GUNBOAT AND GUN-RUNNER (continued 6)

"Oh, I forgot to tell you!" he continued; "I sent a telegram to Duckworth last night informing him of yesterday's proceedings."

I had forgotten all about doing this, so, before any reply could be received, I wired again that I considered it advisable to remain at Jask on account of the disturbed condition of the surrounding district. Commander Duckworth might laugh at my self-assurance for imagining that the little "B.A." could be of much use, but I did not think that he would—nor did I care, so long as he did not order me away. My whole aim in life now seemed centred round the forlorn little lady with the sad grey eyes; and even if she would not make friends with me again, I hoped to be able to protect her. I knew perfectly well that this was the impelling force which decided me to remain there.

The telegram having been sent, Mr. Fisher took me round the whole position.

As you know, the telegraph buildings were built on the rocky end of the peninsula and surrounded by a strong, loopholed wall. He explained to me that there was no probability of an attack either from the sides or from the end, because the Baluchis and Afghans hated the sea, and nothing would induce them to get into a boat.

If they came, they must attack along the neck of the peninsula, and up the open, sloping space below the wall. Across this, as you already know, there was a small breastwork of earth, with a still smaller trench behind it, looking much more like an elongated vegetable-marrow bed than a defence work and, fifty yards lower down, two rows of barbed-wire railings stretching across from sea to sea.

Five hundred yards away, on the narrowest portion of the peninsula, and commanding the landing place to the east—on our right as we looked inland—was the ruined sheikh's fort, or Old Fort, which I had explored on my first visit. It was half-hidden in a fold of the ground and by some date-palm trees. A thousand yards away on the western side—our left-hand side—commanding the beach and landing place there, was the new sheikh's fort, or New Fort, where the custom-house officers had been hanged by the Baluchis on their way back from destroying Bungi and Sudab. Between these were perhaps a score of native "matting" huts. The whole of the sloping neck of the peninsula afforded no cover whatever; but on the right side of the slope, just between the line of barbed-wire and the baby entrenchment was a line of more substantial huts belonging to the coolies and other servants of the telegraph staff.

I don't pretend to be a soldier; but it struck me immediately that this line of huts must be destroyed. It interfered with the fire space from the loopholed wall. Also I told Mr. Fisher that the half-ruined sheikh's house—the Old Fort—must be pulled down, as it would give grand cover for an attacking force.

He shook his head. "I daren't do that; it belongs to the Mir of Jask."

"If you don't pull it down, blow it up," I said, smiling. "You can tell him it was an accident."

All sorts of plans ran through my head. I suggested this and that—twenty different schemes—and rather swept Mr. Fisher off his feet with suggestions. "The first thing to do?" he asked, passing his hand nervously across his forehead, as if he only wanted to be told one thing at a time.

"Blow up the Old Fort!" I told him, and he promised to start right away, as soon as he could get hold of his people. He took me up on the roof of the signal station, where the big telescope stood on its tripod, and I had a grand view of the surroundings of Old Jask, eight miles away, and the wriggling track which led to it round swampy inlets of the sea; of the dreary wastes of sand stretching east and west as far as the eye could see till they lost themselves in the mountains; of the interminable telegraph-poles dwindling away in the distance along the shore line to the east'ard and to the west'ard (to our left as we looked down), of the little Bunder Abbas under her now trim awnings, and of a cluster of dhows moored close to the new sheikh's fort and the village of New Jask.

From force of habit Mr. Fisher slued round the telescope and diligently searched the plains at the foot of the mountains, in whose ravines and valleys the wild tribesmen were concealed.

"Can't see a single band of them this morning," he said with much relief. "The Bunder Abbas is the cause of that."

Afterwards I returned aboard her and sent Hartley, the signal-man, to the telegraph-station, so that I could communicate with Mr. Fisher and he with me at any time. I also sent Jaffa to Old Jask to try to obtain news in the bazaar there.

That done, I had a yarn with Mr. Scarlett. A great change had come over him since he had got rid of his snake bracelet. I am sure he was fatter; the lines in his face were certainly not so deep, nor his eyes so sunken. He had lost that furtive look in them and that vulture appearance. He received the news that I was going to stay here, and that there would probably be some fighting, with positive pleasure.

"Anything we can do to help the poor little lass sir! Now, a Maxim, that's what's wanted up there (pointing to a prominent corner on the flat roof of the main building); from there it could sweep the whole approach. We might lend 'em one of ours if it came to the pinch. Eh, sir?"

"Right oh!" I told him. "Directly we get permission to stay, you can mount one there."

Permission did come, Hartley semaphoring the telegram that very afternoon, and Mr. Scarlett waking me to give the good news. I could swear that he was as pleased as I was.

For the next few days I spent most of my time on shore, landing at sunrise and supervising, in a sort of way, the destruction of the ruined sheikh's house, and the strengthening of the breastwork and the wire entanglements. I say "in a sort of way", because neither Mr. Fisher nor I knew which of us should take entire charge of the defence preparations, with the result that there was a lot of unnecessary work done and some muddling. At any rate the one or two charges exploded in the walls of the Old Fort did not do much damage, and I did not care to interfere.

Meanwhile Mr. Scarlett busied himself preparing the corner of the roof of the telegraph buildings and placing big balks of timber behind the parapet to receive the mounting of a Maxim, if the occasion arose. In spite of the desertion of most of the servants, labour was plentiful, natives of all nationalities and shades of colour clamouring for a job. Many of them were Afghans and Baluchis, and probably were spies; but the only information they could give was that we were expecting an attack and preparing for it, which it was good for them to know. We set these people to work strengthening the barbed-wire fence and the "vegetable-marrow" trench.

At first I had most of my meals with Mr. Fisher and his wife—Miss Borsen never joined us. In fact, I never saw more of her than a flick of a skirt as she fled round a corner one day when I had appeared unexpectedly. She was so obviously avoiding me that it became most unpleasant, and later on I never went to the house unless I was obliged to do so.

This worried me a good deal—the fact of her refusing to forgive me, I mean—-and took away a great deal of my enjoyment.

In spite of this the days went past very quickly. Hartley occasionally saw bands of mounted people wandering about the plains and the coast, but the telegraph-wire was untouched. Jaffa could report nothing more definite than a general feeling of uneasiness; trading dhows came and went, and, day after day, trains of camels and donkeys shuffled backwards and forwards through the eight miles of sand to Old Jask, loading or unloading them.

Indeed, the only exciting incident was the sudden bursting of a strong "shamel", which scattered the dhows and compelled me to raise steam and take shelter from it round the other side of the peninsula.

A fortnight passed, and the mail-steamer had called and left again without either of the two ladies. This time it was Mrs. Fisher who would not leave her husband, and Miss Borsen who would not leave Mrs. Fisher; so they both stayed—out of a mistaken and foolish sense of duty—much to Mr. Fisher's secret grief.

Then the blow fell, the morning after the steamer sailed.

Of course I always slept on board, and just as daylight was dawning I was awakened by hearing a tremendous fusillade. Mr. Scarlett and I jumped up, peering ashore in the direction from which the noise came, and saw a great number (a multitude they looked in the indistinct light) of people on camels streaming right along the peninsula, firing rifles as they rode, whilst a furious burst of firing farther away, in the direction of the new village and the New Fort, told us that another band must be attacking that.

