For the first time Lewis felt the East. Hitherto he had been unable to

see anything in his errand but its futility. A stupider man, with a

sharp, practical brain, would have taken himself seriously and come to

Bardur with an intent and satisfied mind. He would have assumed the air

of a diplomatist, have felt the dignity of his mission, and in success

and failure have borne himself with self-confidence. But to Lewis the

business which loomed serious in England, at Bardur took on the colour

of comedy. He felt his impotence, he was touched insensibly by the easy

content of the place. Frontier difficulties seemed matters for romance

and comic opera; and Bardur resolved itself into an English suburb, all

tea-parties and tennis. But at times an austere conscience jogged him

to remembrance, and in one such fitful craving for action and enterprise

he had found this errand. Now at last, astride the little Kashmir pony,

with his face to the polestar and the hills, he felt the mystery of a

strange world, and his work assumed a tinge of the adventurer. This was

new, he told himself; this was romance. He had his eyes turned to a new

land, and the smell of dry mountain sand and scrub, and the vault-like,

imperial sky were the earnest of his inheritance. This was the East,

the gorgeous, the impenetrable. Before him were the hill deserts, and

then the great, warm plains, and the wide rivers, and then on and on to

the cold north, the steppes, the icy streams, the untrodden forests. To

the west and beyond the mountains were holy mosques, "shady cities of

palm trees," great walled towns to which north and west and south

brought their merchandise. And to the east were latitudes more

wonderful, the uplands of the world, the impassable borders of the

oldest of human cultures. Names rang in his head like tunes--Khiva,

Bokhara, Samarkand, the goal of many boyish dreams born of clandestine

suppers and the Arabian Nights. It was an old fierce world he was on

the brink of, and the nervous frontier civilization fell a thousand

miles behind him.

The white road turned to the right with the valley, and the hills crept

down to the distance of a gun-shot. The mounting tiers of stone and

brawling water caught the moonlight in waves, and now he was in a cold

pit of shadow and now in a patch of radiant moonshine. It was a world

of fantasy, a rousing world of wintry hill winds and sudden gleams of

summer. His spirits rose high, and he forgot all else in plain

enjoyment. Now at last he had found life, rich, wild, girt with

marvels. He was beginning to whistle some air when his pony shied

violently and fell back, and at the same moment a pistol-shot cracked

out of a patch of thorn.

He turned the beast and rode straight at the thicket, which was a very

little one. The ball had wandered somewhere into the void, and no harm

was done, but he was curious about its owner. Up on the hillside he

seemed to see a dark figure scrambling among the cliffs in the fretted

moonlight.

It is unpleasant to be shot at in the dark from the wayside, but at the

moment the thing pleased this strange young man. It seemed a token that

at last he was getting to work. He found a rope stretched taut across

the road, which accounted for the pony's stumble. Laughing heartily, he

cut it with his knife, and continued, cheerful as before, but somewhat

less fantastic. Now he kept a sharp eye on all wayside patches.

At the head of the valley the waters of the stream forked into two

torrents, one flowing from the east in an open glen up which ran the

road to Yarkand, the other descending from the northern hills in a wild

gully. At the foot stood a little hut with an apology for stabling,

where an old and dirty gentleman of the Hunza race pursued his calling

till such time as he should attract the notice of his friends up in the

hills and go to paradise with a slit throat.

Lewis roused the man with a violent knocking at the door. The old

ruffian appeared with a sputtering lamp which might have belonged to a

cave man, and a head of matted grey hair which suggested the same

origin. He was old and suspicious, but at Lewis's bidding he hobbled

forth and pointed out the stabling.

"The pony is to stay here till it is called for. Do you hear? And if

Holm Sahib returns and finds that it is not fed he will pay you nothing.

So good night, father. Sound sleep and a good conscience."

He turned to the twisting hill road which ran up from the light into the

gloom of the cleft with all the vigour of an old mountaineer who has

been long forced to dwell among lowlands. Once a man acquires the art

of hill walking he will always find flat country something of a burden,

and the mere ascent of a slope will have a tonic's power. The path was

good, but perilous at the best, and the proximity of yawning precipices

gave a zest to the travel. The road would fringe a pit of shade, black

but for the gleam of mica and the scattered foam of the stream. It was

no longer a silent world. Hawks screamed at times from the cliffs, and

a multitude of bats and owls flickered in the depths. A continuous

falling of waters, an infinite sighing of night winds, the swaying and

tossing which is always heard in the midmost mountain solitudes, the

crumbling of hill gravel and the bleat of a goat on some hill-side, all

made a cheerful accompaniment to the scraping of his boots on the rocky

road.

He remembered the way as if he had travelled it yesterday. Soon the

gorge would narrow and he would be almost at the water's edge. Then the

path turned to the right and wound into the heart of a side nullah,

which at length brought it out on a little plateau of rocks. There the

road climbed a long ridge till at last it reached the great plateau,

where Forza, set on a small hilltop, watched thirty miles of primeval

desert. The air was growing chilly, for the road climbed steeply and

already it was many thousand feet above the sea. The curious salt smell

which comes from snow and rock was beginning to greet his nostrils. The

blood flowed more freely in his veins, and insensibly he squared his

shoulders to drink in the cold hill air. It was of the mountains and

yet strangely foreign, an air with something woody and alpine in the

heart of it, an air born of scrub and snow-clad rock, and not of his own

free spaces of heather. But it was hill-born, and this contented him;

it was night-born, and it refreshed him. In a little the road turned

down to the stream side, and he was on the edge of a long dark pool.

The river, which made a poor show in the broad channel at Bardur, was

now, in this straitened place, a full lipping torrent of clear, green

water. Lewis bathed his flushed face and drank, and it was as cold as

snow. It stung his face to burning, and as he walked the heartsome glow

of great physical content began to rise in his heart. He felt fit and

ready for any work. Life was quick in his sinews, his brain was a

weathercock, his strength was tireless. At last he had found a man's

life. He had never had a chance before. Life had been too easy and

sheltered; he had been coddled like a child; he had never roughed it

except for his own pleasure. Now he was outside this backbone of the

world with a task before him, and only his wits for his servant. Eton

and Oxford, Eton and Oxford--so it had been for generations--an

education sufficient to damn a race. Stocks was right, and he had all

along been wrong; but now he was in a fair way to taste the world's iron

and salt, and he exulted at the prospect.

It was hard walking in the nullah. In and out of great crevices the

road wound itself, on the brink of stupendous waterfalls, or in the

heart of a brushwood tangle. Soon a clear vault of sky replaced the

out-jutting crags, and he came out on a little plateau where a very cold

wind was blowing. The smell of snow was in the air, a raw smell like

salt when carried on a north wind over miles of granite crags. But on

the little tableland the moon was shining clearly. It was green with

small cloud-berries and dwarf juniper, and the rooty fragrance was for

all the world like an English bolt or a Highland pasture. Lewis flung

himself prone and buried his face among the small green leaves. Then,

still on the ground, he scanned the endless yellow distance. Mountains,

serrated and cleft as in some giant's play, rose on every hand, while

through the hollows gleamed the farther snow-peaks. This little bare

plateau must be naked to any eye on any hill-side, and at the thought he

got to his feet and advanced.

At first sight the place had looked not a mile long, but before he got

to the farther slope he found that it was nearer two. The mountain air

had given him extraordinary lightness, and he ran the distance, finding

the hard, sandy soil like a track under his feet. The slope, when he

had reached it, proved to be abrupt and boulder-strewn, and the path had

an ugly trick of avoiding steepness by skirting horrible precipices.

Luckily the moon was bright, and the man was an old mountaineer;

otherwise he might have found a grave in the crevices which seamed the

hill.

He had not gone far when he began to realize that he was not the only

occupant of the mountain side. A whistle which was not a bird's seemed

to catch his ear at times, and once, as he shrank back into the lee of a

boulder, there was the sound of naked feet on the road before him. This

was news indeed, and he crept very cautiously up the rugged path. Once,

when in shelter, he looked out, and for a second, in a patch of

moonlight, he saw a man with the loose breeches and tightened girdle of

the hillmen. He was running swiftly as if to some arranged place of

meeting.

The sight put all doubts out of his head. An attack on Forza was

imminent, and this was the side from which least danger would be

expected. If the enemy got there before him they would find an easy

entrance. The thought made him quicken his pace. These scattered

tribesmen must meet before they attacked, and there might still be time

for him to get in front. His ears were sharp as a deer's to the

slightest sound. A great joy in the game possessed him. When he

crouched in the shelter of a granite boulder or sprawled among the scrub

while the light footsteps of a tribesman passed on the road he felt that

one point was scored to him in a game in which he had no advantages. He

blessed his senses trained by years of sport to a keenness beyond a

townsman's; his eye, which could see distances clear even in the misty

moonlight; his ear, which could judge the proximity of sounds with a

nice exactness. Twice he was on the brink of discovery. A twig snapped

as he lay in cover, and he heard footsteps pause, and he knew that a

pair of very keen eyes were scanning the brushwood. He blessed his

lucky choice in clothes which had made him bring a suit so near the hue

of his hiding-place. Then he felt that the eyes were averted, the

footsteps died away, and he was safe. Again, as he turned a corner

swiftly, he almost came on the back of a man who was stepping along

leisurely before him. For a second he stopped, and then he was back

round the corner, and had swung himself up to a patch of shadow on the

crag-side. He looked down and saw his enemy clearly in the moonlight; a

long, ferret-faced fellow, with a rifle hung on his back and an ugly

crooked knife in his hand. The man looked round, sniffing the air like

a stag, and then, satisfied that there was nothing to fear, turned and

went on. Lewis, who had been sitting on a sharp jag of rock, swung an

aching body to the ground and advanced circumspectly.

In an hour or two he came to the top of the slope and the beginning of

the second tableland. A grey dimness was taking the place of the dark,

and it had suddenly grown bitterly cold. Dawn in such high latitudes is

not a thing of violent changes, but of slow and subtle gradations of

light, of sudden, coy flushes of colour, of thin winds and bright

fleeting hazes. He lay for a minute in the scrub of cloud-berries, the

collar of his coat buttoned round his throat, and the morning wind,

fresh from leagues of snow, blowing chill on his face. Behind was the

slope alive with men who at any moment might emerge on the plateau. He

waited for the sight of a figure, but none came; clearly the muster was

not yet complete. A thought grew in his brain, and a sudden clearness

in the air translated it into action; for in the hazy distance across

the tableland he saw the walls of Forza fort.

The place could not be two miles off, and between it and him there was

the smooth benty plateau. He might make a rush for it and cross

unobserved. Even now the early sun was beginning to strike it. The

yellow-grey walls stood out clear against the far line of mountains, and

the wisp of colour which fluttered in the wind was clearly the British

flag. The exceeding glory of the morning gave him a new vigour. Why

should not he run with any tribesman of the lot? If he could but avoid

the risk of a rifle bullet at the outset, he would have no fear of the

issue.

He glanced behind him. The place seemed still, though far down there

was a tinkle as of little stones falling. He stood up, straightened

himself for one moment till he had filled his lungs with the clean air.

Then he started to run quickly towards the fort.

The full orb of the sun topped the mountains and the dazzle was in his

eyes from the first. If he covered the first half-mile unpursued he

would be safe; otherwise he might expect a bullet. It was a comic

feeling--the wide green heath, the fresh air, the easy vigour in his

stride, the flush of the morning sun, and that awkward, nervous weakness

in the small of his back where a bullet might be expected to find a

lodgment.

He never looked back till he had gone what seemed to him the proper

distance, and then he glanced hurriedly over his shoulder.

Two men had emerged from the scrub and stood on the edge of the slope.

They were gazing intently at him, and suddenly one lifted a Snider to

his shoulder and fired. The bullet burrowed in the sand to the right of

him. Again he looked back and there they were--five of them now--crying

out to him. Then with one accord they followed over the plateau.

