SIEGE
He never believed that they could hold the northeast corner for a
minute, so loud and unceasing was the uproar. Bullets spattered sharply
along the wall and sang overhead, mixed now and then with an
indescribable whistling and jingling. The angle was like the prow of a
ship cutting forward into a gale. Yet Rudolph climbed, rejoicing, up the
short bamboo ladder, to the platform which his coolies had built in such
haste, so long ago, that afternoon.
His high spirits went before a fall. As he stood up, in the full glow
from the burning go-down, somebody tackled him about the knees and threw
him head first on the sand-bags.
"How many times must I give me orders?" barked the little sea-captain.
"Under cover, under cover, and stay under cover, or I'll send ye below,
ye gallivanting--Oh! it's you, is it? Well, there's your port-hole." A
stubby finger pointed in the obscurity. "There! and don't ye fire till
I say so!"
Thus made welcome, Rudolph crawled toward a chink among the bags, ran
the muzzle of his gun into place, and lay ready for whatever might come
out of the quaking lights and darknesses beyond.
Nothing came, however, except a swollen continuity of sound, a rolling
cloud of noises, thick and sullen as the smell of burnt gunpowder. It
was strange, thought Rudolph, how nothing happened from moment to
moment. No yellow bodies came charging out of the hubbub. He himself lay
there unhurt; his fellows joked, grumbled, shifted their legs on the
platform. At times the heavier, duller sound, which had been the signal
for the whole disorder,--one ponderous beat, as on a huge and very slack
bass-drum,--told that the Black Dog from Rotterdam was not far off. Yet
even then there followed no shock of round-shot battering at masonry,
but only an access of the stormy whistling and jingling.
"Copper cash," declared the voice of Heywood, in a lull. By the sound,
he was standing on the rungs of the ladder, with his head at the level
of the platform; also by the sound, he was enjoying himself
inordinately. "What a jolly good piece of luck! Scrap metal and copper
cash. Firing money at us--like you, Captain. Just what we thought, too.
Some unruly gang among them wouldn't wait, and forced matters. Tonight
was premature. The beggars have plenty of powder, and little else.
So far."
Rudolph listened in wonder. Here, in the thick of the fight, was a
light-hearted, busy commander, drawing conclusions and extracting news
from chaos.
"Look out for arrows," continued the speaker, as he crawled to a
loophole between Rudolph's and the captain's. "They're shooting arrows
up over. Killed one convert and wounded two, there by the water gate.
They can't get the elevation for you chaps here, though." And again he
added, cheerfully, "So far, at least."
The little band behind the loopholes lay watching through the smoke,
listening through the noise. The Black Dog barked again, and sent a
shower of money clinking along the wall.
"How do you like it, Rudie?" chuckled his friend.
"It is terrible," answered Rudolph, honestly.
"Terrible racket, yes. Fireworks, to frighten us. Wait till their
ammunition comes; then you'll see fun. Fireworks, all this." Heywood
turned to his other companion. "I say, Kneebone, what's your idea?
Sniping all night, will it be?--or shall we get a fair chance at 'em?"
The captain, a small, white, recumbent spectre, lifted his head and
appeared to sniff the smoke judicially.
"They get a chance at us, more like!" he grumbled. "My opinion, the
blighters have shot and burnt themselves into a state o' mind; bloomin'
delusion o' grandeur, that's what. Wildest of 'em will rush us to-night,
once--maybe twice. We stave 'em off, say: that case, they'll settle down
to starve us, right and proper."
"Siege," assented Heywood.
"Siege, like you read about." The captain lay flat again. "Wish a man
could smoke up here."
Heywood laughed, and turned his head:--
"How much do you know about sieges, old chap?"
"Nothing," Rudolph confessed.
"Nor I, worse luck. Outside of school--_testudine facia,_ that sort of
thing. However," he went on cheerfully, "we shall before long"--He broke
off with a start. "Rudie! By Jove, I forgot! Did you find them? Where's
Bertha Forrester?"
"Gone," said Rudolph, and struggling to explain, found his late
adventure shrunk into the compass of a few words, far too small and bare
to suggest the magnitude of his decision. "They went," he began, "in
a boat--"
He was saved the trouble; for suddenly Captain Kneebone cried in a voice
of keen satisfaction, "Here they come! I told ye!"--and fired his rifle.
Through a patch of firelight, down the gentle slope of the field, swept
a ragged cohort of men, some bare-headed, some in their scarlet
nightcaps, as though they had escaped from bed, and all yelling. One of
the foremost, who met the captain's bullet, was carried stumbling his
own length before he sank underfoot; as the Mausers flashed from between
the sand-bags, another and another man fell to his knees or toppled
sidelong, tripping his fellows into a little knot or windrow of kicking
arms and legs; but the main wave poured on, all the faster. Among and
above them, like wreckage in that surf, tossed the shapes of
scaling-ladders and notched bamboos. Two naked men, swinging between
them a long cylinder or log, flashed through the bonfire space and on
into the dark below the wall.
"Pung-dongs!" bawled the captain. "Look out for the pung-dong!"
