BROTHER MOLES
This new danger, working below in the solid earth, had thrown Rudolph
into a state of sullen resignation. What was the use now, he thought
indignantly, of all their watching and fighting? The ground, at any
moment, might heave, break, and spring up underfoot. He waited for his
friend to speak out, and put the same thought roundly into words.
Instead, to his surprise, he heard something quite contrary.
"Now we know!" said Heywood, in lively satisfaction. "Now we know what
the beasts have up their sleeve. That's a comfort. Rather!"
He sat thinking, a white figure in the starlight, cross-legged like a
Buddha.
"That's why they've all been lying doggo," he continued. "And then their
bad marksmanship, with all this sniping--they don't care, you see,
whether they pot us or not. They'd rather make one clean sweep, and
'blow us at the moon.' Eh? Cheer up, Rudie: so long as they're digging,
they're not blowing. Are they?"
While he spoke, the din outside the walls wavered and sank, at last
giving place to a shrill, tiny interlude of insect voices. In this
diluted silence came now and then a tinkle of glass from the dark
hospital room where Miss Drake was groping among her vials.
Heywood listened.
"If it weren't for that," he said quietly, "I shouldn't much care.
Except for the women, this would really be great larks." Then, as a
shadow flitted past the orange grove, he roused himself to hail: "Ah
Pat! Go catchee four piecee coolie-man!"
"Can do." The shadow passed, and after a time returned with four other
shadows. They stood waiting, till Heywood raised his head from the dust.
"Those noises have stopped, down there," he said to Rudolph; and rising,
gave his orders briefly. The coolies were to dig, strike into the
sappers' tunnel, and report at once: "Chop-chop.--Meantime, Rudie, let's
take a holiday. We can smoke in the courtyard."
A solitary candle burned in the far corner of the inclosure, and cast
faint streamers of reflection along the wet flags, which, sluiced with
water from the well, exhaled a slight but grateful coolness. Heywood
stooped above the quivering flame, lighted a cigar, and sinking loosely
into a chair, blew the smoke upward in slow content.
"Luxury!" he yawned. "Nothing to do, nothing to fret about, till the
compradore reports. Wonderful--too good to be true."
For a long time, lying side by side, they might have been asleep.
Through the dim light on the white walls dipped and swerved the drunken
shadow of a bat, who now whirled as a flake of blackness across the
stars, now swooped and set the humbler flame reeling. The flutter of his
leathern wings, and the plash of water in the dark, where a coolie still
drenched the flags, marked the sleepy, soothing measures in a nocturne,
broken at strangely regular intervals by a shot, and the crack of a
bullet somewhere above in the deserted chambers.
"Queer," mused Heywood, drowsily studying his watch. "The beggar puts
one shot every five minutes through the same window.--I wonder what he's
thinking about? Lying out there, firing at the Red-Bristled Ghosts. Odd!
Wonder what they're all"--He put back his cigar, mumbling. "Handful of
poor blackguards, all upset in their minds, and sweating round. And all
the rest tranquil as ever, eh?--the whole country jogging on the same
old way, or asleep and dreaming dreams, perhaps, same kind of dreams
they had in Marco Polo's day."
The end of his cigar burned red again; and again, except for that, he
might have been asleep. Rudolph made no answer, but lay thinking. This
brief moment of rest in the cool, dim courtyard--merely to lie there
and wait--seemed precious above all other gain or knowledge. Some quiet
influence, a subtle and profound conviction, slowly was at work in him.
It was patience, wonder, steady confidence,--all three, and more. He had
felt it but this once, obscurely; might die without knowing it in
clearer fashion; and yet could never lose it, or forget, or come to any
later harm. With it the stars, above the dim vagaries of the bat, were
brightly interwoven. For the present he had only to lie ready, and wait,
a single comrade in a happy army.
Through a dark little door came Miss Drake, all in white, and moving
quietly, like a symbolic figure of evening, or the genius of the place.
Her hair shone duskily as she bent beside the candle, and with steady
fingers tilted a vial, from which amber drops fell slowly into a glass.
With dark eyes watching closely, she had the air of a young, beneficent
Medea, intent on some white magic.
"Aren't you coming," called Heywood, "to sit with us awhile?"
"Can't, thanks," she replied, without looking up. "I'm too busy."
"That's no excuse. Rest a little."
She moved away, carrying her medicines, but paused in the door, smiled
back at him as from a crypt, and said:--
"Have _you_ been hurt?"
"Only my feelings."
"I've no time," she laughed, "for lazy able-bodied persons." And she was
gone in the darkness, to sit by her wounded men.