It was now a clear race for life. He must keep beyond reasonable

rifle-shot; otherwise a broken leg might bring him to a standstill. He

cursed the deceptive clearness of the hill air which made it impossible

for his unpractised eye to judge distances. The fort stood clear in

every stone, but it might be miles off though it looked scarcely a

thousand yards. Apparently it was still asleep, for no smoke was

rising, and, strain his ears as he might, he could hear no sound of a

sentry's walk. This looked awkward indeed for him. If the people were

not awake to receive him, he would be potted against its wall as surely

as a rat in a corner. He grew acutely nervous, and as he drew nearer he

made the air hideous with shouts to wake the garrison. A clear race in

the open he did not mind; but he had no stomach for a game of

hide-and-seek around an unscalable wall with an active enemy.

Apparently the gentry behind him were growing despondent. Two rifle

bullets, fired by running men, sang unsteadily in his wake. He was now

so near that he could see the rough wooden gate and the pyramidal nails

with which it was studded. He could guess the number of paces between

him and safety. He was out of breath and a little tired, for the

scramble up the nullah had not been a light one. Again he yelled

frantically to the dead walls, beseeching their inmates to get out of

bed and save his life.

There was still no sound from the sleeping fortress. He was barely a

hundred yards off, and he saw now that the walls were too high to climb

and that nothing remained but the gate. He picked up a stone and flung

it against the woodwork. The din echoed through the empty place, but

there was no sound of life. Just at the threshold there was a patch of

shadow. It was his one way of escape, and as he reached the door and

kicked and hammered at the wood, he cowered down in the shade, praying

that his friends behind might be something less than sharpshooters.

The pursuit saw its chance, and running forward to get within easy

range, proceeded to target practice. Lewis, kicking diligently at the

door, was trying to draw himself into the smallest space, and his mind

was far from comfortable. It needs good nerves to fill the position of

a target with equanimity, and he was too tired to take it in good part.

A disagreeable cold sweat stood on his brow, and his heart beat

violently. Then a bullet did what all his knocking had failed to do,

for it crashed into the woodwork and woke the garrison. He heard feet

hurrying across a yard, and then it seemed to him that men were

reconnoitring from the top of the wall. A second later--when the third

bullet had buried itself in dust a foot beyond his head--the heavy gate

was half opened and a man's hand assisted him to crawl inside.

He looked up to see a tall figure in pyjamas standing over him. "Now I

wonder who the deuce you are?" it was saying.

"My name's Haystoun. H-a-y-s;" then he broke off and laughed. He had

fallen into his old trick of spelling his name to the Oxford tradesmen

when he was young and hated to have it garbled.

He looked up at the questioner again. "Bless me, Andy, so it's you."

The man gave a yell of delight. "Lewis, upon my soul. Who'd have

thought it? It is a Providence. By Gad, I believe I'm just in time to

save your life."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HILL-FORT

Lewis got to his feet and blinked at the morning sun across the yard.

"That was a near shave. Phew, I hate being a target for sharpshooting!

These devils are your friends the Bada-Mawidi."

"The deuce they are," said Andover lugubriously. "I always knew it.

I've told Holm a hundred times, and now here is the beggar away sick and

I am left to pay the piper."

"I know. I met him in Bardur, and that's why I'm here. He told me to

tell you to mind the north gate."

"More easily said than done. We're too few by half here if things get

nasty. How was the chap looking?"

"Pretty miserable. Thwaite and I put him to bed. Then they sent me off

here, for I've got news for you. You know a man called Marker?"

Andover nodded.

"I was dining with him the day before yesterday, and yesterday morning I

got a note from him. He says that he has heard from some private source

that the Bada-Mawidi were arming and proposed an attack on Forza to-day.

He thinks they may have got their arms from the other side, you know.

At any rate he asked me to try to let you hear, and when I saw Holm last

night and heard that such a thing was possible, I came off at once. I

suppose Marker is the sort of man who should know."

"What did Thwaite say?"

"He was keen that I should come at once. Do you think that it's a false

alarm?"

"Oh, it will be genuine enough on Marker's part, but he may have been

misinformed. What beats me is the attack by day. I know the Badas as I

know my own name, and they're too few at the best to have any chance of

rushing the place. Besides, they are poor fighters in the open. On the

other hand they are devils incarnate in a night attack, as we used to

find to our cost. You are sure he said to-day?"

"Sure. Some time this morning."

"Wonder what their game is. However, he ought to be right if anybody

is, and we are much obliged to you for your trouble. You had a pretty

hard time in the open, but how on earth did you get up the hill?"

"Deerstalking style. It was good sport. But for heaven's sake, Andy,

give me breakfast, and tell me what you want me to do. I am under your

orders now."

"You'd better feed and then sleep for a bit. If you don't mind I'll

leave you, for I've got to be very busy. And poor old Holm looked

pretty sick, did he? Well, I am glad he has been saved this affair

anyhow."

A Sikh orderly brought Lewis breakfast. Beyond the tent door there was

stir in the garrison. Men were deployed in the yard, Gurkhas mainly,

with a few Kashmir sepoys, and the loud harsh voice of Andover was

raised to give orders. It was a hot still morning, with something

thunderous in the air. Hot sulphurous clouds were massing on the

western horizon, and the cool early breeze had gone. The whole place

smelt of powder.

Half-way through the meal Andover returned, his lean face red with

exertion. "I've got things more or less in order. They may easily

starve us out, for we are wretchedly provisioned, but I don't think

they'll get us with a rush. I wonder when the show is to commence." He

drank some coffee, and then filled a pipe.

"I left a man at Nazri. If the thing turns out to be a small affair I

am to meet him there to-night; but if I don't come he is to know that it

is serious and go and warn the Khautmi people. You haven't a connection

by any chance?"

"No. Wish we had. The heliograph is no good, and the telegraph is

still under the consideration of some engineer man. But how do you

propose to get to Nazri? It's only twelve miles, but they are mostly up

on end."

"I did it when I was here before. It's easy enough if you have done any

rock-climbing, and I can leave with the light. Besides, there's a

moon."

Andover laughed. "You've turned over a new leaf, Lewis. Your energy

puts us all to shame. I wish I had your physical gifts, my son. The

worst of being long and lanky in a place like this is that you're always

as stiff as a poker. I shall die of sciatica before I am forty. But

upon my word it is queer meeting you here in the loneliest spot in

creation. When I saw you in town before I came out, you were going into

Parliament or some game of that kind. Then I heard that you had been

out here, and gone back; and now for no earthly reason I waken up one

fine morning to find you being potted at before my gate. You're as

sudden as Marker, and a long chalk more mysterious."

Lewis looked grave. "I wish Marker were only as simple as me, or I as

sudden as him. It's a gift not learned in a day. Anyhow I'm here, and

we've got a day's sport before us. Hullo, the ball seems about to open."

Little puffs of smoke and dust were rising from beyond the wall, and on

the heavy air came the faint ping-ping of rifles.

Andover stretched himself elaborately. "Lord alive, but this is absurd.

What do these beggars expect to do? They can't shell a fort with stolen

expresses."

The two men went up to the edge of the wall and looked over the plateau.

A hundred yards off stood a group of tribesmen formed in some semblance

of military order, each with a smoking rifle in his hand. It was like a

parody of a formation, and Andover after rubbing his eyes burst into a

roar of laughter.

"The beggars must be mad. What in heaven's name do they expect to do,

standing there like mummies and potting at a stone wall? There's two

more companies of them over there. It isn't war, it's comic opera." And

he sat down, still laughing, on the edge of a gun-case to put on the

boots which his orderly had brought.

It was comic opera, but the tinge of melodrama was not absent. When a

sufficient number of rounds had been fired, the tribesmen, as if acting

on half-understood instructions from some prehistoric manual, slung

their rifles on their shoulders and came on. The fire from the fort did

not stop them, though it broke their line. In a minute they were

clutching at every hand-grip and foothold on the wall, and Andover with

a beaming face directed the disposition of his men.

Forza is built of great, rough stones, with ends projecting in places

cyclopean-wise, which to an active man might give a foothold. The

little garrison was at its posts, and picked the men off with carbines

and revolvers, and in emergencies gave a brown chest the straight

bayonet-thrust home. The tribesmen fought like fiends, scrambling up

silently with long knives between their teeth, till a shot found them

and they rolled back to die on the sand at the foot. Now and again

a man would reach the parapet and spring down into the courtyard. Then

it was the turn of Andover and Lewis to account for him, and they did

not miss. One man with matted hair and beard was at Lewis's back before

he saw him. A crooked knife had nearly found that young man's neck, but

a lucky twisting aside saved him. He dodged his adversary up and down

the yard till he got his pistol from his inner pocket. Then it was his

turn to face about. The man never stopped and a ball took him between

the eyes. He dropped dead as a stone, and his knife flying from his

hand skidded along the sand till it stopped with a clatter on the

stones. The sound in the hot sulphurous air grated horribly, and Lewis

clapped his hands to his ears to find that he too had not come off

scathless. The knife had cut the lobe, and, bleeding like a pig, he

went in search of water.

The assailants seemed prepared to find paradise speedily, for they were

not sparing with their lives. The attacking party was small, and

apparently there was no reserve, for in all the wide landscape there was

no sign of man. Then for no earthly reason the assault was at an end.

One by one the men dropped back and disappeared from the plateau. There

was no overt signal, no sound; but in a little the annoyed garrison were

looking at vacancy and one another.

"This is the devil's own business," said Andover, rubbing his eyes. The

men, too astonished to pick off stragglers, allowed the enemy to melt

into space; then they set themselves down with rifles cuddled up to

their chins, and stared at Andover.

"It beats me," said that disturbed man. "How many killed?"

"Seven," said a sergeant. "About five more wounded. None of us

touched, barring a bullet in my boot, and two Johnnies slashed on the

cheek. Seems to me as if the gen'lman, Mr. 'Aystoun, was 'it, though."

At the word Andover ran for his quarters, where he found his servant

dressing Lewis's wounded ear. That young man with a face of great

despair was inclining his head over a basin.

"What's the matter, Andy? Don't tell me the show has stopped. I

thought they were game to go on for hours, and I was just coming to join

you."

"They've gone, every mother's son of them. I told you it was comic

opera all along. Seven of them have found the part too much for them,

but the rest have cleared out like smoke. I give it up."

Lewis stared at the speaker, his brain busy with a problem. For a

moment before the fight, and for a little during its progress he had

been serenely happy. He had done something hard and perilous; he had

risked bullets; he had brought authentic news of a real danger. He was

happily at peace with himself; the bland quiet of conscience which he

had not felt for months had given him the vision of a new life. But the

danger had faded away in smoke; and here was Andover with a mystified

face asking its meaning.

"I swear that those fellows never had the least intention of beating us.

There were far too few of them for one thing. They looked like

criminals fighting under sentence, you know, like the Persian fellows.

It was more like some religious ceremony than a fight. The whole thing

is beyond me, but I think no harm's done. Hang it, I wish Holm were

here. He's a depressing beggar, but he takes responsibility off my

shoulders."

The dead men were buried as quickly and decently as the place allowed

of. Things were generally cleaned up, and by noon the little fort was

as spick as if the sound of a rifle had never been heard within its

walls. Lewis and Andover had the midday meal in a sort of gun-room

which looked over the edge of the plateau to a valley in the hills. It

had been arranged and furnished by a former commandant who found in the

view a repetition of the one in a much-loved Highland shooting-box.

Accordingly it was comfortable and homelike beyond the average of

frontier dwellings. Outside a dripping mist had clouded the hills and

chilled the hot air.

The two men smoked silently, knocking out their ashes and refilling with

the regularity of clockwork. Lewis was thinking hard, thinking of the

bitterness of dashed hopes, of self-confidence clutched at and lost. He

saw as if in an inspiration the trend of Marker's plans. He had been

given a paltry fictitious errand, like a bone to a dog, to quiet him.