The crew of the Bunder Abbas were tumbling to their guns, and Mr. Scarlett jumped down on deck to see that everything was ready.

Fascinated, I watched that mad rush of shrieking, firing natives. Leaping off their camels, two or three hundred of them began advancing up the slope towards the telegraph building, stopping to fire, moving on, and stopping again.

"For God's sake get those guns going!" I yelled down.

"In a minute, sir, in a minute!" Mr. Scarlett's voice, calm and collected, came back.

I clutched the railings and gasped as I thought of those two women up there and wondered whether the door through the loopholed wall was closed or not—it was not light enough for me to see. If it was open—God help them!

By this time the leading Baluchis—or whatever they were—were almost up to the line of the barbed-wire; but then I was intensely relieved to hear a few shots popping off from the telegraph buildings, so knew that some of the people had had time to seize their rifles.

"What the devil has gone wrong? Why don't you open fire?" I bawled, as the first of the attacking party reached the barbed-wire. It stopped them for a moment, but then they began throwing their loose cloaks across it and scrambling over.

Now was our chance, and, mad with fury, I dashed down below, yelling to the six-pounder and Maxims' crews to open fire. Mr. Scarlett was not there, nor Moore. Someone told me they were below, aft, and I heard a smashing of woodwork, jumped down, and found them smashing open the door of the magazine. I seized a box of Maxim cartridge-belts and simply heaved it up through the hatchway. In a mad rush of Mr. Scarlett, myself, Moore, and two or three others we were on deck again with a box of six-pounder ammunition between us. As we dragged it forward the marines and Ellis, with his seamen, were pulling the Maxim belts through the breech-blocks; and as we wrenched off the cover of the six-pounder cartridge-box I saw that the crowd of Baluchis were already swarming over the line of breastworks. The long cartridge was thrown into the empty breech of the six-pounder, and as I darted up the ladder to the upper deck it fired. A moment later both Maxims opened too.

CHAPTER XVI

The Siege of Jask

Fortunately the Bunder Abbas was lying broadside on to the shore, so that all three of her guns were able to bear on the ground leading up to the telegraph-station—about fourteen hundred yards away. I reached the upper deck and looked ashore just in time to see the first six-pounder shell bursting on the open slope, close to a group of fifty or sixty of the enemy, who had already reached the breastwork. Some had jumped down into the little trench, others were still clambering over the earthwork. Most of them were firing their rifles, though (as far as I could see through my glasses) without taking the trouble to aim—in fact they were practically firing in the air. As the shell burst among them they swerved aside, just as minnows do when you drop a stone among them, but still went on. Another shell made them swerve again and scatter a little more widely, but did not stop them. A Maxim was wanted—not shells.

Although both Maxims were firing very rapidly, Ellis and Webster did not seem able to find the range. This may have been due to excitement or the uncertain light. At any rate, from where I was I could see, quite plainly, the bullets tearing up the ground near the end of the barbed-wire fence, some two hundred yards this side of where the Baluchis were crossing it.

I yelled down that they were going short, and actually watched the furrows advancing until in another moment those streams of bullets had reached the poor wretches and simply ploughed lanes through them. These people made such a fine target that Ellis and Webster instinctively kept firing at them, and more time was lost before I could make one of them slue his gun round to support Moore's shells. When he did so, the rushing, yelling crowd, who were scrambling across and beyond the trench, seemed to melt away, and only a few were left alive—some to fall back into the trench, where they lay comparatively safely, and others to take refuge among the mat shed huts belonging to the telegraph employees—the huts I had so often implored Mr. Fisher to burn. Ellis—I think it was Ellis—was still "playing" the Maxim on the barbed fence, and was not able to see, or too excited to realize, that he was only firing on dead men lying heaped in masses, or sprawling singly over the fence. I shouted down to tell him not to waste more ammunition.

At this time there were not more than perhaps twenty of the enemy to be seen, and these were doing their best to escape, crawling and creeping, dodging towards those confounded huts.

I stopped the Maxims and ordered Moore to fire a few shells among the huts, hoping to set fire to them, or at any rate turn out the Baluchis taking shelter there. Before he could do this my fellows began shouting: "More are coming, sir; look, sir!" and I saw another horde of chaps dash out from the Old Fort and the dip in the ground round it, rushing up the slope as the others had done, but keeping away to their left, to avoid the mangled heaps of their tribesmen huddled near the barbed-wire fence.

They were already within fifty yards of the huts before we could swing our guns round, only to discover that whilst they kept on the far side of the slope the curvature of the ground protected them to a certain extent, and we could not reach them easily. Only their heads could we see, their heads and their arms brandishing rifles.

We let rip at them without doing much damage, if any, for I never saw the rush waver. But then they came to the barbed fence, and climbing over it they made a better target. They must have suffered horribly, but at least a hundred passed it and disappeared among those huts to join the remnant of the first rush.

I guessed what would happen. Directly they had regained breath the whole crowd would dash for the loopholed wall.

I yelled for everybody to "stand by" and train their guns on the upper slope.

"They'll be in the open in a minute!" I shouted, and glued my glasses to my eyes. It was quite light now. Turning for a moment to the telegraph-station, I saw Hartley trying to semaphore something from the top corner. Rifles were poking out through the loopholes, and, thank goodness, that door in the wall was shut.

Shooting was still going on everywhere—one could not distinguish exactly from where.

"Drop a shell among the huts and turn 'em out," I called down. "Stand by with the Maxims to follow them when they break cover."

Moore fired twice. Then, as I expected, a regular horde of Baluchis rushed out from among the huts, yelling and firing their rifles, making a most appalling din as they swarmed up the slope.

But they were in full view and entirely exposed. The Maxims swept through them; the six-pounder scattered bits of iron and stones amongst them and tumbled many over like rabbits. But we could not stop them all, and before I realized it the wave of men—thinned, it is true, but still numerous—had swept to the foot of the white, loopholed wall itself. The desperate savages were leaping up to grab the top, climbing on each other's backs, poking their rifles through the loopholes, and hammering at the door with their rifle butts. And at this very time the Maxims stopped firing; so did the six-pounder.

I dashed below.

"Go on!" I shouted. "Go on! Why the devil ain't you firing?"

"We'll hit the telegraph people, sir!" they called.

"Don't worry about them—fire—fire—carry on the Maxims," I yelled, "or they'll be inside in a moment."

I cared not a rap whether we killed all the telegraph people, so long as we kept the Baluchis outside. Miss Borsen wouldn't be anywhere near the wall, so we should not hurt her.

The Maxims began pumping out more lead—by good fortune they worked splendidly, the belts jerking through like lightning—and in less time than it has taken me to write this the Baluchis had begun to fall back. Once they were clear of the wall Moore opened on them with shell, and though these shells do very little damage in the open they kept them on the run whilst more Maxim belts were being slipped in.

They fled back to the huts almost too quickly for the guns to follow them. From the rear of the huts they burst forth, trying to keep out of sight; but as they came to the wire-fence they had to climb over it, and one of the Maxims was waiting for them and played terrible havoc. The remnant simply flew down—their heads showing beyond the contour of the slope—till they disappeared among the date-palm trees round the Old Fort.

My fellows began to cheer—they had been too busy before—and the lascars and all the other natives danced about and cheered too—Percy wildly excited; all except of course the cook and his mate, who were busy preparing the men's cocoa, and were apparently still contemplating their usual early suicide directly the saucepans had been cleaned again.