With her went the interval of peace; for past the well-curb came another
figure, scuffing slowly toward the light. The compradore, his robes lost
in their background, appeared as an oily face and a hand beckoning with
downward sweep. The two friends rose, and followed him down the
courtyard. In passing out, they discovered the padre's wife lying
exhausted in a low chair, of which she filled half the length and all
the width. Heywood paused beside her with some friendly question, to
which Rudolph caught the answer.
"Oh, quite composed." Her voice sounded fretful, her fan stirred weakly.
"Yes, wonderfully composed. I feel quite ready to suffer for the faith."
"Dear Mrs. Earle," said the young man, gently, "there ought to be no
need. Nobody shall suffer, if we can prevent. I think we can."
Under the orange trees, he laid an unsteady hand on Rudolph's arm, and
halting, shook with quiet merriment.
"Poor dear lady!" he whispered, and went forward chuckling.
Loose earth underfoot warned them not to stumble over the new-raised
mound beside the pit, which yawned slightly blacker than the night.
Kempner's grave had not been quieter. The compradore stood whispering:
they had found the tunnel empty, because, he thought, the sappers were
gone out to eat their chow.
"We'll see, anyway," said Heywood, stripping off his coat. He climbed
over the mound, grasped the edges, and promptly disappeared. In the long
moment which followed, the earth might have closed on him. Once, as
Rudolph bent listening over the shaft, there seemed to come a faint
momentary gleam; but no sound, and no further sign, until the head and
shoulders burrowed up again.
"Big enough hole down there," he reported, swinging clear, and sitting
with his feet in the shaft. "Regular cave. Three sacks of powder stowed
already, so we're none too soon.--One sack was leaky. I struck a match,
and nearly blew myself to Casabianca." He paused, as if reflecting. "It
gives us a plan, though. Rudie: are you game for something rather
foolhardy? Be frank, now; for if you wouldn't really enjoy it, I'll give
old Gilly Forrester his chance."
"No!" said Rudolph, stung as by some perfidy. "You make me--ashamed!
This is all ours, this part, so!"
"Can do," laughed the other. "Get off your jacket. Give me half a
moment start, so that you won't jump on my head." And he went wriggling
down into the pit.
An unwholesome smell of wet earth, a damp, subterranean coolness,
enveloped Rudolph as he slid down a flue of greasy clay, and stooping,
crawled into the horizontal bore of the tunnel. Large enough, perhaps,
for two or three men to pass on all fours, it ran level, roughly cut,
through earth wet with seepage from the river, but packed into a smooth
floor by many hands and bare knees. It widened suddenly before him. In
the small chamber of the mine, choked with the smell of stale betel, he
bumped Heywood's elbow.
"Some Fragrant Ones have been working here, I should say." The speaker
patted the ground with quick palms, groping. "Phew! They've worked like
steam. This explains old Wutz, and his broken arrow. I say, Rudie, feel
about. I saw a coil of fuse lying somewhere.--At least, I thought it
was. Ah, never mind: have-got!" He pulled something along the floor.
"How's the old forearm I gave you? I forgot that. Equal to hauling a
sack out? Good! Catch hold, here."
Sweeping his hand in the darkness, he captured Rudolph's, and guided it
to where a powder-bag lay.
"Now, then, carry on," he commanded; and crawling into the tunnel,
flung back fragments of explanation as he tugged at his own load. "Carry
these out--far as we dare--touch 'em off, you see, and block the
passage. Far out as possible, though. We can use this hole afterward,
for listening in, if they try--"
He cut the sentence short. Their tunnel had begun to slope gently
downward, with niches gouged here and there for the passing of
burden-bearers. Rudolph, toiling after, suddenly found his head
entangled between his leader's boots.
"Quiet," he heard him whisper. "Somebody coming."
An instant later, the boots withdrew quickly. An odd little squeak of
surprise followed, a strange gurgling, and a succession of rapid shocks,
as though some one were pummeling the earthen walls.
"Got the beggar," panted Heywood. "Only one of 'em. Roll clear, Rudie,
and let us pass. Collar his legs, if you can, and shove."
Squeezing past Rudolph in his niche, there struggled a convulsive bulk,
like some monstrous worm, too large for the bore, yet writhing. Bare
feet kicked him in violent rebellion, and a muscular knee jarred
squarely under his chin. He caught a pair of naked legs, and hugged
them dearly.
"Not too hard," called Heywood, with a breathless laugh. "Poor
devil--must think he ran foul of a genie."
Indeed, their prisoner had already given up the conflict, and lay under
them with limbs dissolved and quaking.
"Pass him along," chuckled his captor. "Make him go ahead of us."
Prodded into action, the man stirred limply, and crawled past them
toward the mine, while Heywood, at his heels, growled orders in the
vernacular with a voice of dismal ferocity. In this order they gained
the shaft, and wriggled up like ferrets into the night air. Rudolph,
standing as in a well, heard a volley of questions and a few timid
answers, before the returning legs of his comrade warned him to dodge
back into the tunnel.