Some devilry was afoot and he must be got out of the road. For a second

the thought pleased him, the thought that at least one man held him

worthy of attention, and went out of his way to circumvent him. But the

gleam of satisfaction was gone in a moment. He could not even be sure

that there was guile at the back of it. It might be all foolish

honesty, and to a man cursed with a sense of weakness the thought of

such a pedestrian failure was trebly intolerable.

But honesty was inconceivable. He and he alone in all the frontier

country knew Marker and his ways. To Andover, sucking his pipe dismally

beside him, the thing appeared clear as the daylight. Marker, the best

man alive, had word of some Bada-Mawidi doings and had given a friendly

hint. It was not his blame if the thing had fizzled out like damp

powder. But to Lewis, Marker was a man of uncanny powers and

intelligence beyond others, the iron will of the true adventurer. There

must be devilry behind it all, and to the eye of suspicion there was

doubt in every detail. And meantime he had fallen an easy victim.

Marooned in this frontier fort, the world might be turned topsy-turvy at

Bardur, and he not a word the wiser. Things were slipping from his

grasp again. He had an intense desire to shut his eyes and let all

drift. He had done enough. He had come up here at the risk of his

neck; fate had fought against him, and he must succumb. The fatal

wisdom of proverbs was all on his side.

But once again conscience assailed him. Why had he believed Marker,

knowing what he knew? He had been led by the nose like a crude

school-boy. It was nothing to him that he had to believe or remain idle

in Bardur. Another proof of his folly! This importunate sense of

weakness was the weakest of all qualities. It made him a nervous and

awkward follower of strength, only to plunge deeper into the mud of

incapacity.

Andover looked at him curiously. His annoyance was of a different

stamp--a little disappointment, intense boredom, and the ever-present

frontier anxiety. But such were homely complaints to be forgotten over

a pipe and in sleep. It struck him that his companion's eyes betrayed

something more, and he kicked him on the shins into attention.

"Been seedy lately? Have some quinine. Or if you can't sleep I can

tell you a dodge. But you know you are looking a bit cheap, old man."

"I'm pretty fit," said Lewis, and he raised his brown face to a glass.

"Why I'm tanned like a nigger and my eye's perfectly clear."

"Then you're in love," said the mysterious Andover. "Trust me for

knowing. When a man keeps as quiet as you for so long, he's either in

love or seedy. Up here people don't fall in love, so I thought it must

be the other thing."

"Rot," said Lewis. "I'm going out of doors. I must be off pretty soon,

if I'm to get to Nazri by sundown. I wish you'd come out and show me

the sort of lie of the land. There are three landmarks, but I can't

remember their order."

An hour later the two men returned, and Lewis sat down to an early

dinner. He ate quickly, and made up sandwiches which he stuffed into

his pocket. Then he rose and gripped his host's hand.

"Good-bye, Andy. This has been a pleasant meeting. Wish it could have

been longer."

"Good-bye, old chap. Glad to have seen you. My love to George, if you

get to Nazri. Give you three to one in half-crowns you won't get there

to-night."

"Done," said Lewis. "You shall pay when I see you next." And in the

most approved style of the hero of melodrama he lit a short pipe and

went off into Immensity.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE WAY TO NAZRI

Our traveller did not reach Nazri that night for many reasons, of which

the chief shall be told. The way to Nazri is long and the way to Nazri

is exceedingly rough. Leaving the table-land you plunge down a

trackless gully into the dry bed of a stream. Thence it is an hour's

uneasy walking among stagnant pools and granite boulders to the foot of

another nullah which runs up to the heart of the hills. From this you

pick your way along the precipitous side of a mountain, and if your head

is good and your feet sure, may come eventually to a place like the roof

of the house, beyond which lies a thicket of thorn-bushes and the Nazri

gully. At first sight the thing seems impossible, but by a bold man it

can be crossed either in the untanned Kashmir shoes or with the naked

feet.

Lewis had not gone a mile and had barely reached the dry watercourse,

when the weather broke utterly in a storm of mist and fine rain. At

other times this chill weather would have been a comfort, but here in

these lonely altitudes, with a difficult path before him, its result was

to confound confusion. So long as he stuck to the stream he had some

guidance; it was hard, even when the air was like a damp blanket, to

mistake the chaos of boulder and shingle which meant the channel. But

the mist was close to him and wrapped him in like a quilt, and he looked

in vain for the foot of the nullah he must climb. He tried keeping by

the edge and feeling his way, but it only landed him in a ditch of

stagnant slime. The thing was too vexatious, and his temper went; and

with his temper his last chance of finding his road. When he had

stumbled for what seemed hours he sat down on a boulder and whistled

dismally. The stream belonged to another watershed. If he followed it,

assuming that he did not break his neck over a dry cataract, he would be

through the mountains and near Taghati quicker than he intended.

Meantime the miserable George would wait at Nazri, would rouse the

Khautmi garrison on a false alarm, and would find himself irretrievably

separated from his friend. The thought was so full of irritation, that

he resolved not to stir one step further. He would spend the night if

need be in this place and wait till the mist lifted.

He found a hollow among the boulders, and improvidently ate half his

store of sandwiches. Then, finding his throat dry, he got up to hunt

for water. A trickle afar off in the rocks led him on, and sure enough

he found water; but when he tried to retrace his steps to his former

resting place he found that he had forgotten the way. This new place

was conspicuously less sheltered, but he sat down on the wet gravel, lit

a pipe with difficulty, and with his knees close to his chin strove to

possess his soul in patience.

He was tired, for he had slept little for two days, and the closer air

of the ravine made him drowsy. He had lost any sense of discomfort from

the wet, and was in the numb condition of the utterly drenched. He

could not spend the night like this, so he roused himself and stood

staring, pipe in teeth, into the drizzle. The mist seemed clearer. He

was a little stupid, so he did not hear the sound of feet on stones till

they were almost on him. Then through the haze he saw a procession of

figures moving athwart the channel. They were not his countrymen, for

they walked with the stoop forward which no Englishman can ever quite

master in his hill-climbing. Lewis turned to flee, but in his numbness

of mind and body missed footing, and fell sprawling over a bank of

shingle. He scrambled to his feet only to find hands at his throat, and

himself a miserable prisoner.

The scene had shifted with a vengeance, and his first and sole impulse

was to laugh. It is possible that if the scarf of a brawny tribesman

had not been so tight across his chest he would have astonished his

captors with hysterical laughter. But the jolt as he was dragged up

hill, tied close to a horse's side, was unfavourable to merriment, and

raw despondency filled his soul. This was the end of his fine doings.

The prisoner of unknown bandits, hurried he knew not whence, a pretty

pass for an adventurer. This was the seal on his ineffectiveness. Shot

against a rock, held up to some sordid ransom, he was as impotent for

good or ill as if he had stayed at home. For a second he longed to pull

horse and captor with one wrench over the brink to the kindly gulf where

all was quiet.

The bitterest ill-humour possessed this meekest of men. Normally he

would have been afraid, for he was an imaginative being who feared

horrors and had little relish for them. But there is a certain perfect

bad temper which casteth out fear, and this held him in its grip. He

cursed the mountain solitude and he cursed the Bada-Mawidi with awful

directness. Then he chose silence as the easier part, and trudged like

a stolid criminal till, half in a daze of weariness and sleep, he found

that the cavalcade had halted.

The place was the edge of a little tableland where in a hollow among

rocks lay a collection of mud-walled huts. A fire, in spite of the damp

weather, blazed cheerfully in the midst of the clearing. There was

commotion in the huts, every door was opened, and evil-smelling people

poured forth with cries and questions. The leader of the newly arrived

party bowed himself before a short, square man whom we have met before,

and spoke something in his ear. Fazir Khan looked up sharply at Lewis,

then laughed, and spoke something to his men in his own tongue.

Lewis comprehended barely a few words of Chil, the Bada tongue, and he

knew little of the frontier speeches. But to his amazement the chief

addressed him in tolerable, if halting, English. It was not for nothing

that Fazir Khan had harried the Border and sojourned incognito in every

town in North India.

"Allah has given thee to us, my son," he said sweetly. "It is vain to

fight against God. I have heard of thee as the Englishman who would

know more than is good for man to know. You were at Forza to-day."

Lewis's temper was at its worst. "I was at Forza to-day, and I watched

your people running. Had they waited a little longer we should have

slain them all, and then have come for you."

The chief smiled unpleasantly. "My people did not fight at Forza

to-day. That was but the sport to draw on fools. Soon we shall fight

in earnest, but in a different place, and thou shalt not see."

"I am your prisoner," said Lewis grimly, "and it is in your power to do

with me as you please. But remember that for every hair of my head my

people will take the lives of four of your cattle-lifters."

"That is an old story," said Fazir Khan wearily, "and I have heard it

many times before. You speak boldly like a man, and because you are not

afraid I will tell you the truth. In a very little there will be not

one of your people in the land, only the Bada-Mawidi, and others whom I

do not name."

"That is a still older story. I have heard it since I was in my

mother's arms. Do you think to frighten me by such a tale?"

"Let us not talk of fear," said the chief with some politeness. "There

are two races in your people, one which talks and allies itself with

Bengalis and swine, and one which lives in hard places and follows war.

The second I love, and had it been possible, I would have allied myself

with it and driven the others into the sea." This petty chieftain spoke

with the pride of one who ruled the destinies of the earth.

Lewis was unimpressed. "I am tired of your riddles," he said. "If you

would kill me have done with it. If you would keep me prisoner, give me

food and a place to sleep. But if you would be merciful, let me go and

show me the way to Bardur. Life is too short for waiting."

Fazir Khan laughed loudly, and spoke something to his people.

"You shall join in our company for the night," he said. "I have eaten

of the salt of your people and I do not murder without cause. Also I

love a bold man."

Lewis was led into the largest of the huts and given food and warm Hunza

wine. The place was hot to suffocation; large beads of moisture stood

on the mud walls, and the smell of uncleanly clothing and sweating limbs

was difficult to stand. But the man's complexion was hard, and he made

an excellent supper. Thereafter he became utterly drowsy. He had it in

his mind to question this Fazir Khan about his dark sayings, but his

eyes closed as if drawn by a magnet and his head nodded. It may have

been something in the wine; it may have been merely the vigil of the

last night, and the toil of the past hours. At any rate his mind was

soon a blank, and when a servant pointed out a heap of skins in a

corner, he flung himself on them and was at once asleep. He was utterly

at their mercy, but his course, had he known it, was the wisest. Even a

Bada's treachery has its limits, and he will not knife a confident

guest. The men talked and wrangled, ate and drank, and finally snored

around him, but he slept through it all like a sleeper of Ephesus.

When he woke the hut was cleared. The village slept late but he had

slept later, for the sun was piercing the unglazed windows and making

pattern-work on the earth floor. He had slept soundly a sleep haunted

with nightmares, and he was still dazed as he peered out into the square

where men were passing. He saw a sentry at the door of his hut, which

reminded him of his condition. All the long night he had been far away,

fishing, it seemed to him, in a curious place which was Glenavelin, and

yet was ever changing to a stranger glen. It was moonlight, still,

bright and warm on all the green hill shoulders. He remembered that he

caught nothing, but had been deliriously happy. People seemed passing

on the bank, Arthur and Wratislaw and Julia Heston, and all his

boyhood's companions. He talked to them pleasantly, and all the while

he was moving up the glen which lay so soft in the moonlight. He

remembered looking everywhere for Alice Wishart, but her face was

wanting. Then suddenly the place seemed to change. The sleeping glen

changed to a black sword-cut among rocks, his friends disappeared, and

only George was left. He remembered that George cried out something and

pointed to the gorge, and he knew--though how he knew it he could not

tell--that the lost Alice was somewhere there before him in the darkness

and he must go towards her. Then he had wakened shivering, for in that

darkness there was terror as well as joy.