His friends were too busy firing into the crowded gloom below. Rudolph,
fumbling at side-bolt and pulling trigger, felt the end of a ladder bump
his forehead, saw turban and mediaeval halberd heave above him, and
without time to think of firing, dashed the muzzle of his gun at the
climber's face. The shock was solid, the halberd rang on the platform,
but the man vanished like a shade.
"Very neat," growled Heywood, who in the same instant, with a great
shove, managed to fling down the ladder. "Perfectly silly attack. We'll
hold 'em."
While he spoke, however, something hurtled over their heads and thumped
the platform. The queer log, or cylinder, lay there with a red coal
sputtering at one end, a burning fuse. Heywood snatched at it and
missed. Some one else caught up the long bulk, and springing to his
feet, swung it aloft. Firelight showed the bristling moustache of
Kempner, his long, thin arms poising a great bamboo case bound with
rings of leather or metal. He threw it out with his utmost force,
staggered as though to follow it; then, leaping back, straightened his
tall body with a jerk, flung out one arm in a gesture of surprise, no
sooner rigid than drooping; and even while he seemed inflated for
another of his speeches, turned half-round and dove into the garden and
the night. By the ending of it, he had redeemed a somewhat rancid life.
Before, the angle was alive with swarming heads. As he fell, it was
empty, and the assault finished; for below, the bamboo tube burst with a
sound that shook the wall; liquid flame, the Greek fire of stink-pot
chemicals, squirted in jets that revealed a crowd torn asunder, saffron
faces contorted in shouting, and men who leapt away with clothes afire
and powder-horns bursting at their sides. Dim figures scampered off, up
the rising ground.
"That's over," panted Heywood. "Thundering good lesson,--Here, count
noses. Rudie? Right-oh. Sturgeon, Teppich, Padre, Captain? Good! but
look sharp, while I go inspect." He whispered to Rudolph. "Come down,
won't you, and help me with--you know."
At the foot of the ladder, they met a man in white, with a white face in
what might be the dawn, or the pallor of the late-risen moon.
"Is Hackh there?" He hailed them in a dry voice, and cleared his throat,
"Where is she? Where's my wife?"
It was here, accordingly, while Heywood stooped over a tumbled object on
the ground, that Rudolph told her husband what Bertha Forrester had
chosen. The words came harder than before, but at last he got rid of
them. His questioner stood very still. It was like telling the news of
an absent ghost to another present.
"This town was never a place," said Gilly, with all his former
steadiness,--"never a place to bring a woman. And--and of her age."
All three men listened to the conflict of gongs and crackers, and to the
shouting, now muffled and distant behind the knoll. All three, as it
seemed to Rudolph, had consented to ignore something vile.
"That's all I wanted to know," said the older man, slowly. "I must get
back to my post. You didn't say, but--She made no attempt to come here?
Well, that's--that's lucky. I'll go back."
For some time again they stood as though listening, till Heywood
spoke:--
"Holding your own, are you, by the water gate?"
"Oh, yes," replied Forrester, rousing slightly. "All quiet there. No
more arrows. Converts behaving splendidly. Two or three have begged
for guns."
"Give 'em this." Heywood skipped up the ladder, to return with a rifle.
"And this belt--Kempner's. Poor chap, he'll never ask you to return
them.--Anything else?"
"No," answered Gilly, taking the dead man's weapon, and moving off into
the darkness. "No, except "--He halted. "Except if we come to a pinch,
and need a man for some tight place, then give me first chance. Won't
you? I could do better, now, than--than you younger men. Oh, and Hackh;
your efforts to-night--Well, few men would have dared, and I feel
immensely grateful."
He disappeared among the orange trees, leaving Rudolph to think about
such gratitude.
"Now, then," called Heywood, and stooped to the white bundle at their
feet. "Don't stand looking. Can't be helped. Trust old Gilly to take it
like a man. Come bear a hand."
And between them the two friends carried to the nunnery a tiresome
theorist, who had acted once, and now, himself tired and limp, would
offend no more by speaking.
When the dawn filled the compound with a deep blue twilight, and this in
turn grew pale, the night-long menace of noise gradually faded also,
like an orgy of evil spirits dispersing before cockcrow. To ears long
deafened, the wide stillness had the effect of another sound, never
heard before. Even when disturbed by the flutter of birds darting from
top to dense green top of the orange trees, the air seemed hushed by
some unholy constraint. Through the cool morning vapors, hot smoke from
smouldering wreckage mounted thin and straight, toward where the pale
disk of the moon dissolved in light. The convex field stood bare, except
for a few overthrown scarecrows in naked yellow or dusty blue, and for a
jagged strip of earthwork torn from the crest, over which the Black Dog
thrust his round muzzle. In a truce of empty silence, the defenders
slept by turns among the sand-bags.
The day came, and dragged by without incident. The sun blazed in the
compound, swinging overhead, and slanting down through the afternoon. At
the water gate, Rudolph, Heywood, and the padre, with a few forlorn
Christians,--driven in like sheep, at the last moment,--were building
a rough screen against the arrows that had flown in darkness, and that
now lay scattered along the path. One of these a workman suddenly caught
at, and with a grunt, held up before the padre.
