"Shoulder to shoulder, boys! Give it 'em straight! There's no going back
this journey." And the speaker slapped his thigh and laughed.
He was penned in a hot corner with a handful of grinning little
Goorkhas, as ready and exultant as himself. He had no earthly business
in that particular spot. But he had won his way there in a hand-to-hand
combat, which had rendered that bit of ground the most desirable
abiding-place on the face of the earth. And being there he meant to
stay.
He was established with the inimitable effrontery of British insolence.
He had pushed on through the dark, fired by the enthusiasm which is born
of hard resistence. It had been no slight matter, but neither he nor his
men were to be easily dismayed. Moreover, their patience had been
severely tried for many tedious hours, and the removal of the curb had
gone to their heads like wine.
Young Derrick Rose, war correspondent, was hot of head and ready of
hand. He had a knack also of getting into tight places and extricating
himself therefrom with amazing agility; which knack served to procure
for him the admiration of his friends and the respect of his enemies. It
was his first Frontier campaign, but it was not apparently destined to
be his last, for he bore a charmed life. And he went his way with a
cheery recklessness that seemed its own security.
On the present occasion he had planted himself, with a serene assumption
of authority, at the head of a handful of Goorkhas who had been pressed
forward too far by an over-zealous officer in the darkness, and had lost
their leader in consequence.
Derrick had stumbled on the group and had forthwith taken upon himself
to direct them to a position which, with a good deal of astuteness, he
had marked out in his own mind earlier in the day as a desirable
acquisition.
There had been a hand-to-hand scuffle in the darkness, and then the
tribesmen had fallen back, believing themselves overwhelmed by superior
numbers.
Derrick and his Goorkhas had promptly taken possession of the rocky
eminence which was the object of their desire, and now prepared, with
commendable determination, to maintain themselves at the post thus
captured; an impossible feat in consideration of the paucity of their
numbers, which fact a wily enemy had already begun to suspect.
That the main force could by any means fail them was a possibility over
which for long neither Derrick nor his followers wasted a thought.
Nevertheless half-an-hour of mad turmoil passed, and no help came.
Derrick charitably set down its non-appearance to ignorance of his state
and whereabouts, and he began at length to wonder within himself how the
place was to be defended throughout the night. Retreat he would not
think of, for he was game to the finger-tips. But even he could not fail
to see that, when the moon rose, he and his followers would be in a very
tight fix.
"Confound their caution! What are they thinking of?" he muttered
savagely. "If they only came straight ahead they would be bound to find
us."
And then a yelling crowd of dim figures breasted the rocks and dashed
forward with the force of a hurricane upon the little body of Goorkhas.
In a second Derrick was fighting in the dark with mad enthusiasm for
bare foothold, and shouting at the top of his voice exhortations to his
men to keep together.
It was a desperate struggle, but once more the little party of invaders
held their ground. And Derrick, yelling encouragement to his friends and
defiance to his foes, became vaguely conscious of a new element in the
strife.
Someone, not a Goorkha, was standing beside him, fighting as he fought,
but in grim silence.
Derrick wondered considerably, but was too busy to ask questions. Only
when he missed his footing, and a strong hand shot out and dragged him
up, his wonder turned to admiration. Here was evidently a mighty
fighting-man!
The tribesmen drew off at length baffled, to wait for the moon to rise.
They were pretty sure of their prey despite the determined resistance
they had encountered. They did not know of the new force that had come
to strengthen that forsaken little knot of men. Had they known, their
estimate of the task before them would have undergone a very material
amendment.
"Hullo!" said Derrick, rubbing his sleeve across his forehead. "Where on
earth did you spring from?"
A steady voice answered him out of the gloom. "I came up from the
valley. The troops are halted at the entrance of the ravine. There will
be no further advance to-night."
Derrick swore a sudden, fierce oath.
"No further advance! Do you mean that? Then Carlyon doesn't know we are
here."
"Oh, yes, he knows," answered the man indifferently. "But he says very
reasonably that he didn't order you to come up here, and he can't
sacrifice twice the number of men here to get you down again.
Unfortunate for you, of course; but we all have to swallow bad luck at
one time or another. Make the best of it!"
Derrick swore again with less violence and greater resolution.
"And who, in wonder, may you be?" he broke off to enquire. "I'm a war
correspondent myself."
There was a vein of humour in the quiet reply.
"Oh, I'm a non-combatant, too. It's always the non-combatants that do
the work. Have you got a revolver? Good! Any cartridges? That's right.
Now, look here, it's out of the question to remain in this place till
moonrise."
"I won't go back," said Derrick doggedly. "I'll see Carlyon hang first."
"Quite right. I wasn't going to propose that. It's impossible, in the
first place. Perhaps it is only fair to Colonel Carlyon to mention that
he had no notion that there is anything so important as a newspaper man
at the head of this expedition. It's a detail, of course. Still, if you
get through, it is just as well that you should know the rights of the
case."
Derrick broke into an involuntary laugh.
"Did Carlyon get you to come and tell me so?" He turned and peered
through the darkness at the man beside him. "You never got up here
alone?" he said incredulously.
"Oh, yes. It wasn't difficult. I was guided by the noise you made. How
many men have you?"
"Ten or twelve; not more--all Goorkhas."
"Good! We must quit this place at once. It will be a death-trap when the
moon rises. There are some boulders higher up, away to the right. We
can occupy them till morning and fight back to back if they try to rush
us. There ought to be plenty of shelter among those rocks."