He went to the door, only to find himself turned back by the sheep-skin

sentry, who half unsheathed for his benefit an ugly knife. He found

that his revolver, his sole weapon, had been taken while he slept.

Escape was impossible till his captors should return.

A day of burning sun had followed on the storm. Out of doors in the

scorching glare from the rock there seemed an extraordinary bustle. It

was like the preparations for a march, save that there seemed no method

in the activity. One man burnished a knife, a dozen were cleaning

rifles, and all wore the evil-smelling finery with which the hillman

decks his person for war. Their long oiled hair was tied in a sort of

rude knot, new and fuller turbans adorned the head, and on the feet were

stout slippers of Bokhara make. Lewis had keen eyesight, and he strove

to read the marks on the boxes of cartridges which stood in a corner.

It was not the well-known Government mark which usually brands stolen

ammunition. The three crosses with the crescent above--he had seen them

before, but his memory failed him. It might have been at Bardur in the

inn; it might have been at home in the house of some great traveller.

At any rate the sight boded no good to himself or the border peace. He

thought of George waiting alone at Nazri, and then obediently warning

the people at Khautmi. By this time Andover would know he was missing,

and men would be out on a very hopeless search. At any rate he had done

some good, for if the Badas meant marching they would find the garrisons

prepared.

About noon there was a bustle in the square and Fazir Khan with a dozen

of his tail swaggered in. He came straight to the hut, and two men

entered and brought out the prisoner. Lewis stiffened his back and

prepared not reluctantly for a change in the situation. He had no

special fear of this smiling, sinister chieftain. So far he had been

spared, and now it seemed unlikely that in the midst of this bustle of

war there would be room for the torture which alone he dreaded. So he

met the chief's look squarely, and at the moment he thanked the lot

which had given him two more inches of height.

"I have sent for thee, my son," said Fazir Khan, "that you may see how

great my people is."

"I have seen," said Lewis, looking round. "You have a large collection

of jackals, but you will not bring many back."

The notion tickled Fazir Khan and he laughed with great good-humour.

"So, so," he cried. "Behold how great is the wisdom of youth. I will

tell you a secret, my son. In a little the Bada-Mawidi, my people, will

be in Bardur and a little later in the fat corn lands of the south, and

I, Fazir Khan, will sit in King's palaces." He looked contemptuously

round at his mud walls, his heart swelling with pride.

"What the devil do you mean?" Lewis asked with rising suspicion. This

was not the common talk of a Border cateran.

"I mean what I mean," said the other. "In a little all the world shall

see. But because I have a liking for a bold cockerel like thee, I will

speak unwisely. The days of your people are numbered. This very night

there are those coming from the north who will set their foot on your

necks."

Lewis went sick at heart. A thousand half-forgotten suspicions called

clamorously. This was the secret of the burlesque at Forza, and the new

valour of the Badas. He saw Marker's game with the fatal clearness of

one who is too late. He had been given a chance of a little piece of

service to avert his suspicions. Marker had fathomed him well as one

who must satisfy a restless conscience but had no stomach for anything

beyond. Doubtless he thought that now he would be enjoying the rest

after labour at Forza, flattering himself on saving a garrison, when all

the while the force poured down which was to destroy an empire. An army

from the north, backed and guided by every Border half-breed and

outlaw--what hope of help in God's name was to be found in the sleepy

forts and the unsuspecting Bardur?

And the Kashmir and the Punjab? A train laid in every town and village.

Supplies in readiness, communications waiting to be held, railways ready

for capture. Europe was on the edge of a volcano. He saw an outbreak

there which would keep Britain employed at home, while the great power

with her endless forces and bottomless purse poured her men over the

frontier. But at the thought of the frontier he checked himself. There

was no road by which an army could march; if there was any it could be

blocked by a handful. A week's, a day's delay would save the north, and

the north would save the empire.

His voice came out of his throat with a crack in it like an old man's.

"There is no road through the mountains. I have been there before and I

know."

Again Fazir Khan smiled. "I use no secrecy to my friends. There is a

way, though all men do not know it. From Nazri there is a valley

running towards the sunrise. At the head there is a little ridge easily

crossed, and from that there is a dry channel between high precipices.

It is not the width of a man's stature, so even the sharp eyes of my

brother might miss it. Beyond that there is a sandy tableland, and then

another valley, and then plains."

The plan of the place was clear in Lewis's brain. He remembered each

detail. The long nullah on which he had looked from the hill-tops had,

then, an outlet, and did not end, as he had guessed, in a dead wall of

rock. Fool and blind! to have missed so glorious a chance!

He stood staring dumbly around him, unconscious that he was the

laughingstock of all. Then he looked at the chief.

"Am I your prisoner?" he asked hoarsely.

"Nay," said the other good-humouredly, "thou art free. We have

over-much work on hand to-day to be saddled with captives."

"Then where is Nazri?" he asked.

The chief laughed a loud laugh of tolerant amusement. "Hear to the bold

one," he cried. "He will not miss the great spectacle. See, I will

show you the road," and he pointed out certain landmarks. "For one of

my own people it is a journey of four hours; for thee it will be

something more. But hurry, and haply the game will not have begun. If

the northern men take thee I will buy thy life."

Four hours; the words rang in his brain like a sentence. He had no

hope, but a wild craving to attempt the hopeless. George might have

returned to Nazri to wait; it was the sort of docile thing that George

would do. In any case not five miles from Nazri was the end of the

north road and a little telegraph hut used by the Khautmi forts. The

night would be full moonlight; and by night the army would come. His

watch had been stolen, but he guessed by the heavens that it was some

two hours after noon. Five hours would bring him to Nazri at six, in

another he might be at the hut before the wires were severed. It was a

crazy chance, but it was his all, and meanwhile these grinning tribesmen

were watching him like some curious animal. They had talked to him

freely to mock his feebleness. His dominant wish was to escape from

their sight.

He turned to the descent. "I am going to Nazri," he said.

The chief held out his pistol. "Take your little weapon. We have no

need of such things when great matters are on hand. Allah speed you,

brother! A sure foot and a keen eye may bring you there in time for the

sport." And, still laughing, he turned to enter the hut.

CHAPTER XXX

EVENING IN THE HILLS

The airless heat of afternoon lay on the rocks and dry pastures. The

far snow-peaks, seen for a moment through a rift in the hills, shimmered

in the glassy stillness. No cheerful sound of running water filled the

hollows, for all was parched and bare with the violence of intemperate

suns and storms. Soon he was out of sight and hearing of the village,

travelling in a network of empty watercourses, till at length he came to

the long side of mountain which he knew of old as the first landmark of

the way. A thin ray of hope began to break up his despair. He knew now

the exact distance he had to travel, for his gift had always been an

infallible instinct for the lie of a countryside. The sun was still

high in the heavens; with any luck he should be at Nazri by six o'clock.

He was still sore with wounded pride. That Marker should have divined

his weakness and left open to him a task in which he might rest with a

cheap satisfaction was bitter to his vanity. The candour of his mind

made him grant its truth, but his new-born confidence was sadly

dissipated. And he felt, too, the futility of his efforts. That one

man alone in this precipitous wilderness should hope to wake the Border

seemed a mere nightmare of presumption. But it was possible, he said to

himself. Time only was needed. If he could wake Bardur and the north,

and the forts on the passes, there would be delay enough to wake India.

If George were at Nazri there would be two for the task; if not, there

would be one at least willing and able.

It was characteristic of the man that the invasion was bounded for him

by Nazri and Bardur. He had no ears for ultimate issues and the ruin of

an empire. Another's fancy would have been busy on the future; Lewis

saw only that pass at Nazri and the telegraph-hut beyond. He must get

there and wake the Border; then the world might look after itself. As

he ran, half-stumbling, along the stony hillside he was hard at work

recounting to himself the frontier defences. The Forza and Khautmi

garrisons might hold the pass for an hour if they could be summoned. It

meant annihilation, but that was in the bargain. Thwaite was strong

enough in Bardur, but the town might give him trouble of itself, and he

was not a man of resources. After Bardur there was no need of thought.

Two hours after the telegraph clicked in the Nazri hut, the north of

India would have heard the news and be bestirring itself for work. In

five hours all would be safe, unless Bardur could be taken and the wires

cut. There might be treason in the town, but that again was not his

affair. Let him but send the message before sunset, and he would still

have time to get to Khautmi, and with good luck hold the defile for

sixty minutes. The thought excited him wildly. His face dripped with

sweat, his boots were cut with rock till the leather hung in shreds, and

a bleeding arm showed through the rents in his sleeve. But he felt no

physical discomfort, only the exhilaration of a rock climber with the

summit in sight, or a polo player with a clear dribble before him to the

goal. At last he was playing a true game of hazard, and the chance gave

him the keenest joy.

All the hot afternoon he scrambled till he came to the edge of a new

valley. Nazri must lie beyond, he reasoned, and he kept to the higher

ground. But soon he was mazed among precipitous shelves which needed

all his skill. He had to bring his long stride down to a very slow and

cautious pace, and, since he was too old a climber to venture rashly, he

must needs curb his impatience. He suffered the dull recoil of his

earlier vigour. While he was creeping on this accursed cliff the

minutes were passing, and every second lessening his chances. He was in

a fever of unrest, and only a happy fortune kept him from death. But at

length the place was passed, and the mountain shelved down to a plateau.

A wide view lay open to the eye, and Lewis blinked and hesitated. He

had thought Nazri lay below him, and lo! there was nothing but a tangle

of black watercourses.

The sun had begun to decline over the farther peak, and the man's heart

failed him utterly. These unkind stony hills had been his ruin. He was

lost in the most formidable country on God's earth, lost! when his

whole soul cried out for hurry. He could have wept with misery, and

with a drawn face he sat down and forced himself to think.

Suddenly a long, narrow black cleft in the farther tableland caught his

eye. He took the direction from the sun and looked again. This must be

the Nazri Pass, which he had never before that day heard of. He saw

where it ended in a stony valley. Once there he had but to follow the

nullah and cross the little ridge to come to Nazri.

Weariness was beginning to grow on him, but the next miles were the

quickest of the day. He seemed to have the foot of a chamois. Down the

rocky hillside, across the chaos of boulders, and up into the dark

nullah he ran like a maniac. His mouth was parched with thirst, and he

stopped for a moment in the valley bottom to swallow some rain-water.

At last he found himself in the Nazri valley, with the thin sword-cut

showing dark in the yellow evening. Another mile and he would be at the

camping-place, and in five more at the hut.

He kept high up on the ridge, for the light had almost gone and the

valley was perilous. It must be hideously late, eight o'clock or more,

he thought, and his despair made him hurry his very weary limbs.

Suddenly in the distant hollow he saw the gleam of a fire. He stopped

abruptly and then quickened with a cry of joy. It must be the faithful

George still waiting in the place appointed. Now there would be two to

the task. But it was too late, he bitterly reflected. In a little the

moon would rise, and then at any moment the van of the invader might

emerge from the defile. He might warn Bardur, but before anything could

be done the enemy would be upon them. And then there would be a

southward march upon a doubtful and half-awakened country, and then--he

knew not.

But there was one other way. It had not occurred to him before, for it

is not an expedient which comes often to men nowadays, save to such as

are fools and outcasts. We are a wise and provident age, mercantile in

our heroics, seeking a solid profit for every sacrifice. But this

man--a child of the latter day--had not the new self-confidence, and he

was at the best high-strung, unwise, and unworldly. Besides, he was

broken with toil and excited with adventure. The last dying rays of the

sun were resting on the far snow walls, and the great heart of the west

burned in one murky riot of flame. But to the north, whence came

danger, there was a sea of yellow light, islanded with faint roseate

clouds like some distant happy country. The air of dusk was thin and

chill but stirring as wine to the blood, and all the bare land was for

the moment a fairy realm, mystic, intangible and untrodden. The

frontier line ran below the camping place; here he was over the border,

beyond the culture of his kind. He was alone, for in this adventure

George would not share. He would earn nothing, in all likelihood he

would achieve nothing; but by the grace of God he might gain some

minutes' respite. He would be killed; but that, again, was no business

of his. At least he could but try, for this was his one shred of hope

remaining.

