“In that town,” said Blake to himself, peering cautiously through the
scrub, “is Mannering’s grave, and the wreck of a brave man’s life-work.
O, Sergeant, if those two beggarly Nyam-Nyams try to run away, deal with
them straightly. At moonset we will go down.”
“O sons of Eblis,” murmured the Haussa sergeant with a grin, “scum of
the market-place, little frogs of the mud-puddles of Wakonda, in that
town is good soured milk, much grain, and the chickens and goats as many
as the prayers of the prophet. At moonset we will go down.”
The command gurgled pleasantly to itself and lay closer. Blake crawled
nearer Macartney, who was raking the silver-patched blackness with a
pair of night-glasses wrapped in dark cloth.
“I can make out a tin roof,” whispered Macartney at last; “that will be
the roof of the residency.”
“Where Mannering was speared on his own door-step,” said Jim Blake,
taking the glasses. “Dead, down and dead, wiped out, absolute failure,
Mannering. I can’t get over that, you know. He was such a keen old
beggar; so wrapped up in his work. He simply spent himself on this
beastly country. And he cleared out Wakonda, as far as mortal eye can
see, on purpose to make room for seven other devils worse than the late
king.”
“Couldn’t be,” put in Macartney.
“It’s not being speared that’s the worst part of it,” persisted Blake;
“we all come to that sooner or later. It’s having absolutely nothing to
show for his life or his death. Nothing even for the next man to build
on. It’s that,” he continued, shivering as the dawn chill blew up the
valley, “which I fancy must worry old Mannering—still.”
“What you need is chlorodyne,” whispered Macartney, indignantly.
They lay silent in the dark, upland grass, and the dew beaded and
dripped on the thorns overhead. The command hunted for prickles in its
feet, tightened belts, and babbled softly of stewed fowl.
From immense spaces, as spun out and as thin as a thread, came the
hunting-cry of a lion. The Haussa sergeant crept up and touched Blake’s
foot.
“The moon sets, O Effendi, and it is not yet dawn.”
Blake rose to his feet and looked at the sky. “We be ready,” he said.
The command moved as one man, eyes glinting whitely under the
tarbooshes. The last few days had been hungry ones. Below in the valley
was good food; it was only to fight a little, and all would be full.
“Ya Illah, brethren, let us go down.”
They went down. Blake was no tactician, and his plan in such cases was
simple. You took the main gate, held it, and swept the obstructionists
out of the other gates or over the mud walls, broom fashion. He had
worked with his present command for a year, and they followed him like a
football team. The sergeant at his elbow presently touched his sleeve.
“There is made ground here.”
“Made ground?”
“Yes. The road built by Mannering Bimbashi.”
Already the road built by Mannering for the grain dealers and spice
merchants was no more than a track in the under-growth, and the grass
swept to the thigh. Their way dipped sharply, and a river valley
swirling in mist took them like shadows. Blake felt under his feet the
rotten piles of a bridge, and a rifle clanged against rusted iron.
“I think these cattle of Wakonda have the alarm,” said the sergeant as
they grunted up the opposite slope.
“Why?”
“There was a watchman at the bridge end; we should have crossed by the
ford farther down. But these Wakonda cannot fight, and all is as Allah
wills. O Ibrahim, son of Suleiman, keep thy rifle dry and remember to
get under the walls.”
The town was clattering like a frightened hen-roost when a company of
shadows flitted through the fog, and flung themselves under the walls
and against the main gate. Five minutes of noisy, scrambling,
hit-or-miss fighting followed, and they were inside, with their hardest
work before them. Their ire had driven back the defenders, but they
themselves had for the moment no cover. Presently the slugs began to
flop on the walls behind them, and two men fell. Blake felt a stinging
blow on the knee, and went down on all fours. He rose, laughing rather
shakily into Macartney’s scared face.
“A spent bullet,” he cried in the din; “can’t put my foot to the ground.
Clear those houses, old man; I’ll hold the gate.”
Macartney nodded and was gone, his men after him. Blake and his handful
took cover behind a mud buttress and a dead camel, and prepared to hold
the gate. It was only then that Blake saw the sergeant.
“Why art thou here?”
“I stay with thee, O Effendi. Besides,”—he sniffed wistfully,—“in that
house they have been cooking good mutton. I would not go too far.”
The din and turmoil of the narrow ways rose and fell like the froth of
the sea. The roofs were beginning to burn in a dozen places as
Macartney, in rough-and-ready fashion, cleared out the slug-shooters.
The red light of burning thatch danced in the fog and the thinning dark,
and by this light Blake saw a score of white-wrapped figures leap from
the reek and rush for the gate, shouting as they came.
“Steady, men, steady!”
“By the prophet’s beard!” cried the Haussa sergeant, flinging himself
flat behind the camel, “these be no Wakonda, but ghazis of the far
desert. Shoot well, O my children!”
It was all happening with the jerky rapidity of a cinematograph film,
and the noise passed hearing. The command, inspired with visions of
buttered mutton, loaded and fired as one man. Two, three close-range
volleys swept between the walls, and the alley was blotched with whitish
bundles that were the bodies of the desert men. But the others came on,
and suddenly Blake was on his feet in the shadow of the gate, fighting
hand to hand for his life.
“Stand firm, O my children!”