Jaffa, left to himself, had been firing a rifle. He looked pleased and happy. As for Mr. Scarlett, he was beaming.

"Drove 'em 'Balooks' back all right, sir!" he said, rubbing his hands. "They've learnt a lesson or two, those poor wretched devils," and he jerked his thumb towards the open sloping ground, which now looked as if a fierce gust had blown the washing out of a laundry and distributed it unevenly over the ground.

I asked him what had been the matter at first, and why he had broken down the doors of the magazine. He told me that as Moore had run aft with the key he had dropped it overboard in his excitement. This was Moore all over. Just like the idiot he was!

We now had time to look towards the village and the New Fort.

Only a very occasional shot came from that direction, and through our glasses we saw that the parapets and battlements were black with figures, so knew that the Baluchis had captured it. The trading dhows were being hauled off-shore and were putting to sea, their crews working desperately to save them from falling into the hands of the Baluchis; the bay was full of their frightened cries as they hoisted their clumsy sails and tried to gain safety.

Just then bullets began to fall round us, and soon we were under a brisk, long-range fire—apparently from the fugitives round the Old Fort. It was so badly aimed that it was hardly enough to disturb us but a badly-aimed bullet is just as dangerous as a well-aimed one—if it happens to find a billet. So whilst the Maxim crews were getting up more ammunition and reloading belts, I made Moore throw a few shells close to the Old Fort. The first few they stood but at the seventh we had the gratification of seeing them bolt back into a fold of the ground close to the landing-place on the other side of the peninsula. They drove their frightened camels into this shelter and were safe from any tokens of "esteem" we could send them.

Just then someone called my attention to the telegraph buildings. I looked and saw the door in the loopholed wall thrown open, and men began filing out and racing down the slope—a man in pyjamas leading them. It was Mr. Fisher. Why they were coming out goodness only knows; but down they ran, apparently with the idea of manning the trench and breastwork. They had almost reached it before I remembered that some of the enemy might possibly be there still; and, sure enough, as the leading ones leapt into the trench on one side, I saw thirty or forty Baluchis, who had been hidden from us on the other side, spring up, fire point-blank, and leap over, dropping their rifles and slashing with swords as they jumped down among them. We could not possibly give assistance; we could not fire into the mêlée, and stood stock-still, holding our breath, watching the hand-to-hand struggle. It probably did not last fifty seconds, though it seemed more like fifty minutes, and at last the telegraph staff began to retreat uphill. Luckily very few—not half a dozen—followed them; the rest contenting themselves with lying down and firing.

Mr. Scarlett, without orders, took the risk and fired a shell among this lot, and made them scramble over the breastwork again out of sight. The others stopped as well and came back.

Mr. Fisher, in his pyjamas, tried to lead his people to charge down once more; but they would not follow him. Instead, they fell back inside the loopholed wall—the white figure being the last to enter—and I breathed again when the door was once more closed.

We now had all we could do to prevent the Bunder Abbas being damaged by the fleeing dhows. Their crews had quite lost their heads. One fouled us amidships and tore a stanchion out before she drifted clear; another, having cut her "grass" hawser cable, drifted helplessly right across our bows, with our little cable tautening under her bottom. Every single soul of us was trying to shove her free, and I had to veer cable before she eventually scraped past, hanging up for a moment as her projecting stern caught in the stem-post and carried away another stanchion, which let the whole fore part of the awning fall over the six-pounder gun—and over us too. If only the Baluchis had taken advantage of this moment we could have done nothing. Luckily the poor wretches were disheartened, or perhaps they never even saw their chance.

Away inshore, by the New Fort, there was much yelling and screaming. The whole village was humming like a hive of bees disturbed—the inhabitants fleeing along the beach and staggering under their valuables, until some shots, apparently from the New Fort, fell among them, when they dropped their burdens and fled all the faster. The enemy in that fort commanded the track to Old Jask, and these poor wretches had to make a great circuit before they could hope to reach safety.

Honestly, I had not imagined that an attack would have been delivered with so little warning. As Mr. Scarlett said: "It was not at all like their usual way of doing things." They ought to have come along in the daylight, settled themselves across the base of the peninsula, and then sent in a messenger to ask for a ransom, failing which they would storm the place. That had always been the custom in this part of the world, so both Jaffa and Mr. Scarlett assured me.

It was not very flattering to our own military instincts and preparation for defence to realize that if they had not begun firing their rifles almost before they had reached the neck of the peninsula, and long before they ever commenced to dismount from their camels to charge up the slope, they must have taken the telegraph-station by surprise. We should have heard or seen nothing until too late; and I really went cold "all over", to think what would have happened inside those walls with the Bunder Abbas absolutely powerless to interfere. I knew now, though I did not know it before, that none of these people can control themselves; they must let off their rifles to work up their courage to the charging-point, and must continue wasting ammunition to keep it there.

The extraordinary thing was that Jaffa had ridden nearly twenty miles inland only yesterday, and had actually visited several villages at the foot of the mountains, without obtaining any warning whatever.

Hartley began signalling again from the top of the roof.

"Two men killed and two missing," I read. "Mr. Fisher wishes to know if you can clear the trench. There are fifty or sixty of the enemy still there?"

I'd forgotten them.

I called out to Mr. Scarlett and asked him whether he thought we could turn them out with shell and Maxims. We both agreed that we could not do so without expending more ammunition than we could afford.

"Right oh! We shall have to land and drive 'em out!" I said.

He was very anxious to come with me.

"Don't leave me this time, sir," he pleaded, and I could not help but wonder at the change which had come over him.

He saw my look of surprise and burst out with: "I am a different man now, sir; I feel a different being altogether since I got rid of that," and he touched his left arm. I shook my head and told him that he would have all he could do to keep the main body back if they had the heart to come along again.

I semaphored to Hartley to tell Mr. Fisher to keep up a fire on the trench, so as to occupy the minds of those chaps still there, and in half an hour landed in the dinghy, just below some rocks at the end of the barbed-wire fences, with Webster, Jones, and Gamble. Sending the dinghy back for Ellis, Andrews, and Griffiths, we dashed to the top of the beach and lay down between the end of the fence and the breastwork. Until they came it was a very ticklish position to be in; for if those fifty or so "Balooks" had spotted us, and had the "heart of a worm", they might have "done for" all three of us.

We lay there absolutely motionless, glued to the ground, whilst the noise of casual firing from above told us that the telegraph people were doing what I'd asked them—firing at the trench farther along. Not a hundred yards from us rifles began answering them. It was a great relief when the dinghy came back and Ellis, Griffiths, and Andrews joined us.

Then we rose, fixing bayonets and rushing up and across the open to the wretched breastwork, much too excited to worry about how many chaps we should find there. I knew that the trench had no traverses—we had never thought them necessary; so once we scrambled over and into it we should be able to sweep the whole length of it with our rifles.

We just caught sight of the ghastly heaps of dead lying at the foot of the fence a little farther along, some actually leaning over as if they were alive. Then we saw some live Baluchis lying down on our side of the breastwork, too busily engaged plugging at the loopholed wall to think of danger behind them.