The thought, once conceived, could not be rejected. He was no coward or

sophist to argue himself out of danger. He laid no flattering unction

to his soul that he had done his best while another way remained

untried. For this type of man may be half-hearted and a coward in

little matters, but he never deceives himself. We have all our own

virtues and their defects. I am a well-equipped and confident person,

walking bluffly through the world, looking through and down upon my

neighbours, the incarnation of honesty; but I can find excuses for

myself when I desire them, I hug my personal esteem too close, and a

thousand to one I am too great a coward at heart to tell myself the

naked truth. You, on the other hand, are vacillating and ill at your

ease. You shrink from the hards of life which I steer happily through.

But you have no delusions with yourself, and the odds are that when the

time comes you may choose the "high that proved too high" and achieve

the impossibly heroic.

A tired man with an odd gleam in his eye came out of the shadows to the

firelight and called George by name.

"My God, Lewis, I am glad to see you! I thought you were lost. Food?"

and he displayed the resources of his larder.

Lewis hunted for the water-bottle and quenched his thirst. Then he ate

ravenously of the cold wild-fowl and oatcake which George had provided.

He was silent and incurious till he had satisfied his wants; then he

looked up to meet George's questions.

"Where on earth have you been? Andover said you started out to come

here last night. I did as you told me, you know, and when you didn't

come I roused the Khautmi people. They swore a good deal but turned

out, and after an infernal long climb we got to Forza. We roused up

Andover after a lot of trouble, and he took us in and gave us supper.

He said you had gone off hours ago, and that the Bada-Mawidi business

had been more or less of a fraud. So I slept there and came back here

in the morning in case you should turn up. Been shooting all day, but

it was lonely work and I didn't get the right hang of the country.

These beggars there are jolly little use," and he jerked his head in the

direction of the native servants. "What _have_ you been after?"

"I? Oh, I've been in queer places. I fell into the hands of the Badas

a couple of hours after I left Forza. There was a storm up there and I

got lost in the mist. They took me up to a village and kept me there

all night. And then I heard news--my God, such news! They let me go

because they thought I could do no harm and I ran most of the way here.

Marker has scored this time, old man. You know how he has been going

about all North India for the last year or two getting things much his

own way. Well, to-night when the moon rises the great blow is to be

struck. It seems there is a pass to the north of this; I knew the place

but I didn't know of the road. There is an army coming down that place

in an hour or so. It is the devil's own business, but it has got to be

faced. We must warn Bardur, and trust to God that Bardur may warn the

south. You know the telegraph hut at the end of the road, when you

begin to climb up the ravine to the place? You must get down there at

once, for every moment is precious."

George had listened with staring eyes to the tale. "I can't believe

it," he managed to ejaculate. "God, man! it's invasion, an unheard-of

thing!"

"It's the most desperate truth, unheard-of or no. The whole thing lies

in our hands. They cannot come till after midnight, and by that time

Thwaite may be ready in Bardur, and the Khautmi men may be holding the

road. That would delay them for a little, and by the time they took

Bardur they might find the south in arms. It wouldn't matter a straw if

it were an ordinary filibustering business. But I tell you it's a great

army, and everything is prepared for it. Marker has been busy for

months. There will be outbreaks in every town in the north. The

railways and arsenals will be captured before ever the enemy appears.

There will be a native rising. That was to be bargained for. But God

only knows how the native troops have been tampered with. That man was

as clever as they make, and he has had a free hand. Oh the blind

fools!"

George had turned, and was buttoning the top button of his shooting-coat

against the chilly night wind. "What shall I say to Thwaite?" he

asked.

"Oh, anything. Tell him it's life or death. Tell him the facts, and

don't spare. You'll have to impress on the telegraph clerk its

importance first and that will take time. Tell him to send to Gilgit

and Srinagar, and then to the Indus Valley. He must send into Chitral

too and warn Armstrong. Above all things the Kohistan railway must be

watched, because it must be their main card. Lord! I wish I understood

the game better. Heaven knows it isn't my profession. But Thwaite will

understand if you scare him enough. Tell him that Bardur must be held

ready for siege at any moment. You understand how to work the thing?"

George nodded. "There'll be nobody there, so I suppose I'll have to

break the door open. I think I remember the trick of the business.

_Then_, what do I do?"

"Get up to Khautmi as fast as you can shin it. Better take the servants

and send them before you while you work the telegraph. I suppose

they're trustworthy. Get them to warn Mitchinson and St. John. They

must light the fires on the hills and collect all the men they can spare

to hold the road. Of course it's a desperate venture. We'll probably

all be knocked on the head, but we must risk it. If we can stop the

beggars for one half-hour we'll give Thwaite a better chance to set his

house in order. How I'd sell my soul to see a strong man in Bardur!

That will be the key of the position. If the place is uncaptured

to-morrow morning, and your wires have gone right, the chief danger on

this side will be past. There will be little risings of wasps' nests up

and down the shop, but we can account for them if this army from the

north is stopped."

"I wonder how many of us will see to-morrow morning," said George

dismally. He was not afraid of death, but he loved the pleasant world.

"Good-bye," said Lewis abruptly, holding out his hand.

The action made George realize for the first time the meaning of his

errand.

"But, I say, Lewie, hold on. What the deuce are you going to do?"

"I am dog-tired," said the impostor. "I must wait here and rest. I

should only delay you." And always, as if to belie his fatigue, his eyes

were turning keenly to the north. At any moment while he stood there

bandying words there might come the sound of marching, and the van of

the invaders issue from the defile.

"But, hang it, you know. I can't allow this. The Khautmi men mayn't

reach you in time, and I'm dashed if I am going to leave you here to be

chawed up by Marker. You're coming with me."

"Don't be an ass," said Lewis kindly. This parting, one in ignorance,

the other in too certain knowledge, was very bitter. "They can't be here

before midnight. They were to start at moonrise, and the moon is only

just up. You'll be back in heaps of time, and, besides, we'll soon all

be in the same box."

It was a false card to play, for George grew obstinate at once. "Then

I'm going to be in the same box as you from the beginning. Do you

really think I am going to desert you? Hang it, you're more important

than Bardur."

"Oh, for God's sake, listen to reason," Lewis cried in despair. "You

must go at once. I can't or I would. It's our only chance. It's a

jolly good chance of death anyway, but it's a naked certainty unless you

do this. Think of the women and children and the people at home. You

may as well talk about letting the whole thing slip and getting back to

Bardur with safe skins. We must work the telegraph and then try to hold

the road with the Khautmi men, or be cowards for evermore. We're

gentlemen, and we are responsible."

"I didn't mean it that way," said George dismally. "But I want you to

come with me. I can't bear the thought of your being butchered here

alone, supposing the beggars come before we get back. You're sure there

is time?"

"You've three hours before you, but every moment is important. This is

the frontier line, and this fire will do for one of the signals. You'll

find me here. I haven't slept for days." And he yawned with feigned

drowsiness.

"Then--good-bye," said George solemnly, holding out his hand a second

time. "Remember, I'm devilish anxious about you. It's a pretty hot job

for us all; but, gad! if we pull through you get the credit."

Then with a single backward glance he led the way down the narrow track,

two mystified servants at his heels.

Lewis watched him disappear, and then turned sadly to his proper

business. This was the end of a very old song, and his heart cried out

at the thought. He heaped more wood on the blaze from the little pile

collected, and soon a roaring, boisterous fire burned in the glen, while

giant shadows danced on the sombre hills. Then he rummaged in the tent

till he found the rifles, carefully cleaned and laid aside. He selected

two express 400 bores, a Metford express and a smooth-bore Winchester

repeater. Then he filled his pockets with cartridges, and from a small

box took a handful for his revolver. All this he did in a sort of

sobbing haste, turning nervous eyes always to the mouth of the cañon.

He filled his flask from a case in the tent, and, being still ravenously

hungry, crammed the remnants of supper into a capacious game-pocket.

Then, all preparations being made, he looked for a moment down the road

where his best friend had just gone out of his ken for ever. The

thought was so dreary that he did not dare to delay longer, but with a

bundle of ironmongery below his arms began to scramble up the glen to

where the north star burned between two peaks of hill.

He did the journey in an hour, for he was in a pitiable state of

anxiety. Every moment he looked to hear the tramp of an army before

him, and know his errand of no avail. Over the little barrier ridge he

scrambled, and then up the straight gully to the little black rift which

was the gate of an empire. His unquiet mind peopled the wilderness with

voices, but when, breathless and sore, he came into the jaws of the

pass, all was still, silent as the grave, save for an eagle which

croaked from some eyrie in the cliffs.

CHAPTER XXXI

EVENTS SOUTH OF THE BORDER

Thwaite was finishing a solitary dinner and attempting to find interest

in a novel when his butler came with news that the telephone bell was

ringing in the gun-room. Thwaite, being tired and cross, told him to

answer it himself, expecting some frivolous message about supplies. The

man returned in a little with word that he could not understand it.

Then Thwaite arose, blessing him, and went to see. The telegraph office

proper was on the other side of the river, on the edge of the native

town, but a telephone had been established to the garrison.

Thwaite's first impulse was to suspect a gigantic hoax. A scared native

clerk was trying to tell him a most appalling tale. George had not

spared energy in his message, and the Oriental imagination as a medium

had considerably increased it. The telegrams came in a confused order,

hard to piece together, but two facts seemed to stand out from the

confusion. One was that there was an unknown pass in the hills beyond

Nazri through which danger was expected at any moment that night; the

other was that treason was suspected throughout the whole north. Then

came the name of Marker, which gave Thwaite acute uneasiness. Finally

came George's two words of advice--keep strict watch on the native town

and hold Bardur in readiness for a siege; and wire the same directions

to Yasin, Gilgit, Chitral, Chilas, and throughout Kashmir and the

Punjab. Above all, wire to the chief places on the new Indus Valley

railway, for in case of success in Bardur, the railway would be the

first object of the invader.

Thwaite put down the ear-trumpet, his face very white and perspiring.

He looked at his watch; it was just on nine o'clock. The moon had

arisen and the telegram said "moonrise." He could not doubt the

genuineness of the message when he had heard at the end the names

Winterham and Haystoun. Already Marker might be through the pass, and

little the Khautmi people could do against him. He must be checked at

Bardur, though it cost every life in the garrison. Four hours' delay

would arm the north to adequate resistance.

He telephoned to the telegraph office to shut and lock the doors and

admit no one till word came from him. Then he summoned his Sikh

orderly, his English servant, and the native officers of the garrison.

He had one detachment of Imperial Service troops officered by Punjabis,

and a certain force of Kashmir Sepoys who made ineffective policemen,

and as soldiers were worse than useless. And with them he had to defend

the valley, and hold the native town, which might give trouble on his

flank. This was the most vexatious part of the business. If Marker had

organized the thing, then nothing could be unexpected, and treachery was

sure to be thick around them.

The men came, saluted, and waited in silence. Thwaite sat down at a

table and pulled a sheaf of telegraph forms to pieces. First he wired

to Ladcock at Gilgit, beseeching reinforcements. From Bardur to the

south there is only one choice of ways--by Yasin and Yagistan to the

Indus Valley, or by Gilgit and South Kashmir. Once beyond Gilgit there

was small hope of checking an advance, but in case the shorter way to

the Indus by the Astor Valley was tried there might be hope of a delay.

So he besought Ladcock to post men on the Mazeno Pass if the time was

given him. Then he sent a like message to Yasin, though on the high

passes and the unsettled country there was small chance of the wires

remaining uncut. A force in Yasin might take on the flank any invasion

from Afghanistan and in any case command the Chitral district. Then

came a series of frantic wires at random--to Rawal Pindi, to the Punjabi

centres, to South Kashmir. He had small confidence in these messages.

