy's flankers came in view of the

disordered transport and with cries of triumph began to shoot down into

it from the hill.

One of the jampanis was hit in the first fusillade, and, another

dropping with fright, the doolie came with a crash to the ground, and

Rose scrambled out of it, her teeth set and a little revolver in her

hand, to face what would probably have proved the closing scene of the

day's fight, had not, at that moment, the leading company of the Guides

emerged from the defile.

They had come for three miles at the double and had no breath for

shouting, but they extended with parade precision, and went straight

for the scattered sharpshooters on the enemy's left.

But the day was too old for half measures. With a faith in

reinforcements and a strong front, Terrington signalled Afzul Singh,

who had, despite his forty-five years, outpaced on foot the youngest of

his men, to keep his right shoulder up, thus ignoring the enemy's left

and bringing the Guides through the broken Bakót men on the main road.

Then, as the panting line came up to him, Terrington put himself in

front of it and charged straight at Mir Khan's centre.

That part of the enemy's front, unaware, owing to the slope of the

ground, of the Guides' arrival, only waited a snap of the trigger, as

the wave of buff-clad men burst over the rise. Then it turned and ran.

Blown though his men were, Terrington carried them half a mile further

before halting them. By doing so he cut in halves Mir Khan's line of

battle and isolated his entire left wing, which did not need a second

volley from the Guides to explain what had happened, and in an instant

was leaping like a flock of goats over the shale slopes in wild retreat.

Leaving Afzul with half a company to complete the rout, Terrington

wheeled the other half to the left, and, coming into line with the

Dogras and Sikhs, fell upon the enemy's right, which had seen the

defeat of the centre, and pressed it hotly down the hill.

He only carried the pressure far enough to clear the road, and, as soon

as the second company of the Guides appeared in the gap to form his

rear-guard a general movement began across the valley towards the

Sorágh Gul; the Sikhs, Dogras and half a company of the Guides covering

the transport on the south side, the second company of the Guides,

breathless but athirst for battle, holding the road behind it, and the

Bakót men still running like hounds over the great shale slopes on the

north hacking down the flying Saris with their knives or shooting them

like rabbits at a dozen yards.

It was a triumph of unhoped-for victory, but even yet was not complete.

For the swiftness of Terrington's advance brought him to the Gul before

the men who had been pursuing Walcot could recross it after the news of

Mir Khan's defeat had reached their ears. The Gul was a ravine with

sides almost precipitous and close upon two hundred feet in depth, with

a torrent raging over its rocks which could only be forded at one place.

Walcot, reinforced by Freddy Gale with the garrison of Rashát had

turned upon his pursuers, who reached in their flight one side of the

Gul as Terrington's force appeared on the other.

Panic-stricken they plunged into its abyss to escape the bullets behind

them, hoping to hide amongst the boulders in the torrent's bed.

But the river had risen behind them, and a foaming floor of water

stretched from side to side of the chasm.

Clinging like conies to those bare declivities they were shot screaming

for mercy or insane with fear, and fell like blood-gutted leeches into

the flood beneath.

Terrington watched the slaughter, silent and stern, feeling to be but

the avenging instrument of God, yet wishing for the qualities of a god

to reconcile him to its pitilessness and inevitable injustice.

While he watched, his ear caught the click of little feet on the rocks,

and he turned to find Rose Chantry beside him, gazing down upon the

torment of that gulf of death.

"Go back!" he said hurriedly. "You mustn't see this."

She turned to him a little face fierce and white and ablaze with

vengeance.

"I _shall_ see it," she cried imperiously; "they killed my husband."

Yet her vengeance came rather from the relief of long pent anxiety, and

it was less of her husband that she was thinking than of the man who

had come back to her out of mortal danger, his coat ripped by bullets

in two places and a dark scum of dried blood across his face from a

flesh-wound in the temple.