Directly we saw them we yelled—we could not restrain ourselves any longer—and as we rushed for them they saw our bayonets, squealed with fright, and leapt across the breastwork into the trench. We were after them in a moment, each racing to be first, jumping the breastwork with a bound, and seeing them flying helter-skelter to the far end. I jumped clean on a wounded man, who wriggled up and tried to slash at me with a sword; but I was away before the blow touched me. We simply emptied our magazines into these chaps and they never gave us a chance to close. A few fell, but our aim was too wild to account for many, and most of them scrambled out, over, and down towards the barbed-wire, like a lot of rabbits making for their "bury". We knocked over one or two as they flung themselves over the wires, and the rest simply dashed down the slope to join the main body hidden in the hollow.

A faint cheer came from the loopholed wall, and I heard a cry of disgust from my own men. Looking back I saw them bending over the corpse of what had been one of the Eurasian telegraph people. It was horribly mutilated.

A little farther on another lay dead, mutilated in the same hideous manner. It made me sick to look at them.

In fact the whole place was a shambles. There must have been nearly a hundred—perhaps more—bodies dotted about in little white heaps near the fence and the breastwork, the heaps being more scattered between the breastwork and the wall where the Maxim had caught them in their final rush. Along the foot of the wall corpses lay singly. What grand-looking men they were, too, with fierce high-bred faces. It was a horrid business.

The edge of civilization! Yes! I was there again, and the only satisfaction this slaughter gave was the knowledge of what the fate of those two poor frightened women would have been had the attack succeeded.

I don't want, in this yarn, to worry anyone with the thoughts which flashed through my head on this or that occasion, but I should like to write just this and have done with it. To stand quietly, as I was doing then, on that slope where not many minutes previously four or five hundred raging men in the prime of life had rushed up with the one idea in their souls to "kill or die", "kill or die", and to see now the huddled, white-cloaked figures lying all round, so calm and still and dignified by death, made me feel wearily sad.

It was my duty to kill them—I was sent there, on the edge of civilization, to do so—and it had fallen to my lot to do it. "Kismet!"

It was only one more wave of fanatical, unthinking, misdirected barbarism broken again as it tried to wash back the advance of civilization, and civilization cannot and must not cease to roll back such waves, in the eternal progress of the world. I remembered the day I had walked so jauntily out of the Admiralty with every contempt for the roar and bustle of traffic and trade, and every nerve tingling with delight at soon leaving it for the edge of civilization; and now that I was there, and had done a man's work with the tools and engines of war which civilization had put in my hand, I was neither pleased nor proud.

It was all too cruel, too brutal, all so meaningless and useless a waste of life. These men had died because we prevented them, by every means in our power, from obtaining more rifles. They only wanted them to carry on their family and tribal blood feuds, to raid other tribes, and to shoot our own soldiers across the Indian frontier. But to these poor wretches this was their whole duty in life, and they knew that the telegraph-cable was one of their chief enemies—it could give warning of attempts to land arms; it could summon ships from below the horizon to prevent them being landed: so they had laid down their lives in the endeavour to destroy it, and had left their waiting wives to teach their fatherless children black hatred of the white man, and to bring them up with the one idea, later on, when they were big enough to hold a rifle, of trying to revenge their fathers' deaths and beat back—in their turn—advancing civilization.

Standing among all these heaped-up corpses I could not help thinking what a wailing there would be when these grand men did not return to their village fastnesses in those grim mountains standing up like a huge wall against the horizon.

A rifle suddenly went off close to me. Turning, I saw Webster open his breech and jerk out a cartridge.

"A wounded chap tried to stab me, sir," he said in explanation.

That was the worst part of it. The wounded never expected anything but death, and wanted revenge before they died. It was not the slightest use trying to attend to their wounds, in fact it was dangerous to go anywhere near a man, even though he looked as dead as a stone—he might only be pretending to be dead and waiting his opportunity for you to get close. I ought to have given orders for my men to go round and shoot every one with any sign of life in him, but this I absolutely refused to do. The poor, ignorant wretches should have the chance of crawling down among their own people—if they could.

I called my men away, and, carefully avoiding every patch of tumbled, distorted bodies, went up to speak to Mr. Fisher, whom I saw coming towards me—still in his pyjamas—a revolver in his hand.

He was quite cool. "Thank you very much!" he said simply.

"How is Miss Borsen," I asked eagerly, "and your wife?" but he did not know. He had not seen them since the first alarm.

"What will these Baluchi chaps do now?" I asked.

"Baluchis!" he said. "Most of them are Afghans, the real fighting Afghan; there are only a sprinkling of Baluchis. I don't know what they will do, but they've had such a lesson that they'll probably be off again to the hills to-night. I've sent off a wire to Duckworth to tell him that we've been attacked and that you beat them off by fire from your launch."

He seemed undecided what to do. He still hesitated about burning those confounded huts which had already caused so much trouble. He did not want to irritate the employees who lived there, and kept on saying: "We'll wait till the morning; there probably won't be a sign of them then."

But he gladly accepted my offer to mount one of my Maxims on top of the station, and I went back to the Bunder Abbas with my people to send it ashore as quickly as possible.

Already some at least of the Afghans were recovering their fright, for as we marched down to the beach we came in for a sharp "sniping", and Jones the marine was shot through the arm. He dropped his rifle and swore at Gamble, thinking he had struck him; then he looked at the place, shook his fist towards the Old Fort, picked up his rifle with the other hand, and came on.

It was the same arm which had been hit during the engagement with the Afghans at Bungi whilst we were trying to get old Popple Opstein out of his trap.

Once aboard the Bunder Abbas I took charge and sent Mr. Scarlett ashore with the Maxim.

He was delighted to go, unshipped it and lowered it, with two thousand rounds of ammunition, into the dinghy, and set off ashore with Jackson and Ellis to help him.

Some of the telegraph coolies were waiting to carry it up the slope, and as I ate some breakfast which Percy had ready for me, and afterwards smoked my pipe, I watched the three of them busy mounting it at the corner of the parapet.

Before leaving the Bunder Abbas I had ordered steam to be raised, and directly the lascar first-driver reported the engines ready I signalled to Mr. Fisher that I intended to steam round to the other side of the peninsula and try to teach the enemy another lesson.

This I did, and, as I expected, found them totally unprepared for my approach. They must have seen the Bunder Abbas getting under way and steaming out, but possibly imagined that she was going to sea. At any rate, as I suddenly appeared round the head of the peninsula and the rocks there, I found them crowded together, almost on the shore, among their camels.

They appeared to be asleep, but woke with a fright when Moore let rip a shell among them.

As they rose to their feet I turned the Bunder Abbas round and gave them a taste of the Maxim as well.

They had had one lesson at daybreak; they now, at midday, had a still harder one. It was pure, undiluted slaughter; but, though sickening, was absolutely necessary. They fled helter-skelter inland, leaving their camels to fend for themselves, rushing behind the ruins of the Old Fort, and, when a couple of shells drove them out of that, flying panic-stricken in a long straggling line—the devil take the hindmost—through the sand-dunes towards the mainland, many of them making a long detour in the direction of the New Fort. What I did hate to see was the poor, wretched, wounded camels hobbling about, falling down, and struggling to their feet again.

Having cleared this side of the peninsula I went back and anchored at my old billet. From there I could see the remnant of the enemy huddled round the walls of the New Fort. I might have stirred them with a few more shells, but did not. Mr. Scarlett signalled presently that the Maxim was mounted and ready, so I ordered him to bring Jackson back to the ship; Ellis and Hartley between them would be able to work it, and I was too short-handed already to spare anyone else. Mr. Scarlett was very pleased with himself and with the splendid fire zone which the Maxim he had just mounted could sweep. He had seen the ladies, and said that though they were very white they seemed fairly cheerful.