The head was blunt. About the shaft, wound tightly with silk thread, ran
a thin roll of Chinese paper.
Dr. Earle nodded, took the arrow, and slitting with a pocket-knife,
freed and flattened out a painted scroll of complex characters. His keen
old eyes ran down the columns. His face, always cloudy now, grew darker
with perplexity.
"A message," he declared slowly. "I think a serious message." He sat
down on a pile of sacks, and spread the paper on his knee. "But the
characters are so elaborate--I can't make head or tail."
He beckoned Heywood, and together they scowled at the intricate and
meaningless symbols.
"All alike," complained the younger man. "Maddening." Then his face
lighted. "No, see here--lower left hand."
The last stroke of the brush, down in the corner, formed a loose "O. W."
"From Wutzler. Must mean something."
For all that, the painted lines remained a stubborn puzzle.
"Something, yes. But what?" The padre pulled out a cigar, and smoking
at top speed, spaced off each character with his thumb. "They are all
alike, and yet"--He clutched his white hair with big knuckles, and
tugged; replaced his mushroom helmet; held the paper at a new focus.
"Ah!" he said doubtfully; and at last, "Yes." For some time he read to
himself, nodding. "A Triad cipher."
"Well?" resumed Heywood, patiently.
The reader pointed with his cigar.
"Take only the left half of that word, and what have you?"
"'Lightning,'" read Heywood.
"The right half?"
"'Boat.'"
"Take," the padre ordered, "this one; left half?"
"'Lightning,'" repeated his pupil. "The right half--might be
'rice-scoop,' But that's nonsense."
"No," said the padre. "You have the secret. It's good Triad writing.
Subtract this twisted character 'Lightning' from each, and we've made
the crooked straight. The writer was afraid of being caught. Here's the
sense of his message, I take it." And he read off, slowly:--
"A Hakka boat on opposite shore; a green flag and a rice-scoop hoisted
at her mast; light a fire on the water-gate steps, and she will come
quickly, day or night.--O.W."
Heywood took the news coldly. He shook his head, and stood thinking.
"That won't help," he said curtly. "Never in the world."
With the aid of a convert, he unbarred the ponderous gate, and ventured
out on the highest slab of the landing-steps. Across the river, to be
sure, there lay--between a local junk and a stray _papico_ from the
north--the high-nosed Hakka boat, her deck roofed with tawny
basket-work, and at her masthead a wooden rice-measure dangling below a
green rag. Aft, by the great steering-paddle, perched a man, motionless,
yet seeming to watch. Heywood turned, however, and pointed downstream to
where, at the bend of the river, a little spit of mud ran out from the
marsh. On the spit, from among tussocks, a man in a round hat sprang up
like a thin black toadstool. He waved an arm, and gave a shrill cry,
summoning help from further inland. Other hats presently came bobbing
toward him, low down among the marsh. Puffs of white spurted out from
the mud. And as Heywood dodged back through the gate, and Nesbit's rifle
answered from his little fort on the pony-shed, the distant crack of the
muskets joined with a spattering of ooze and a chipping of stone on the
river-stairs.
"Covered, you see," said Heywood, replacing the bar. "Last resort,
perhaps, that way. Still, we may as well keep a bundle of firewood
ready here."
The shots from the marsh, though trivial and scattering, were like a
signal; for all about the nunnery, from a ring of hiding-places, the
noise of last night broke out afresh. The sun lowered through a brown,
burnt haze, the night sped up from the ocean, covering the sky with
sudden darkness, in which stars appeared, many and cool, above the
torrid earth and the insensate turmoil. So, without change but from
pause to outbreak, outbreak to pause, nights and days went by in
the siege.
Nothing happened. One morning, indeed, the fragments of another blunt
arrow came to light, broken underfoot and trampled into the dust. The
paper scroll, in tatters, held only a few marks legible through dirt and
heel-prints: "Listen--work fast--many bags--watch closely." And still
nothing happened to explain the warning.
That night Heywood even made a sortie, and stealing from the main gate
with four coolies, removed to the river certain relics that lay close
under the wall, and would soon become intolerable. He had returned
safely, with an ancient musket, a bag of bullets, a petroleum squirt,
and a small bundle of pole-axes, and was making his tour of the
defenses, when he stumbled over Rudolph, who knelt on the ground under
what in old days had been the chapel, and near what now was
Kempner's grave.
He was not kneeling in devotion, for he took Heywood by the arm, and
made him stoop.
"I was coming," he said, "to find you. The first night, I saw coolies
working in the clay-pit. Bend, a moment over. Put now the ear close."
Heywood laid his cheek in the dust.
"They're keeping such a racket outside," he muttered; and then, half to
himself: "It certainly is. Rudie, it's--it's as if poor Kempner
were--waking up." He listened again. "You're right. They are digging."
The two friends sat up, and eyed each other in the starlight.