The sergeant’s voice echoed his. He was the centre of an indescribable
confusion. Under the gate the smoke of the volleys hung heavily. Through
this broke first one fierce face, then another, the gleams of arms, the
surge and retreat of the attack, the blows and outcries of men. Ibrahim,
the son of Suleiman, fell across Blake’s feet and coughed his life out
in ten seconds. Another of his best men was down, speared through the
heart. And then, as suddenly as they had come, the desert men retreated
to the shelter of the huts, and Blake, looking up, saw that it was day.
“They are gone,” said the sergeant, looking at the dead, “but they will
come again. O Effendi, this is no good place.”
“I should have kept more men,” Blake was thinking clearly and rapidly.
“If Mac doesn’t come back inside ten minutes, it will be too late for
us, and he’ll have to cut his way out.”
A moment’s dreamlike quiet had succeeded the dreamlike noise. Over his
head the sky was clear and growing gold, barred with the black flocks of
wild-fowl that flew to their feeding grounds in the valley. The sun rose
with the hard flash of metal, and the blink of metal answered from the
ruined roof of Mannering’s house. Blake’s breath drew cold. Was he also
to die uselessly, wastefully, his work unfinished, under the spears of
Wakonda? “Steady, men, steady, and fire slowly! It is ours to hold the
gate.”
The Haussa sergeant leaped to his feet.
“They come again! O jackals of the sands, we men are ready—”
“Silence—and lie down!”
Again with that dreaming sense of unreality Blake watched the rush of
fluttering figures up the valley. The men were loading and firing as
fast as they could, but the rush was scarcely checked. Someone behind
him began to croon a wild death-song. A thrown spear flickered before
his eyes and struck his head a glancing blow. He looked at it curiously
as it clattered down on his boots, and wondered why his hands felt so
weak, and why the earth reeled under his feet like an outrolled ribbon.
Then everything was lost in a warm red mist through which savage faces
seemed to peer and yell. Blinded and dizzy, he braced himself for the
shock of the charge, the while some voice in his head was buzzing
busily, “you will go down as Mannering did, a failure, a failure. . .”
An utter pity for Mannering filled him. He leaned back against the wall,
levelled his revolver as well as he could on his knee, and waited—as
Mannering had waited.
“_Ya Illah!_” shouted the sergeant hoarsely. “Who be these?”
Blake cleared the blood from his eyes and looked. The attack had wavered
and had turned upon itself, for a compact little force of ten had filed
out from behind a house and fallen upon the desert men in the rear. They
were in all degrees of dress and undress. Their leader was very tall and
very thin, with a great bush of hair, upon which he wore the remains of
a tarboosh, and he had an empty bandoleer round his neck. He and his
were armed variously, ranging from a damaged Martini to an inlaid jesail
from the North. These weapons they were using variously, in disciplined
silence. So much Blake saw in a photographic flash of amazement. Then
strength came back to him, and he and the sergeant flung themselves
across the dead camel.
“Come on, you black rascals!” shouted Blake, staggering as he stood.
“Follow me, sons of darkness!” yelled the sergeant.
The men obeyed with howls. Caught between two forces, the enemy fighting
like wolves, were driven down alleys, cut down in corners, scattered and
broken. In five minutes Blake’s men and their unknown allies were
staring and panting under the gate, their work done.
“Now,” suggested the Haussa, patting Blake all over with his delicate
black hands in a search for fatal injuries—“now I go and picket that
street whence came the cooking smell.”
“Wait!” commanded Blake. He looked at the gate; at the dead lying in the
light and the black shadows. Even now the gold had scarcely gone from
the faint, hot blue sky; scattered bands of birds still flew across it,
and the high air seemed stirred with a multitude of wings. He looked at
the leader of the allies, who was standing on one leg and grinning
anxiously.
“Who art thou?”
The man drew his dusty heels together and carefully saluted.
“We be the men of Mannering Bimbashi.”
“Of Mannering Bimbashi?”
“Yea, Master. I was a policeman of the force wherewith he policed this
town. He said to us, ‘Go here’ or ‘Go there,’ and we went and punished
the evil-doers. Twice and thrice have I fought under Mannering
Bimbashi.” He gazed contemptuously at his command. “These others are
also of his force, or of his house—warriors, as I am, or gardeners and
herders of goats; but all Mannering Bimbashi’s men.”
“Go on,” said Blake quietly.
“Mannering Bimbashi was slain, and many of his folk; but I was left. I
remembered. I gathered these others together, and bade them remember
also. Mannering Bimbashi was dead, but we were not freed from our
service. We had to live. I was a seller of rock-salt in the
market-place, and these others did work after their kind. Sometimes we
met and spoke together. None knew us for his men, and his name might not
be upon our lips; but we laid our hands upon our mouths—so—and then we
remembered.”
“Go on.”
“There is no more. It is very difficult to remember. But I knew the
English would come in the footsteps of our Bimbashi and I held these of
his together in readiness, as thou hast seen. But our Bimbashi—on whom
be peace!—has been dead a long time, and now we would take service with
thee, O master.”
“Thou hast done well.” Blake’s voice shook a little as he thought how
well. “Thou hast done very well. But why?”
The man was very ugly and very black, but all the poetry and sadness of
the Arab were in his face as he answered:
“We were his men. We loved him.”
Blake’s eyes were dim as he looked across at the ruined house. There,
Mannering had gone down, and his hope, his work, his deeds—all these
had gone down with him into dust.
“But even here there was love left,” said Blake aloud, with a kind of
wonder; “even here there was love left!”
Then he took his men and Mannering’s and went to join Macartney in the
ordering of Wakonda.