I asked if they'd sent any message to me.

"Mrs. Fisher did, sir, but I'm hanged if I remember what it was exactly."

"Did Miss Borsen?" I asked, trying to hide my nervous anxiety to know whether perhaps what had occurred might have made her show signs of forgiving me.

I felt miserable when he shook his head. "Not as I remember, sir."

There were two things that troubled him: those confounded huts, which rather interfered with his beloved Maxim, and that breastwork. He pointed out that there were not nearly enough men to defend the breastwork, and that it formed admirable cover for an attacking force.

"We ought to level it in, that we ought," he said, shaking his head.

Of course he was right. Hadn't we seen what had happened that very morning?

"Mr. Fisher expects them to clear away back to the hills to-night," I told him. "What do you think?"

He shook his head again. "They don't seem to be carrying out their usual routine; not a bit of it. They ought to retire—that is, if experience is anything to go by. I don't like the look of them occupying the fort; it looks as if they meant to stay."

When I asked him whether he thought the Mir of Old Jask would attack them, and endeavour to recapture his fort, he only made a grimace.

All that afternoon there was absolute quiet except for an occasional shot from the New Fort and also a few shots fired on the slope itself, where the telegraph coolies were busy dragging the dead into heaps and burning them. These last shots told me that some of the wounded Afghans had had to be dispatched.

Mr. Scarlett was so anxious for me to try to get a "move on" Mr. Fisher about burning the huts and levelling the breastworks that I went ashore later in the day and again urged him to do this.

Nothing I could say could make him realize the necessity. "I am certain they'll all have cleared away home by to-morrow morning. We'll wait till then. Besides, I dare not overwork the coolies. If I do they will desert," was all I could get out of him.

I suggested that it might be advisable to send Mrs. Fisher and Miss Borsen on board the Bunder Abbas for the night; but he declined for the same reason as he declined everything else—that he expected the Afghans to disappear before morning.

"Do you know that you are responsible for much of this?" he said, as he walked backwards and forwards with me outside the loopholed wall.

"Responsible! What do you mean?"

"Why," he said, "they all know of the loss of that huge caravan over on the Muscat coast—the one you and the Intrepid captured between you. It they had got those rifles and all that ammunition through to the Indian frontier there would have been another 'rising' there. They were only waiting for them before giving the signal to the tribes along a hundred miles of the frontier to pour down through the passes and lay waste the valleys and murder the tribes living there under British protection. They all know this, and to-day they have been trying to revenge themselves for their lost opportunity. I've seen among the killed several men I know: powerful sheikhs, Arabs from the other coast, leading men from Afghan villages. It is a bigger business than I thought at first.

"However, they will probably be gone by the morning, and you may pride yourself that but for your capturing that big caravan the other day, the Indian Government would have had another little war on its hands.

"Oh," he added, "I'd almost forgotten! I had a wire from Muscat. The Intrepid has gone off up the coast after some more arms."

I went back to the Bunder Abbas rather elated at the idea that I had helped to stop a little war, and remembered what Commander Duckworth had said: "They ought to do something for you." It was rather early to expect promotion, but it would be grand if it came.

"Can't budge him," I told Mr. Scarlett. "He still thinks they'll have gone back home by the morning. The Intrepid has gone after some more arms so we shan't be disturbed till she gets back. That's one good bit of news."

Just before sunset a small dhow came drifting slowly into the bay. She was flying the Muscat red flag and did not seem to notice anything unusual, or that the anchorage was deserted of shipping, so I sent Jaffa across to warn her nakhoda of what was happening. Jaffa came back to say that he was very grateful and would put to sea again, but had several passengers for Old Jask who preferred to land and would take shelter at the telegraph-station until things were quiet. I saw them later on—three cloaked figures—land on the beach and make their way up towards the loopholed wall.

We also saw numerous little spirals of blue smoke rising into the air round the walls of the New Fort, so knew that the tribesmen were preparing food; and Hartley, just about this time, signalled that he could see a large mass of mounted people moving across the plains in our direction. This did not worry us. We, Mr. Scarlett and I, were quite happy. From what he told me it was out of the question that, even though they did not retreat that night, they would attempt an attack. Their ideas of war and sieges were to attack at dawn; it was a tradition to attack at dawn, and seldom had they been known to attack at any other time.

The sun was setting now in its usual magnificence; everything—the rocks, the telegraph-station over them, the sandy shores, the walls of the New Fort, were flooded with delicate rose tints. The mountains behind and the few wisps of clouds overhanging them were suffused with the same delicate colours, and out from behind them rose the moon—nearly full—and we knew that directly the sun's light vanished her light would take its place and enable us to defeat any attack (almost inconceivable) that the Afghans might attempt.

We only had to keep vigilant watch, and if they tried to rush the slope again we should see the white-cloaked figures as plainly as in daytime.

I kept the first watch that night, Griffiths with me. At about ten o'clock flames burst out ashore, in the direction of the New Fort, and soon it was evident that the whole of the village was on fire. It was a grand spectacle as the flames spread from hut to hut, leaping high in the air, lighting up the walls of the fort, even the white walls of the telegraph buildings, and making the water of the bay and the brasswork of the Bunder Abbas glow red.

The flames and crackling were still fierce when Mr. Scarlett relieved me at midnight. In his opinion the Afghans had set the huts on fire purposely, and were probably retreating inland under cover of the heavy cloud of smoke which lay above them.

I had four hours in which to sleep, so, stretching myself on my bed, I lay down on that little upper deck outside our cabin, leaving him and Gamble to keep the "middle" watch.

CHAPTER XVII

Jassim Takes his Revenge

At four o'clock in the morning Mr. Scarlett shook me and reported all quiet and the fire on shore dying down. I scrambled to my feet to take over the "morning" watch, feeling as fresh and wakeful as though I had not been to sleep for a fortnight!

The moonlight was very brilliant, so brilliant, indeed, that the telegraph buildings on the dark rocks and the New Fort on the white sand stood out quite as boldly as in the daytime; and all that could be seen of the remains of the fire was a glowing line of red-hot ashes extending along the beach, where the village had been.

The slope leading up to the loopholed wall was so flooded with light that I could distinguish even the barbed-wire fence and the shadows of the wires and uprights.

Of the Afghans themselves nothing whatever could be made out; but this did not imply that they had gone away, because most of them might be sleeping inside the fort and the others behind it, and at the base of the peninsula the fringe of date-palms threw such extremely dark, puzzling shadows that the camels might have been concealed among these, or even been driven farther along behind the sand-hills without our having noticed any movement.

At any rate, whatever had or had not happened, I was not going to leave anything to chance, or take any risks: so the rest of the hands were called and stood to their guns; cocoa was served out; and to make sure that Ellis and Hartley were on the alert I made a flashing signal to them. As it was answered I knew that they, too, were "standing by" their Maxim.

After this there was nothing to do but strain our eyes shorewards and wait for daylight. In the half-hour when the increasing light of dawn is absorbing the light of the moon and rendering the outlines of objects uncertain and ill defined, this waiting for an attack is always most scaring. It makes no difference how often one experiences this feeling of acute tension, it always seems to occupy one so completely that not a soul moves or speaks; even breathing is a difficult matter, and breaths come in deep jerks, only when they can be held no longer.