If the local risings were serious, as he believed them to be, they would

be too late, and in any case they were beyond the country where

strategical points were of advantage against an invader. There remained

the stations on the Indus Valley railway, which must be

the earliest point of attack. The terminus at Boonji was held by a

certain Jackson, a wise man who inspired terror in a mixed force of

irregulars, Afridis, Pathans, Punjabis, Swats, and a dozen other

varieties of tribesmen. To him he sent the most lengthy and urgent

messages, for he held the key of a great telegraphic system with which

he might awake Abbotabad and the Punjab. Then, perspiring with heat and

anxiety, he gave the bundle into the hands of his English servant, and

told off an officer and twenty men to hold the telegraph office. A blue

light was to be lit in the window if the native town should prove

troublesome and reinforcements be needed.

Soon the force of the garrison was assembled in the yard, all but a few

who had been sent on messages to the more isolated houses of the English

residents. Thwaite addressed them briefly: "Men, there's the devil's

own sweet row up the north, and it's moving down to us. This very night

we may have to fight. And, remember, it's not the old game with the

hillmen, but an army of white men, servants of the Tsar, come to fight

the servants of the Empress. Therefore, it is your duty to kill them

all like locusts, else they will swallow up you and your cattle and your

wives and your children, and, speaking generally, the whole bally show.

We may be killed, but if we keep them back even for a little God will

bless us. So be steady at your posts."

The garrison was soon dispersed, the guns in readiness, pointing up the

valley. It was ten o'clock by Thwaite's watch ere the last click of the

loaders told that Bardur was awaiting an enemy. The town behind was in

an uproar, men clamouring at the gates, and seeking passports to flee to

the south. Chinese and Turcoman traders from Leh and Lhassa, Yarkand

and Bokhara, with scared faces, were getting their goods together and

invoking their mysterious gods. Logan, who had returned from Gilgit

that very day, rode breathless into the yard, clamouring for Thwaite.

He received the tale in half a dozen sentences, whistled, and turned to

go, for he had his own work to do. One question he asked:

"Who sent the telegrams?"

"Haystoun and Winterham."

"Then they're alone at Nazri?"

"Except for the Khautmi men."

"Will they try to hold it?"

"I should think so. They're all sportsmen. Gad, there won't be a soul

left alive."

Logan galloped off with a long face. It would be a great ending, but

what a waste of heroic stuff! And as he remembered Lewis's frank

good-fellowship he shut his lips, as if in pain.

The telegrams were sent, and reply messages began to pour in, which kept

one man at the end of the telephone. About half-past ten a blue light

burned in the window across the river. There seemed something to do in

the native town of narrow streets and evil-smelling lanes, for the sound

of shouting and desultory firing rose above the stir of the fort. The

telegraph office abutted on the far end of the bridge, and Thwaite had

taken the precaution of bidding the native officer he had sent across

keep his men posted around the end of the passage. Now he himself took

thirty men, for the native town was the most dangerous point he had to

fear. The wires must not be cut till the last moment, and, as they

passed over the bridge and then through the English quarter, there was

small danger if the office was held. He found, as he expected, that the

place was being maintained against considerable odds. A huge mixed

crowd, drawn in the main from the navvies who had been employed on the

new road, armed with knives and a few rifles, and encouraged by certain

wild, dancing figures which had the look of priests, was surging around

the gate. The fighting stuff was Afridi or Chitrali, but there was

abundance of yelling from this rabble of fakirs and beggars who

accompanied them. Order there was none, and it was clear to Thwaite

that this rising had been arranged for but not organized. His men had

small difficulty in forcing a way to the office, where they served to

complete the cordon of defence and the garrison of the bridge-end. Two

men had been killed and some half-dozen of the rioters. He pushed into

the building, and found a terrified Kashmir clerk sternly watched by his

servant and the Sikh orderly. The man, with tears streaming down his

face, was attempting to read the messages which the wires brought.

Thwaite picked up and read the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering

characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit,

saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and

that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the

trouble in time he would try and hold the Mazeno Pass, and meanwhile he

had done his best to wake the Punjab. As the wires would be probably

cut within the next hour there would be no more communications, but he

besought Thwaite to keep the invader in the passes, as the whole south

country was a magazine waiting for a spark to explode. The message ran

in short violent words, and Thwaite had a vision of Ladcock, short,

ruddy, and utterly out of temper, stirred up from his easy life to hold

a frontier.

There was no word from Yasin, as indeed he had expected, for the tribes

on the highlands about Hunza and Punial were the most disaffected on the

Border, and doubtless the first to be tampered with. Probably his own

message had never gone, and he could only pray that the men there might

by the grace of God have eyes in their heads to read the signs of the

times. There was a brief word from Jackson at Boonji. There attacks

had been made on the terminus and the engine-sheds since sunset, which

his men had luckily had time to repulse. A large amount of

rolling-stock was lying there, as five freight trains had brought up

material for the new bridge the day before. Of this the enemy had

probably had word. Anyhow, he hoped to quiet all local disturbances,

and he would undertake to see that every station on the line was warned.

He would receive reinforcements from Abbotabad by the afternoon of the

next day; if Bardur and Gilgit, or Yasin as it might be, could delay the

attack till then everything might be safe--unless, indeed, the whole

nexus of hill-tribes rose as one man. In which case there would be the

devil to pay, and he had no advice to give.

Thwaite read and laughed grimly. It was not a question of a day's

delay, but of an hour's, and the hill-tribes, if he judged Marker's

cleverness rightly, would act just as Jackson feared. The business had

begun among the navvies at Bardur and Gilgit and Boonji. In a little

they would have news of real tribal war--Hunzas, Pathans, Chitralis,

Punialis, and Chils, tribes whom England had fought a dozen times before

and knew the mettle of; now would be the time for their innings. Well

supplied with money and arms--this would have been part of Marker's

business--they would be the forerunners of the great army. First savage

war, then scientific annihilation by civilized hands--a sweet prospect

for a peaceful man in the prime of life!

He returned to the fort to find all quiet and in order. It commanded

the north road, but though the eye might weary itself with looking on

the moonlit sandy valley and the opaque blue hills, there was no sight

or sound of men. The stars were burning hard and cold in the vault of

sky, and looking down somewhere on the march of an army. It was now

close on midnight; in five hours dawn would break in the east and the

night of attack would be gone. But death waited between this midnight

hour and the morning. What were Haystoun and the men from Khautmi

doing? Fighting or beyond all fighting? Well, he would soon know. He

was not afraid, but this cursed waiting took the heart out of a man!

And he looked at his watch and found it half-past twelve.

* * * * *

At Yasin there was the most severe fighting. It lasted for three days,

and in effect amounted to a little tribal war. A man called Mackintosh

commanded, and he had the advantage of having regulars with him, Gurkhas

for the most part, who were old campaigners. The place had seemed

unquiet for some days, and certain precautions had been taken, so that

when the rioting broke out at sunset it was easy to get the town under

subjection and prepare for external attack. The Chiling Pass into

Chitral had given trouble of old, but Mackintosh was scarcely prepared

for the systematic assaults of Punialis and Tangiris from the east and

south. Having always been famous as an alarmist he put the right

interpretation on the business, and settled down to what he half hoped,

half feared, might be a great frontier war. The place was strong only

on the north side, and the defence was as much a question of engineering

as of war. His Sepoys toiled gallantly at the incomplete defences,

while the rest fought hand to hand--bayonet against knife, Metford

against Enfield--to cover their labour. He lost many men, but on the

evening of the next day he had the satisfaction of seeing the

fortifications complete, and he awaited a siege with equanimity, as he

was well victualled.

On the second night the enemy again attacked, but the moon was bright,

and they were no match for his sharpshooters. About two in the morning

they fell back, and for the next day it looked as if they proposed to

invest the garrison. But by the third evening they began to melt away,

taking with them such small plunder as they had won. Mackintosh, who

was a man of enterprise, told off a detachment for pursuit, and cursed

bitterly the fate which had broken his ankle with a rifle-bullet.

In the south along the railway the warnings came in good time. At Rawal

Pindi there was some small difficulty with native officials, a large

body of whom seemed to have unaccountably disappeared. This delayed for

some time the sending of a freight-train to Abbotabad, but by and by

substitutes were found, and the works left under guard. The telegram to

Peshawur found things in readiness there, for memories of old trouble

still linger, and people sleep lightly on that frontier. Word came of

native riots in the south, at Lahore and Amritsar, and the line of towns

which mark the way to Delhi. In some places extraordinary accidents

were reported. Certain officers had gone off on holiday and had not

returned; odd and unintelligible commands had come to perplex the minds

of others; whole camps were reported sick where sickness was least

expected. A little rising of certain obscure rivers had broken up an

important highway by destroying all the bridges save the one which

carried the railway. The whole north was on the brink of a sudden

disorganization, but the brink had still to be passed. It lay with its

masters to avert calamity; and its masters, going about with haggard

faces, prayed for daylight and a few hours to prepare.

* * * * *

George had sent his men to Khautmi before he entered the telegraph hut,

and he followed himself in twenty minutes. Somewhere upon the hill-road

he met St. John with a dozen men, who abused him roundly and besought

details.

"Are you sure?" he cried. "For God's sake, say you're mistaken. For,

if you're not, upon my soul it's the last hour for all of us."

George was in little mood for jest. He told Lewis's tale in a few

words.

"A pass beyond Nazri," the man cried. "Why, I was there shooting buck

last week. Up the nullah and over the ridge, and then a cleft at the

top of the next valley? Does he say there's a pass there? Maybe, but

I'll be hanged if an army could get through. If we get there we can

hold it."

"We haven't time. They may be here at any moment. Send men to Forza

and get them to light the fires. Oh, for God's sake, be quick! I've

left Haystoun down there. The obstinate beggar was too tired to move."

Over all the twenty odd miles between Forza and Khautmi there is a chain

of fires which can be used for signals in the Border wars. On this

night Khautmi was to take the west side of the Nazri gully and Forza the

east, and the two quickest runners in the place were sent off to Andover

with the news. He was to come towards them, leaving men at the

different signal-posts in case of scattered assaults, and if he came in

time the two forces would join in holding the Nazri pass. But should

the invader come before, then it fell on the Khautmi men to stand alone.

It was a smooth green hollow in the stony hills, some hundred yards

wide, and at the most they might hope to make a fight of thirty minutes.

St. John and George, with their men, ran down the stony road till the

sweat dripped from their brows, though the night was chilly. Mitchinson

was to follow with the rest and light the fires; meantime, they must get

to Nazri, in case the march should forestall them. St. John was

cursing his ill-luck. Two hours earlier and they might have held the

distant cleft in the hills, and, if they were doomed to perish, have

perished to some purpose. But the holding of the easy Nazri pass was

sheer idle mania, and yet it was the only chance of gaining some paltry

minutes. As for George, he had forgotten his vexatious. His one

anxiety was for Lewis; that he should be in time to have his friend at

his side. And when at last they came down on the pass and saw the

camp-fire blazing fiercely and no trace of the enemy, he experienced a

sense of vast relief. Lewis was making himself comfortable, cool beggar

that he was, and now was probably sleeping. He should be left alone; so

he persuaded St. John that the best point to take their stand on was on

a shoulder of hill beyond the fire. It gave him honest pleasure to

think that at last he had stolen a march on his friend. He should at

least have his sleep in peace before the inevitable end.

He looked at his watch; it was almost half-past eleven.

"Haystoun said they'd be here at midnight," he whispered to his

companion. "We haven't long. When do you suppose Andover will come?"

"Not for an hour and a half at the earliest. Afraid this is going to be

our own private show. Where's Haystoun?"

George nodded back to the fire in the hollow, and the tent beside it.

"There, I expect, sleeping. He's dog-tired, and he always was a very

cool hand in a row. He'll be wakened soon enough, poor chap."

