All through the day quiet reigned. An occasional sword-glint in the
mountains, an occasional gleam of white against the brown hillside;
these were the only evidences of an active enemy.
The women were released from durance in the club-house, with strict
orders to return in the early evening.
Derrick went restlessly through the camp, seeking Carlyon. He found him
superintending the throwing-up of earthworks. The most exposed part of
the camp was to be abandoned. Derrick joined him in silence. Somehow
this man's personality attracted him strongly. Though he had defied him,
quarrelled with him, insulted him, the spell of his presence was
irresistible.
Carlyon paid small attention to him till he turned to leave that part of
the camp's defences. Then, with a careless hand through Derrick's arm,
he said:
"You will have your fill of stiff fighting to-night, boy. But, remember,
you are not to throw yourself away."
As evening fell, the attack was resumed, and it continued throughout the
night. Tribesmen charged up to the very breastworks themselves and fell
before the awful fire of the defenders' rifles. Death had no terrors for
them. They strove for the mastery with fanatical zeal. But they strove
in vain. A greater force than they possessed, the force of discipline
and organized resistance--kept them at bay. Behind the splendid courage
of the Indian soldiers were the resource and the resolution of a handful
of Englishmen. The spirit of the conquering race, unquenchable,
irresistible, weighed down the balance.
In the middle of the night Captain Raymond was hit in the shoulder and
carried, fainting, to the closely guarded club-house, where his wife was
waiting.
The command devolved upon Lieutenant Steele, who took up the task
undismayed. Down in the hastily dug trenches Toby Carey was fiercely
holding his men to their work.
And Derrick Rose was with him, unrestrained for that night at least.
"Relief at dawn!" Toby said to him once.
And Derrick responded with a wild laugh.
"Relief be damned! We can hold our own without it."
* * * * *
Relief came with the dawn, at a moment when the tribesmen were spurring
themselves to the greatest effort of all, sustained by the knowledge
that their Great Fakir was among them.
General Harford, with guides, Sikhs, Goorkhas, came down like a
hurricane from the south-east, cut off a great body of tribesmen from
their fellows, and drove them headlong, with deadly force, upon the
defences they had striven so furiously to take.
The defenders sallied out to meet them with fixed bayonets. The brief
siege, if siege it could be called, was over.
In the early light Derrick found himself fighting, fighting furiously,
sword to sword. And the terrible joy of the conflict ran in his blood
like fire.
"Ah!" he gasped. "It's good! It's good!"
And then he found another fighting beside him--a mighty fighting man,
grim, terrible, silent. They thrust together; they withdrew together;
they charged together.
Once an enemy seized Derrick's sword and he found himself vainly
struggling against the awful, wild-faced fanatic's sinewy grasp. He saw
the man's upraised arm, and knew with horrible certainty that he was
helpless, helpless.
Then there shot out a swift, rescuing hand. A straight and deadly blow
was struck. And Derrick, flinging a laugh over his shoulder, beheld a
man dressed as a tribesman fall headlong over his enemy's body, struck
to the earth by another swordsman.
Like lightning there flashed through his brain the memory of a man who
had saved his life more than a year before on this same tumultuous
Frontier--a man in tribesman's dress, with blue eyes of a strange, keen
friendliness. He had it now. This was the Secret Service man. Derrick
planted himself squarely over the prostrate body, and there stood while
the fight surged on about him to the deadly and inevitable end.