But if the strain is great when the moon is there to help, it is ten times as great when there is no moon and the first glimmer of daylight distorts everything so strangely and forms such strange weird shapes.

How grateful we were to the moon that morning!

Daylight did come at last. The fading shadows under the fringe of date-palm trees showed us hundreds of motionless lumps which gradually outlined themselves into camels; figures began moving about among them, and out from the door of the fort streamed many more to kneel on the sand, facing the glory of the rising sun, throw their arms above their heads, and bend at their devotions.

This might only be the preliminary to an attack; so still we remained at our guns, until the sight of many little spirals of blue smoke rising in the calm morning air, and the little groups of men seated round them—evidently cooking—made it absolutely certain that they did not intend any such thing—not that morning.

"That finishes the business," Mr. Scarlett said, drawing a deep breath, and letting it out again with a jerk.

We had been so certain—Mr. Scarlett and I—that they would have done the one thing or the other, and now they had done neither; they had simply stayed where they were, in complete possession of the base of the peninsula, and entirely cutting it off from any assistance from Old Jask.

Mr. Scarlett shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. He could not understand these tactics.

"It ain't like 'em, sir; it ain't like anything I've seen or heard of before, and I don't care about it," he said, as I dismissed the men from the guns to get their breakfasts and scrub decks.

Whilst they were doing this we were startled suddenly by the sound of rifle firing, a long way off, in the direction of Old Jask, and drawing rapidly nearer. Without waiting for the order, the crew tumbled up from below to their guns, but no one could see anything happening. At first we made sure that another band of Afghans were attacking the old town; but this could not be so, because the people round the New Fort seemed even more startled than we had been. They sprang to their feet, seized their rifles, and whilst some began to "round up" the camels, driving them close to the wall, others poured into the fort itself.

Whilst we were wondering what all this meant, the battlements of the fort became alive with dark turbans; puffs of smoke darted out from them, and the reports of their rifles came across to us. At what they were firing we could neither see nor guess.

At last, after firing had been going on continuously for four or five minutes, Mr. Scarlett saw a cloud of dust, and, looking in the direction of his finger, I made out a number of mounted men—some on horses, others on camels—advancing over the plain from Old Jask. Spurts of light, showing in the cloud of sand dust over their heads, told us that it was from them we had heard the first firing.

"It's the old Mir's border police coming to recapture the fort," Mr. Scarlett sang out. "Now you'll see some pretty fighting. Just remember, sir, that they are mostly Bedouins from the other coast, and they and the Afghans hate each other like poison. Now watch what's going to happen."

I did; we all did.

The line of men came charging up to the base of the peninsula, sweeping away to the right and wheeling round the bend of the swamp lying there, until they were not more than two thousand yards from the fort. Firing from both parties was continuous. Then for a moment I lost sight of them behind some sand-hills, and expected, when next they appeared, to find that they had dismounted, left their horses and camels in rear of those sand-hills, and were attacking properly—with short rushes or something of that sort—although I was puzzled to think what they could effect against the thick walls of the fort.

Instead of this they reappeared in sight—in somewhat looser formation certainly, but still mounted—and galloped madly along the intervening sand, firing rapidly, whilst the fusillade from the parapet and towers of the fort swelled furiously, and the people who had driven the camels under cover of the walls lay down to fire as well.

The attacking party came to five hundred yards—to three hundred; none of them seemed to have been hit. Still they galloped, the men on camels bringing up the rear left far behind. Then the horsemen suddenly divided into two parties, and, yelling and firing their rifles, they circled completely round the fort, enveloping it, meeting in the rear of it, and dashing round again. A continuous splutter of musketry burst out from the walls above their heads, without, as far as we could see, doing the faintest damage. In fact, the firing was so wild that a good many bullets began falling round us, and one banged against the funnel close to where I was standing.

The circling rings of horsemen grew larger as they curveted and pranced in the clouds of dust kicked up by their own horses' hoofs, until they all swooped off like a flock of birds and gathered in a knot about half a mile from the fort; whereupon the firing died down almost completely. Every now and then a horseman darted out from among them, dashed towards the fort, gave a display of horsemanship, fired his rifle, performed some circus tricks, and then dashed back again.

I was so interested and amused that I forgot that the fort was well within range of our six-pounder.

"Let's help them," I shouted, ordering Moore to "plug" a shell at the fort.

Mr. Scarlett only laughed. "You'll see what happens."

Our first shell burst short, burying itself in the sand; the second blew a hole in the soft bricks of the fort; and before we could fire a third the whole covey of those border police had whirled round and galloped rapidly away, quickly disappearing in another cloud of dust on their way back to Old Jask, still firing their rifles furiously.

I don't believe that a single man of them had been hit.

"Shall we cease fire, sir?" Mr. Scarlett asked. "We haven't enough ammunition to waste any more on the fort."

"Right oh!" I nodded.

The horsemen of the party had galloped off, but the few men on camels who had been left in the rear had evidently "rounded up" some of the Afghans' camels, for they now reappeared beyond the sandhills trying to drive a dozen—perhaps more—in front of them.

Immediately there was a stir among the Afghans outside the wall; more poured out through the door of the fort, and in a twinkling they were after them on foot, wading across the swamp so as to head off the party with the camels. Firing burst out more furiously than ever, and it was not many seconds before the captured camels were abandoned and the other fellows followed the horsemen.

"Well, sir, that little 'show' was what they call a battle—a regular 'pitched' battle," Mr. Scarlett said. "How they decide who's won beats me. It's an accident if anyone gets killed or even wounded, but those Bedouins will go back and pour out a long yarn to the old Mir; every one of them will have to give an account of the fierceness of the fight, and probably they'll all desert during the day and go looting on their own account—looting peaceful villages, which is much more in their line. We may as well let our chaps, and the Afghans too, go on with their breakfasts."

In ten minutes the whole of the tribesmen were squatting round their fires again as though nothing had happened.

Now that we knew they had not retired—had no intention of doing so—Mr. Scarlett was as anxious as I was that those huts should be burnt, the breastwork levelled, and the trench filled in; so I went ashore to try to persuade Mr. Fisher to make a start on these jobs.

I found him much more surprised at the non-retirement of the Afghans than we had been, and very much more disappointed. In fact, he looked about as worried as any man could look. He took me up to the house so that I could personally assure his wife that the Bunder Abbas would not leave them. She was in a terrible state of alarm, almost beside herself; her eyes were terrified, and she clutched my arm so tightly whilst she was imploring me to stay that her finger nails left deep marks.

"Why don't you send for the Intrepid? We shall all be killed," she said in the most agitated manner; and it was quite useless to tell her that the Intrepid had gone up the coast and that we could not communicate with her. When she did let go of my arm her hands worked convulsively at her sides, and I no longer wondered why her husband looked so worn.

Miss Borsen was not there, of course, and I had not the courage to ask after her. In fact, I was very glad to tear myself away and go up to the Maxim on the roof, to see for myself whether it could sweep the whole slope.

Mr. Scarlett had told me correctly. The Maxim had a grand position, and no one could approach without coming under its fire except towards the right, where it was possible to creep up unseen behind those huts.