"You're sure he can't tell us anything?"

"Nothing. He told me all. Better let him be." Mitchinson came up with

the rearguard. Living all but alone in the wilds had made him a silent

man compared to whom the taciturn St. John was garrulous. He nodded to

George and sat down.

"How many are we?" George asked.

"Forty-three, counting the three of us. Not enough for a good stand.

Wonder how it'll turn out. Never had to do such a thing before."

St. John, whose soul longed for Maxims, posted his men as best he

could. There was no time to throw up earthworks, but a rough cairn of

stone which stood in the middle of the hollow gave at least a central

rallying-ground. Then they waited, watching the fleecy night vapours

blow across the peaks and straining their ears for the first sound of

men.

George grew impatient. "It can't be more than five miles to the pass.

Shouldn't some of us try to get there? It would make all the

difference."

St. John declined sharply. "We've taken our place and we must stick to

it. We can't afford to straggle. Hullo! it's just on twelve. Thwaite

has had three hours to prepare, and he's bound to have wakened the

south. I fancy the business won't quite come off this time."

Suddenly in the chilly silence there rose something like the faint and

distant sound of rifles. It was no more than the sound of stone

dropping on a rock ledge, for, still and clear and cold though the night

was, the narrowness of the valley and the height of the cliffs dulled

all distant sounds. But each man had the ear of the old hunter, and

waited with head bent forward.

Again the drip-drip; then a scattering noise as when one lets peas fall

on the floor.

"God! That's carbines. Who the devil are they fighting with?"

Mitchinson's eye had lost its lethargy. His scraggy neck was craned

forward, and his grim mouth had relaxed into a grimmer smile.

"It's them, sure enough," said St. John, and spoke something to his

servant.

"I'm going forward," said George. "It may be somebody else making a

stand, and we're bound to help."

"You're bound not to be an ass," said St. John. "Who in the Lord's

name could it be? It may be the Badas polishing off some hereditary

foes, and it may be Marker getting rid of some wandering hillmen. Man,

we're miles beyond the pale. Who's to make a stand but ourselves?"

Again came the patter of little sounds, and then a long calm.

"They're through now," said St. John. "The next thing to listen for is

the sound of their feet. When that comes I pass the word along. We're

all safe for heaven, so keep your minds easy."

But the sound of feet was long in coming. Only the soft night airs, and

at rare intervals an eagle's cry, or the bleat of a doe from the valley

bottom. The first half-hour of waiting was a cruel strain. In such

moments a man's sins rise up large before him. When his future life is

narrowed down to an hour's compass, he sees with cruel distinctness the

follies of his past. A thousand things he had done or left undone

loomed on George's mental horizon. His slackness, his self-indulgence,

his unkindness--he went over the whole innocent tale of his sins. To

the happy man who lives in the open and meets the world with a square

front this forced final hour of introspection has peculiar terrors.

Meantime Lewis was sleeping peacefully in the tent by the still cheerful

fire. Thank God, he was spared this hideous waiting!

About two Andover turned up with fifteen men, hot and desperate. He

listened to St. John's story in silence.

"Thank God, I'm in time. Who found out this? Haystoun? Good man,

Lewis! I wonder who has been firing out there. They can't have been

stopped? It's getting devilish late for them anyhow, and I believe

there's a little hope. It would be too risky to leave this pass, but I

vote we send a scout."

A man was chosen and dispatched. Two hours later he returned to the

mystified watchers at Nazri. He had been on the hill-shoulder and

looked into the cleft. There was no sign of men there, but he had heard

the sound of men, though where he could not tell. Far down the cleft

there was a gleam of fire, but no man near it.

"That's a Bada dodge," said Andover promptly. "Now I wonder if Marker

trusted too much to these gentry, and they have done us the excellent

service of misleading him. They hate us like hell, and they'd sell

their souls any day for a dozen cartridges; so it can't have been done

on purpose. Seems to me there has been a slip in his plans somewhere."

But the sound of voices! The man was questioned closely, and he was

strong on its truth. He was a hillman from the west of the Khyber, and

he swore that he knew the sound of human speech in the hills many miles

off, though he could not distinguish the words.

"In thirty minutes it will be morning," said George. "Lord, such a

night, and Lewis to have missed it all!" His spirits were rising, and he

lit a pipe. The north was safe whatever happened, and, as the inertness

of midnight passed off, he felt satisfaction in any prospect, however

hazardous. He sat down beneath a boulder and smoked, while Andover

talked with the others. They were the frontier soldiers, and this was

their profession; he was the amateur to whom technicalities were

unmeaning.

Suddenly he sprang up and touched St. John on the shoulder. A great

chill seemed to have passed over the world, and on the hill-tops there

was a faint light. Both men looked to the east, and there, beyond the

Forza hills, was the red foreglow spreading over the grey. It was dawn,

and with the dawn came safety. The fires had burned low, and the

vagrant morning winds were beginning to scatter the white ashes. Now

was the hour for bravado, since the time for silence had gone. St.

John gave the word, and it was passed like a roll-call to left and

right, the farthest man shouting it along the ribs of mountain to the

next watch-fire. The air had grown clear and thin, and far off the dim

repetition was heard, which told of sentries at their place, and the

line of posts which rimmed the frontier.

Mitchinson moistened his dry lips and filled his lungs with the cold,

fresh air. "That," he said slowly, "is the morning report of the last

outpost of the Empire, and by the grace of God it's 'All's well.'"

CHAPTER XXXII

THE BLESSING OF GAD

"Gad--a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last."

Lewis peered into the gorge and saw only a thin darkness. The high

walls made pits of shade at the foot, but above there was a misty column

of light which showed the spectres of rock and bush in the nullah

beyond. It was all but dark, and the stars were coming out like the

lights on a sea-wall, hard and cold and gleaming. Just in the throat of

the pass a huge boulder had fallen and left a passage not two yards

wide. Beyond there was a sharp descent of a dozen feet to the gravelled

bottom which fell away in easier stages to the other watershed. Here

was a place made by nature for his plans. With immense pains he rolled

the biggest stones he could move to the passage, so that they were

poised above the slope. He tried the great boulder, too, with his

shoulders, and it seemed to quiver. In the last resort this mass of

rock might be sent crashing down the incline, and by the blessing of God

it should account for its man.

He brought his rifles forward to the stones, loaded them and felt the

cartridges easy in his pocket. They were for the thirty-yards range;

his pistol would be kept for closer quarters. He tried one after the

other, cuddling the stocks to his cheek. They were all dear-loved

weapons, used in deer-stalking at home and on many a wilder beat. He

knew the tricks of each, and he had little pet devices laughed at by his

friends. This one had clattered down fifty feet of rock in Ross-shire

as the scars on the stock bore witness, and another had his initials

burned in the wood, the relic of a winter's night in a Finnish camp. A

thousand old pleasant memories came back to him, the sights and scents

and sounds of forgotten places, the zest of toil and escapade, the joy

of food and warmth and rest. Well! he had lived, had tasted to the

full the joys of the old earth, the kindly mother of her children. He

had faced death thoughtlessly many times, and now the Ancient Enemy was

on his heels and he was waiting to give him greeting. A phrase ran in

his head, some trophy from his aimless wanderings among books, which

spoke of death coming easily to one "who has walked steadfastly in the

direction of his dreams." It was a comforting thought to a creature of

moods and fancies. He had failed, doubtless, but he had ever kept some

select fanciful aim unforgotten. In all his weakness he had never

betrayed this ultimate Desire of the Heart.

Some few feet up the cliff was a little thicket of withered thorns. The

air was chilly and the cleft was growing very black. Why should not he

make a fire behind the great boulder? He gathered some armfuls and

heaped them in a space of dry sand. They were a little wet, so they

burned slowly with a great smoke, which the rising night wind blew

behind him. He was still hungry, so he ate the food he had brought in

his pockets; and then he lit his pipe. How oddly the tobacco tasted in

this moment of high excitement! It was as if the essence of all the

pipes he had ever smoked was concentrated into this last one. The smoke

blew back, and as he sniffed its old homely fragrance he seemed to feel

the smell of peat and heather, of drenched homespun in the snowy bogs,

and the glory of a bright wood fire and the moorland cottage. In a

second his thoughts were many thousand miles away. The night wind

cooled his brow, and he looked into the dark gap and saw his own past.

The first picture was a cold place on a low western island. Snow was

drifting sparsely, and a dull grey Atlantic swell was grumbling on the

reefs. He was crouching among the withered rushes, where seaweed and

shells had been blown, and snow lay in dirty patches. He felt the thick

collar of his shooting-coat tight about his neck, while the December

evening grew darker and colder. A gillie, who had no English, was lying

at his right hand, and far out at sea a string of squattering geese were

slowly drifting shorewards with the wind. He saw the scene clear in

every line, and he remembered the moment as if it had been yesterday. It

had been one of his periods of great exultation. He had just left

Oxford, and had fled northward after some weeks in Paris to wash out the

taste of civilization from his mouth among the island north-westers. He

had had a great day among the woodcock, and now was finishing with a

stalk after wild geese. He was furiously hungry, chilled and soaked to

the bone, but riotously happy. His future seemed to stretch before him,

a brighter continuation of a bright past, a time for high achievement,

bold work, and yet no surcease of pleasure. He had been master of

himself in that hour, his body firm and strong, his soul clear, his mind

a tempered weapon awaiting his hands.

And then the scene changed to a June evening in his own countryside. He

was deep in the very heart of the hills beside a little loch, whose

clear waves lapped on beaches of milky sand, it was just on twilight,

and an infinite sighing of soft winds was around him, a far-away

ineffable brightness of sunset, and the good scents of dusk among thyme

and heather. He had fished all the afternoon, and his catch lay on the

bent beside him. He was to sleep the night in his plaid, and already a

fire of heather-roots behind him was prepared for supper. He had been

for a swim, and his hair was still wet on his forehead. Just across a

conical hill rose into the golden air, the highest hill in all the

countryside, but here but a little thing, for the loch was as high as

many a hill-top. Just on its face was a scaur, and there a raven--a

speck--was wheeling slowly. Among the little islands broods of mallard

were swimming, and trout in a bay were splashing with wide circles. The

whole place had seemed caught up into an ecstasy, a riot of gold and

crimson and far-off haunting shades and scents and voices. And yet it

was no wild spectacle; it was the delicate comfort of it all which had

charmed him. Life seemed one glorious holiday, the world a garden of

the gods. There was his home across the hills, with its cool chambers,

its books and pictures, its gardens and memories. There were his

friends up and down the earth. There was the earth itself waiting for

his conquest. And, meantime, there was this airy land around him, his

own by the earliest form of occupation.

The fire died down to embers and a sudden scattering of ashes woke him

out of his dreaming. The old Scots land was many thousand miles away.

His past was wiped out behind him. He was alone in a very strange

place, cut off by a great gulf from youth and home and pleasure. For an

instant the extreme loneliness of an exile's death smote him, but the

next second he comforted himself. The heritage of his land and his

people was his in this ultimate moment a hundredfold more than ever.

The sounding tale of his people's wars--one against a host, a foray in

the mist, a last stand among the mountain snows--sang in his heart like

a tune. The fierce, northern exultation, which glories in hardships and

the forlorn, came upon him with such keenness and delight that, as he

looked into the night and the black unknown, he felt the joy of a

greater kinship. He was kin to men lordlier than himself, the

true-hearted who had ridden the King's path and trampled a little world

under foot. To the old fighters in the Border wars, the religionists of

the South, the Highland gentlemen of the Cause, he cried greeting over

the abyss of time. He had lost no inch of his inheritance. Where,

indeed, was the true Scotland? Not in the little barren acres he had

left, the few thousands of city-folk, or the contentions of unlovely

creeds and vain philosophies. The elect of his race had ever been the

wanderers. No more than Hellas had his land a paltry local unity.