The man's cool speech caught Derrick's fancy. He spoke as quietly as if
he were sitting at an English dinner-table.
"You had better take command," said Derrick.
"No, thanks; you are going to pull this through. Are you ready to move?
Pass the word to the men! And then all together! It is now or never!"
A few seconds later they were stumbling in an indistinguishable mass
towards the haven indicated by the latest comer. It was a difficult
scramble, not the least difficult part of it being the task of keeping
in touch with each other. But Derrick's spirits returned at a bound with
this further adventure, and he began to rejoice somewhat prematurely in
his triumph over Carlyon's caution.
The man who had come to his assistance kept at his elbow throughout the
climb. Not a word was spoken. The men moved like cats through the
dimness. Below them was a confused din of rifle-firing. Their advance
had evidently not been detected.
"Silly owls! Wasting their ammunition!" murmured Derrick to the man
beside him. He received no response. A warning hand closed with a grip
on his elbow. And Derrick subsided.
When the moon rose, magnificent and glowing from behind the mountains,
Derrick and his men looked down from a high perch on the hillside, and
watched a furious party of tribesmen charge and occupy their abandoned
position.
"Now, this is good!" said Derrick, and he was in the act of firing his
revolver into the thick of the crowd below him when again the sinewy
hand of his unknown friend checked him.
"Hold your fire, man!" the man said, in his quiet, unmoved voice. "You
will want it presently."
But the stranger's hold tightened. He was standing in the shadow
slightly behind Derrick.
"Wait!" he said. "They will find you soon enough. You are not in a
position to take the offensive."
Derrick swung round with a restless word. And then he pulled up short.
He was facing a tribesman, gaunt and tall, with odd, light eyes that
glittered strangely in the moonlight. Derrick stared at the apparition,
dumbfounded. After a pause the man took his hand from the
correspondent's arm.
"Don't give the show away for want of a little caution!" he said. "There
are your men to think of, remember. This is no picnic."
Derrick was still staring hard at the strange figure before him.
"I say," he said at length, "what in the name of wonder are you?"
He heard a faint, contemptuous laugh. The unknown drew the end of his
_chuddah_ farther across his face.
"You are marvellously guileless for a war correspondent," he said. And
he turned on his heel and stalked away into the shadows.
Derrick stood gazing after him in stupefaction.
"A Secret Service agent, is he?" he murmured at length to himself. "By
Jove! What a marvellous fake! On Carlyon's business, I suppose. Confound
Carlyon! I'll tell him what I think of him if I come through this all
right."
Carlyon, in times of peace, was one of Derrick Rose's most intimate
friends. That Carlyon, upon whom he relied as upon a tower of strength
should fail him at such a pinch as this, and for motives of caution
alone, was a circumstance so preposterous and unheard-of that Derrick's
credulity was hardly equal to the strain.
He began to wonder if this stranger who had guided him into safety, from
what he now realized to be a positive death-trap, had given him a wholly
unexaggerated account of Carlyon's attitude.
He waited awhile, thinking the matter over with rising indignation; and
at length, as the noise below him subsided, he moved from his shelter to
find his informant. It was a rash thing to do, but prudence was not his
strong point. Moreover, the Secret Service man had aroused his
curiosity. He wanted to see more of this fellow. So, with an
indifference to danger, foolhardy, though too genuine to be
contemptible, he strolled across an unprotected space of moonlight to
join him.
Two seconds later he was lying on his face, struggling with the futile,
convulsive effort of a stricken man to recover his footing. And even
while he struggled, he lost consciousness.
He awoke at length as one awakes from a troublous dream, and looked
about him with a dazed consciousness of great tumult.
The space in which he lay was no longer wide and empty. The white world
was peopled with demons that leapt and surged around his prostrate body.
And someone, a man in white, with naked, uplifted arms, stood above him
and quelled the tumult.
Derrick saw it all, heard the mad yells lessen and die down, watched
with a dumb amazement the melting away of the fierce crowd.
And then the man who stood over him turned suddenly and, kneeling,
lifted him from his prostrate position. It was a man in native dress
whose eyes held for Derrick an odd, half-familiar fascination.
Where had he met those eyes before? Ah, he remembered. It was the Secret
Service man. And that was strange, too. For Carlyon always scoffed at
Secret Service men. Still, this was a small matter which, no doubt,
would right itself. Everything looked a little peculiar and distorted on
this night of wonders. Carlyon himself had sadly degenerated in his
opinion since the morning. Bother Carlyon!
Suddenly a great sigh burst from Derrick, and the moonlight broke up
into tiny, dazzling fragments. The darkness was full of them, alive
with them.
"Fire-flies!" gasped Derrick, and began to cough, at first slowly, with
pauses for breath, then quickly, spasmodically, convulsively. For breath
had finally failed him.
The arm behind him raised him with the steady strength of iron muscles,
and a hand pressed his chest. But the coughing did not cease. It was the
anguished strife of wounded Nature to assert her damaged authority; the
wild, last effort to clutch and hold fast the elusive torch that,
flickering in the midst of darkness, is called life--the one priceless
possession of our little mortal treasury.
And while he coughed and fought with the demon of suffocation Derrick
was strongly aware of the eyes that watched him, burning like two
brilliant blue points out of the darkness. Wonderful eyes! Steady,
strong, unflinching. The eyes of a friend--a true friend--not such an
one as Carlyon--Carlyon who had failed him.
A thick, unexplored darkness fell upon Derrick as he thought of
Carlyon's desertion; and he forgot at length to wonder at the
strangeness of the night.