Ellis and Hartley had filled old flour-sacks with sand and placed them along the parapet, on each side of the gun. They were busy bringing up more, and were quite happy. "If only those huts were out of the way, sir, nothing could get near us," Ellis said; and though I again implored Mr. Fisher to burn them he still refused. He took me to see the two wounded Eurasians—one shot through the arm and the other badly slashed about the head. They were bandaged in very "shipshape" fashion, and looked comfortable enough.

"Who did that?" I asked, pointing to their dressings; and when he told me that Miss Borsen had looked after them, as she knew something of "first aid", I envied them for a moment.

He had now only fifteen of the telegraph staff remaining, and, as he said, none of them knew anything about fighting. He was doubtful about trusting rifles to the servants and telegraph employees, because these were of all nationalities—Zanzibaris, Baluchis, Tamils, and various half-castes; but he had collected the rifles strewn over the slope yesterday when those fellows had been shot down—nearly a hundred of them there were, of all patterns. Very little ammunition had been found on the dead bodies, and that, too, was all mixed up—Mauser, Mannlicher, Le Bras, Lee-Metford, Martini—all in a hopeless jumble. He promised to have them sorted.

Then I was taken all round the outside of the loopholed wall, and discovered—what I had not thought of before—that it was possible for an enemy to crawl along the rocks on the eastern side—the right side looking inland—without being seen, to clamber up them, and attack that flanking wall without exposing themselves. However, the man who designed the wall must have realized this and had built it nearly fifteen feet high, so that unless they brought ladders with them it would be difficult to scale. The cable-house—a little square building into which the cable from Muscat wriggled out of the sea—stood isolated on the rocks, and could be attacked at night with impunity.

Walking round the rear wall I satisfied myself that no attack could be made from that quarter, because the rocks at the end of the peninsula could only be reached in boats, and as the sea was always rough there at this time of year a landing was out of the question. The western side—the one looking over the bay where the Bunder Abbas was anchored—was fairly safe, though here again a daring enemy might creep round by the beach (where I had just landed) and attack from short range. However, so long as the Bunder Abbas remained (or had ammunition), and the nights were moonlit, this possibility did not worry me.

Mr. Fisher kept on complaining of the few men he had left—fifteen all told—which was a ridiculous number to protect all three of the vulnerable sides; but I implored him to arm the servants and any of the labourers he could trust, and gradually convinced him that this was safe.

As we came back to the front side I saw that thirty or forty men were already shovelling the breastwork back into the trench. This pleased me.

Then he took me through the door—covered with bullet marks and the dents of rifle butts—as I wanted to see where best to make a defence should the wall itself be captured. I went all round the buildings, and came to the conclusion that his own house would be the most suitable. It was strongly built; it had a raised veranda running round it, and was almost overlooking the left-hand corner of the loopholed wall—the corner nearest to the Bunder Abbas. This was the house on the roof of which the Maxim was already mounted, and from the parapet there it would be easy to pick off any Afghans who had gained a lodgment on the wall itself. Another point in its favour was that the well was close to it—in the rear.

I urged him to get sand-bags and pile them up round the veranda and in the open door-ways or windows. I also urged upon him the necessity of bringing in food from the telegraph stores and also all the reserve ammunition. All my arguments could not convince him that this was necessary, and he pointed out that, whatever happened, he could not abandon the telegraph instruments in the other building.

"We must keep them working at all costs," he said stubbornly.

He had not said this many seconds before up came a messenger, followed by an excited Eurasian "operator", to tell him that the overland wire to Karachi had been cut again some fifteen miles out.

"That solves part of the difficulty," I said, smiling. "You cannot pass on cable messages, so won't want so many of the staff at work."

He too seemed relieved, and told me that half his fellows had been lining the wall all last night and the other half working the instruments. "They can't keep awake twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four. Now they'll be able to get a little sleep.

"Oh, I forgot," he went on; "a dhow which came in last evening brought some passengers for Old Jask. They stayed here during the night, and are waiting to see me at my office, though how they think I can get them through I don't know. By the way, they brought a letter for your gunner. I've been carrying it about in my pocket. Here it is," and he handed me an envelope addressed in Arabic. "You might give it him."

I caught sight of Miss Borsen coming towards us and evidently wishing to speak to Mr. Fisher; so, as I did not want to worry her with my presence, and had done all I wanted to do, I took the letter and went down the slope to the dinghy and so back to the Bunder Abbas.

"Here's a letter for you," I told the gunner. "It's not Jassim's writing this time."

He grinned as he read it.

"It's from the governor of the Muscat fort. He says that Jassim's got out. I didn't imagine he'd keep him there long after my back was turned."

"Well, he won't bother us here," I said, much more amused to think how Mr. Scarlett's dread of him had disappeared than alarmed at any possible danger to myself.

For the rest of the morning and afternoon we kept a good look-out, in case the Afghans made any move; though, except for a few small foraging parties, they simply slumbered or smoked at the foot of the walls, shifting round with the shade as the sun travelled westwards.

It was a great temptation to stir them up with a few shells; though, if we had done so, we should only at the best have driven them out of range and out of sight, and once out of sight we should not have been able to observe their movements. There was another reason—a much more pressing one: we had none too much six-pounder ammunition.

An hour before sunset Mr. Fisher made a signal that he wanted to see me again, and he came down to the beach to meet me. The Afghans had sent a messenger in to say that they would attack at dawn next morning with twice as many men as they had had yesterday, and he wanted my advice.

"Of course it's only bluff," he said nervously; "but I want you to persuade my wife and Miss Borsen to go aboard the Bunder Abbas."

On the way up to the door in the loophooled wall he took me along the trench to see how well his people had been working. They had filled in about a hundred yards of it, and were still busy. Those wretched huts, however, still stood there, right in the line of fire.

"Why the dickens don't you burn them?" I said, really angry, and he was muttering a half-apology when some noise behind me and a warning shout made me turn round.

Not ten yards from me stood Jassim. I knew him at once—how could I forget him?—his face flaming with hatred, the veins of his neck standing out; and in his hand he held a Mauser pistol levelled at me.

He fired, and instinctively I ducked, seized a spade which was lying at my feet, and dashed at him. Mr. Fisher drew a revolver from his pocket and I heard him fire. Then I felt something hit my chest on the right side. It tumbled me over like a rabbit; but I was up again on one knee in time to see Mr. Fisher fire a second shot and Jassim stagger back. He still had those awful eyes fixed on me, glaring death, and as he raised his pistol again I rolled into the trench to escape being hit a second time.

Something filled my throat, and I spat up a lot of bright blood, and felt dazed and foolish. I was trying to get to my feet again when Mr. Fisher came to me with a face as white as a sheet, jumped into the trench, and made me lie back.

"There!" I said, spitting up more blood; "he got me there," and I put my finger where the bullet had hit me.

I felt no pain whatsoever—only a peculiar half-drunk feeling—and tried to sit up again; but this only brought on more coughing, and Mr. Fisher pressed me down.

Then I knew that I should be no more use—only a burden to everyone.

I looked up at him apologetically.

"Get me aboard the 'B.A.'; I shall be all right soon:" but the effort of speaking forced more blood into my mouth, and I had to stop.

With a frightened expression on his face he bade me stop talking and lie still.

"I'll have you carried down," he said; "wait till we can get a stretcher."

By this time there was a whole crowd of people round me, though I seemed hardly to notice them; someone put my topee over my eyes, to shield them from the slanting sun.

Presently, as if in a dream, I heard Mr. Fisher's voice.