Wherever the English flag was planted anew, wherever men did their duty

faithfully and without hope of little reward--there was the fatherland

of the true patriot.

The time was passing, and still the world was quiet. The hour must be

close on midnight, and still there was no sign of men. For the first

time he dared to hope for success. Before, an hour's delay was all that

he had sought. To give the north time for a little preparation, to make

defence possible, had been his aim; now with the delay he seemed to see

a chance for victory. Bardur would be alarmed hours ago; men would be

on the watch all over Kashmir and the Punjab; the railways would be

guarded. The invader would find at the least no easy conquest. When

they had trodden his life out in the defile they would find stronger men

to bar their path, and he would not have died in vain. It was a slender

satisfaction for vanity, for what share would he have in the defence?

Unknown, unwept, he would perish utterly, and to others would be the

glory. He did not care, nay, he rejoiced in the brave obscurity. He

had never sought so vulgar a thing as fame. He was going out of life

like a snuffed candle. George, if George survived, would know nothing

of his death. He was miles beyond the frontier, and if George, after

months of war, should make his way to this fatal cleft, what trace would

he find of him? And all his friends, Wratislaw, Arthur Mordaunt, the

folk of Glenavelin--no word would ever come to them to tell them of his

end.

But Alice--and in one wave there returned to him the story which he had

striven to put out of his heart. She had known him in his weakness, but

she would never think of him in his strength. The whimsical fate

pleased him. The last meeting on that grey autumn afternoon at the

Broken Bridge had heartened him for his travellings. It had been a

compact between them; and now he was redeeming the promise of the tryst.

And she would never know it, would only know that somewhere and somehow

he had ceased to struggle with an inborn weakness. Well-a-day! It was

no world of rounded corners and complete achievements. It was enough if

a hint, a striving, a beginning were found in the scheme of man's

frailty. He had no clear-cut conception of a future--that was the happy

lot of the strong-hearted--but he had a generous intolerance of little

success. He did not ask rewards, but he prayed for the hope of a good

beginning or a gallant failure. The odd romance which lies in the

wanderer's brain welcomed the paradox. Alice and her bright hair

floated dim on the horizon of his vision, something exquisite and dear,

a memory, a voice, a note of tenderness in this last exhilaration. A

sentimental passion was beyond him; he was too critical of folly to

worship any lost lady; and he had no love for vain reminiscences. But

the girl had become the embodied type of the past. A year ago he had

not seen her, now she was home and childhood and friends to him. For a

moment there was the old heart-hunger, but the pain had gone. The

ineffectual longing which had galled him had perished at the advent of

his new strength.

For in this ultimate moment he at last seemed to have come to his own.

The vulgar little fears, which, like foxes, gnaw at the roots of the

heart, had gone, even the greater perils of faint hope and a halting

energy. The half-hearted had become the stout-hearted. The resistless

vigour of the strong and the simple was his. He stood in the dark gully

peering into the night, his muscles stiff from heel to neck. The

weariness of the day had gone: only the wound in his ear, got the day

before, had begun to bleed afresh. He wiped the blood away with his

handkerchief, and laughed at the thought of this little care. In a few

minutes he would be facing death, and now he was staunching a pin-prick.

He wondered idly how soon death would come. It would be speedy, at

least, and final. And then the glory of the utter loss. His bones

whitening among the stones, the suns of summer beating on them and the

winter snowdrifts decently covering them with a white sepulchre. No man

could seek a lordlier burial. It was the death he had always craved.

From murder, fire, and sudden death, why should we call on the Lord to

deliver us? A broken neck in a hunting-field, a slip on rocky

mountains, a wounded animal at bay--such was the environment of death

for which he had ever prayed. But this--this was beyond his dreams.

And with it all a great humility fell upon him. His battles were all

unfought. His life had been careless and gay; and the noble

commonplaces of faith and duty had been things of small meaning. He had

lived within the confines of a little aristocracy of birth and wealth

and talent, and the great melancholy world scourged by the winds of God

had seemed to him but a phrase of rhetoric. His creeds and his

arguments seemed meaningless now in this solemn hour; the truth had been

his no more than his crude opponent's! Had he his days to live over

again he would look on the world with different eyes. No man any more

should call him a dreamer. It pleased him to think that, half-hearted

and sceptical as he had been, a humorist, a laughing philosopher, he was

now dying for one of the catchwords of the crowd. He had returned to

the homely paths of the commonplace, and young, unformed, untried, he

was caught up by kind fate to the place of the wise and the heroic.

* * * * *

Suddenly on his thoughts there broke in a dull tread of men, a sound of

slipping stones and feet upon dry gravel. He broke into the cold sweat

of tense nerves, and waited, half hidden, with his rifle ready. Then

came the light of dull lanterns which showed a thin, endless column

beneath the rock walls. They advanced with wonderful quietness, the

sound of feet broken only by a soft word of command. He calculated the

distance--now it was three hundred yards, now two, now a bare eighty.

At fifty his rifle flew to his shoulder and he fired. His nerves were

bad, for one bullet clicked on the rock, while the second took the dust

a yard before the enemy's feet. Instantly there was a halt and the

sound of speech.

The failure had steadied him. The second pair of shots killed their

men. He heard the quick cry of pain and shivered. He was new to this

work and the cry hurt him. But he picked up his express and fired

again, and again there was a cry and a fall. Then he heard a word of

command and the sound of men creeping in the side of the nullah. Eye

and ear were marvelously acute at the moment, for he picked out the

scouts and killed them. Then he loaded his rifles and waited.

He saw a man in the half-light not five yards below him. He fired and

the man dropped, but he had used his rifle and the great spattering of

earth showed his whereabouts. Now was the time for keen eye and steady

arm. The enemy had halted thirty yards off and beneath the slope there

was a patch of darkness. He kept one eye on this, for it might contain

a man. He fixed his attention on a ray of moonlight which fell across

the floor of the gully. When a man crept past this he shot, and he

rarely failed.

Then a command was given and the column came forward at the double. He

fired two shots, but the advance continued. They passed the ray of

light and he saw the whites of their eyes and the gleam of teeth and

steel. They paused a second to fire a volley, and a storm of shot

rattled about him. He had stepped back into his shelter, and was

unscathed, but when he looked out he saw the enemy at the foot of the

slope. His weapons were all loaded except the express, and in mad haste

he sent shot after shot into the ranks. The fire halted them, and for a

second they were on the edge of a panic. This unknown destruction

coming out of the darkness was terrifying to the stoutest hearts. All

the while there was wrath behind them. This stopping of the advance

column was throwing the whole force into confusion. Angry messages came

up from the centre, and distracted officers cursed their native guides.

Meanwhile Lewis was something wholly unlike himself, a maddened creature

with every sense on the alert, drinking in the glory of the fight. He

husbanded the chances of his life with generous parsimony. Every chance

meant some minutes' delay and every delay a new link of safety for the

north. His cartridges were getting near an end, but there still

remained the stones and his pistol and the power of his arm hand to

hand.

Suddenly came a second volley which all but killed him, bullets glancing

on all sides of him and scraping the rocks with a horrid message of

death. Then on the heels of it came a charge up the slope. The turn

had come for the last expedient. He rushed to the stone and with the

strength of madness rooted it from its foundations. It wavered for a

second, and then with a cloud of earth and gravel it plunged downwards.

A second and it had ploughed its way with a sickening grinding sound

into the ranks of the men below. There was one wild scream of terror,

and then a retreat, a flight, almost a panic.

Down in the hollow was a babel of sound, men yelping with fright,

officers calming and cursing them, and the shouting of the forces

behind. For Lewis the last moment was approaching. The neck of the

pass was now bare and wide and half of the slope was gone. He had lost

his weapons in the fall, all but his express, and the loosening of the

stone had crushed his foot so that he could scarcely stand. Then order

seemed to be restored, for another volley rang out, which passed over

his head as he crouched on the ground. The enemy were advancing slowly,

resolutely. He knew that now there was something different in their

tread.

He was calm and quiet. The mad exhilaration was ebbing and he was

calculating chances as dispassionately as a scientist in his study. Two

shots, the six chambers of his pistol, and then he would be ground to

powder. The moon rode over the top of the cleft and a sudden wave of

light fell on the slope, the writhing dead, and below, the advancing

column. It gave him a chance for fair shooting, and he did not miss.

But the men were maddened with anger and taunts, and they would have

charged a battery. They came up on the slope with a fierce rush,

cursing in gutturals. He slipped behind the old friendly jag of rock

and waited till they were abreast. Then began a strange pistol

practice. Crouching in the darkness he selected his men and shot them,

making no mistake. The front ranks of the column turned to the right

and lunged with their bayonets into the gloom. But the man knew his

purpose. He climbed farther back till he was above their heads, looking

down on ranks of white inhuman faces mad with slaughter and the courage

which is next door to fear. They were still advancing, but with an

uncertain air. He saw his chance and took it. Crying out he knew not

what, he leapt among them with clutched rifle, striking madly to right

and left. There was a roar of fright, and for a moment a space was

cleared around him. He fought like a maniac, stumbling with his crushed

foot and leaving two men stunned at his feet. But it was only for a

moment. A bayonet entered his side and his rifle snapped at the stock.

He grappled with the nearest man and pulled him to the ground, for he

could stand no longer. Then there came a wild surge around, a dozen

bayonets pierced him, and in the article of death he was conscious of a

great press which ground him into the earth. The next moment the column

was marching over his body.

* * * * *

Dawn came with light and sweet airs to the dark cleft in the hills.

Just at that moment, when the red east was breaking into spires and

clouds of colour, and the little morning winds were beginning to flutter

among the crags, two men were standing in the throat of the pass. The

ground about them was ploughed up as if by a battery, the rock seamed

and broken, and red stains of blood were on the dry gravel. From the

north, in the direction of the plain, came the confused sound of an army

in camp. But to the south there was a glimpse through an aperture of

hill of a far side of mountain, and on it a gleam as of fire.

Marka, clad in the uniform of a captain of Cossacks, looked fiercely at

his companion and then at the beacon.

"Look," he said, "look and listen!" And sure enough in the morning

stillness came the sound as of a watchword cried from post to post.

"That," said he, "is the morning signal of an awakened empire and the

final proof of our failure."

"It was no fault of mine," said Fazir Khan sourly. "I did as I was

commanded, and lo! when I come I find an army in confusion and the

frontier guarded." The chief spoke with composure, but he had in his

heart an uneasy consciousness that he had had some share in this

undoing.

Marka looked down at a body which lay wrinkled across the path. It was

trodden all but shapeless, the poor face was unrecognizable, the legs

were scrawled like a child's letters. Only one hand with a broken gold

signet-ring remained to tell of the poor inmate of the clay.

The Cossack looked down on the dead with a scowling face. "Curse

him--curse him eternally. Who would have guessed that this fool, this

phrasing fool, would have spoiled our plans? Curse his conscience and

his honour, and God pity him for a fool! I must return to my troops,

for this is no place to linger in." The man saw his work of years

spoiled in a night, and all by the agency of a single adventurer. He

saw his career blighted, his reputation gone. It is not to be wondered

at if he was bitter.

He turned to go, and in leaving pushed the dead man over with his foot.

He saw the hand and the broken ring.

"This thing was once a gentleman," he said, and he went down the pass.

But Fazir Khan remained by the body. He remembered his guest of two

days before, and he cursed himself for underrating this wandering

Englishman. He saw himself in evil case. His chances of spoil and

glory had departed. He foresaw expeditions of reprisal, and the

Bada-Mawidi hunted like partridges upon the mountains. He had staked his

all on a desperate chance, and this one man had been his ruin. For a

moment the barbarian came out, and in a sudden ferocity he kicked the

dead.

But as he looked again he was moved to a juster appreciation.

"This thing was a man," he said.

Then stooping he dipped his finger in blood and touched his forehead.

"This man," he said, "was of the race of kings."