Again the two men crept forward on their expedition; and this time the
leader talked without lowering his voice.
"That chap," he declared, "was fairly chattering with fright. Coolie, it
seems, who came back to find his betel-box. The rest are all outside
eating their rice. We have a clear track."
They stumbled on their powder-sacks, caught hold, and dragged them, at
first easily down the incline, then over a short level, then arduously
up a rising grade, till the work grew heavy and hot, and breath came
hard in the stifled burrow.
"Far enough," said Heywood, puffing. "Pile yours here."
Rudolph, however, was not only drenched with sweat, but fired by a new
spirit, a spirit of daring. He would try, down here in the bowels of the
earth, to emulate his friend.
"But let us reconnoitre," he objected. "It will bring us to the clay-pit
where I saw them digging. Let us go out to the end, and look."
"Well said, old mole!" Heywood snapped his fingers with delight. "I
never thought of that." By his tone, he was proud of the amendment.
"Come on, by all means. I say, I didn't really--I didn't _want_ poor old
Gilly down here, you know."
They crawled on, with more speed but no less caution, up the strait
little gallery, which now rose between smooth, soft walls of clay.
Suddenly, as the incline once more became a level, they saw a glimmering
square of dusky red, like the fluttering of a weak flame through scarlet
cloth. This, while they shuffled toward it, grew higher and broader,
until they lay prone in the very door of the hill,--a large, square-cut
portal, deeply overhung by the edge of the clay-pit, and flanked with
what seemed a bulkhead of sand-bags piled in orderly tiers. Between
shadowy mounds of loose earth flickered the light of a fire, small and
distant, round which wavered the inky silhouettes of men, and beyond
which dimly shone a yellow face or two, a yellow fist clutched full of
boiled rice like a snowball. Beyond these, in turn, gleamed other little
fires, where other coolies were squatting at their supper.
"Rudie, look!" Heywood's voice trembled with joyful excitement. "Look,
these bags; not sand-bags at all! It's powder, old chap, powder! Their
whole supply. Wait a bit--oh, by Jove, wait a bit!"
He scurried back into the hill like a great rat, returned as quickly and
swiftly, and with eager hands began to uncoil something on the clay
threshold.
"Do you know enough to time a fuse?" he whispered. "Neither do I.
Powder's bad, anyhow. We must guess at it. Here, quick, lend me a
knife." He slashed open one of the lower sacks in the bulkhead by the
door, stuffed in some kind of twisted cord, and, edging away, sat for an
instant with his knife-blade gleaming in the ruddy twilight. "How long,
Rudie, how long?" He smothered a groan. "Too long, or too short, spoils
everything. Oh, well--here goes."
The blade moved.
"Now lie across," he ordered, "and shield the tandstickor." With a
sudden fuff, the match blazed up to show his gray eyes bright and
dancing, his face glossy with sweat; below, on the golden clay, the
twisted, lumpy tail of the fuse, like the end of a dusty vine. Darkness
followed, quick and blinding. A rosy, fitful coal sputtered, darting out
short capillary lines and needles of fire.
"Cut sticks--go like the devil! If it blows up, and caves the earth on
us--" Heywood ran on hands and knees, as if that were his natural way of
going. Rudolph scrambled after, now urged by an ecstasy of apprehension,
now clogged as by the weight of all the hill above them. If it should
fall now, he thought, or now; and thus measuring as he crawled, found
the tunnel endless.
When at last, however, they gained the bottom of the shaft, and were
hoisted out among their coolies on the shelving mound, the evening
stillness lay above and about them, undisturbed. The fuse could never
have lasted all these minutes. Their whole enterprise was but labor
lost. They listened, breathing short. No sound came.
"Gone out," said Heywood, gloomily. "Or else they saw it."
He climbed the bamboo scaffold, and stood looking over the wall. Rudolph
perched beside him,--by the same anxious, futile instinct of curiosity,
for they could see nothing but the night and the burning stars.
"Gone out. Underground again, Rudie, and try our first plan." Heywood
turned to leap down. "The Sword-Pen looks to set off his mine
to-morrow morning."
He clutched the wall in time to save himself, as the bamboo frame leapt
underfoot. Outside, the crest of the slope ran black against a single
burst of flame. The detonation came like the blow of a mallet on
the ribs.
"Let him look! Let him look!" Heywood jumped to the ground, and in a
pelting shower of clods, exulted:--
"He looked again, and saw it was
The middle of next week!"
"Come on, brother mole. Spread the news!"
He ran off, laughing, in the wide hush of astonishment.