"He's shot through the lung—the right side, thank God!" and someone touched my wrist very gently; and although I could not see her, on account of the topee over my face, I knew it was Miss Borsen's hand. My mouth filled with blood again, and everything became quite dark and peaceful.

I opened my eyes, feeling most horribly weak, and not knowing what had happened or where I was.

Opposite me were two parallel streaks of white light, and these seemed to hypnotize me. I could not move my eyes from them for a long time; but gradually my brain pulled itself together, and my sense of surroundings came back. I was in a square room with shutter-closed windows all round it. Deep shadows on the whitewashed walls seemed to come from a lamp behind me, and I was lying on a little trestle-bed. Presently I realized that those two streaks of light were made by the moonlight forcing its way in through cracks in one of the shutters, and just below them I saw something white resting on a chest of drawers, and recognized my own topee.

I noticed that I could hardly breathe; something seemed to be squeezing my chest, and I put up one hand—very shakily—to find out what it was. As I did this there was a rustle behind my shoulder, and a very small white hand took hold of mine and put it back where it had lain, and Miss Borsen's voice, sounding ever so far away, told me to lie absolutely still and not attempt to speak.

I felt so extraordinarily weak—just as if I had lost all control of myself—that I obeyed without the slightest effort to resist. I did try to turn my head, but it seemed to be wedged on each side with pillows, and a finger she placed on my forehead stopped me immediately.

I lay quite still, staring at the ceiling and the round patch of light thrown on it by the lamp, until all that had happened came back to me. I looked at my topee to make sure, and the hard luck of being knocked over just when there was so much to be done made me so miserable that I could not help groaning.

"You must not make the least noise or speak; you must not move your hands or feet; it's your only chance," Miss Borsen said, speaking from the head of the bed: and her voice had such a soothing, hypnotizing effect that I closed my eyes and seemed to float away into space almost immediately.

When I woke again Mr. Fisher was sitting by my bedside. He turned quickly when my eyes opened, and he too said the same thing: "Lie absolutely still, and don't speak."

He saw by my face that I wanted to ask him something, and guessed what it was.

"Jassim is dead," he said. "I shot him."

"Poor devil!" I thought, and was sorry.

He then went on to tell me that Mr. Scarlett had been informed of all that had happened, and had come ashore to see me whilst I was asleep, and make all arrangements for the night in case the Afghans attacked.

"We are all ready. Your two men (the signal-man and the man you sent with the Maxim) and I are taking it in turn to keep watch down by the fence all through the night. The signal-man is there now, and half my fellows and twenty of the coolies are lining the wall, so they can't take us by surprise. The greater part of the trench is filled in, and there is nothing more to be done until daylight. I've wired to Muscat to tell the political agent about everything, and of you being wounded, and have asked him to inform the Intrepid, but she is not back yet.

"It's nearly midnight now, and my turn for the wire fence. Keep absolutely still, and try to go to sleep until I come back."

He rose—his shadow was thrown on the wall as he bent over to lower the lamp—and I heard him go out.

But sleep was now impossible; my chest was so tightly bandaged that I could hardly breathe, and though I counted all the cracks in the shutter through which the moonlight was showing, counted them time after time until it was almost maddening, sleep would not come.

It seemed ages before I heard a very soft footstep creeping towards me, and the lamp threw the shadow of a woman on the wall, and for a moment the silhouette of Miss Borsen's face.

For a second I had a great longing to ask her if she would forgive me, but I still seemed to be under the spell of her orders not to speak or move, and, fearful of seeing her, I closed my eyes.

She felt my pulse, lowered the lamp the slightest degree more, and I heard her go out as noiselessly as she had entered.

After that the night dragged on somehow. I seemed to be rather delirious, and fancied all sorts of strange things. At one time the shadows on the wall took on the shape of old Popple Opstein, and I thought we were sitting yarning on the little deck outside the cabin; and at another they turned to Jassim, and I thought he was "coming" for me again. Then I thought I was once more trying to carry Miss Borsen down to the dinghy, but my feet would not move, and Jassim was after us. It was horrid.

With the first streaks of daylight I came to my senses again, and waited and waited to hear the sound of firing and the yells of the Afghans charging up to the loopholed wall. I strained my ears to catch the noise of the six-pounder, but all was still. Gradually the light grew stronger, people began moving about in the house, and presently, when it was quite daylight—even though the shutters were closed—Mr. Fisher came in with a joyous expression on his face.

"They've thought better of it," he said. "They're still down there, but aren't making a move.

"Don't talk," he added as he saw I wanted to ask him something, and he brought me a block of notepaper and a pencil. He held the note-paper whilst I wrote in a very shaky way: "Thirsty", for I was most terribly dry.

He gave me some beef-tea of "sorts", holding the cup to my lips. My aunt, but it was good! I could have drunk a bucketful.

I pleaded with my eyes for more, but he shook his head. "Acting under orders—Miss Borsen's orders; can't," he said, and, thinking to relieve my mind, told me that his men were already at work on the trench.

He could only spare me a very few moments, but came in every now and then throughout the day.

Ellis and Hartley occasionally put their heads inside the door to tell me that everything was quiet, and Mr. Scarlett paid me a visit during the afternoon. He was fearfully apologetic about my wound, and seemed to think it was his fault entirely. In case I wanted them he had brought me a clean uniform and my dispatch-box with all my letters.

"I've been down the slope, sir, to have a look for that chap, Jassim," he said, "but I'm hanged if I can find him."

I was too weak to worry about this.

Mrs. Fisher visited me once and tried to read to me, but the effort was too great for her nerves, so she did not stay very long. Miss Borsen never came near me, and it was the old butler or head boy who was my most constant visitor, bringing me beef-tea and jelly, feeding me, and trying to make me comfortable.

About sunset Hartley came in to tell me that several large bands of Afghans could be seen winding their way down from the mountains in our direction, and when Mr. Fisher came later to confirm this, I wrote on the note-paper block: "Send women to B.A.," because I fully expected that the great attack must come next morning.

With very great difficulty he at length persuaded his wife to go aboard the Bunder Abbas, but nothing would induce Miss Borsen to accompany her.

"She's got the idea into her head that she's responsible for the two Eurasians and yourself, and is not going to leave any of you till you're on your legs again," Mr. Fisher told me hopelessly.

That night was even more unpleasant than the first, but it did at length pass, and as the daylight crept through the shutters no attack was made—not a rifle was fired. It was very strange, and I could not understand it.

Perhaps an hour later Mr. Fisher came in, looking ghastly.

"We are isolated!" he cried. "They've crept round by the rocks during the night to the cable-house, cut the cable, and must have had a boat helping them, for we cannot find the sea end. I dare not send people out to look for it; they'd never pick it up."

I wrote: "Try. B.A. will help," and wrote a signal to Mr. Scarlett to get up steam and go round to the east bay.

Mr. Fisher promised to try, but did not see how they could succeed, as they had no proper grappling gear.

The cutting of the cable seemed to determine him to follow my advice about preparing his house for any emergency. All day I heard people lumbering in and out, and the old butler, looking scared, told me that they were putting sand-bags round the veranda and filling the upper rooms with stores, the most portable of the telegraph apparatus, and ammunition. They even carried sand-bags through my room and piled them up on the balcony outside.

Ellis and Hartley supervised these preparations and kept me informed of what the Bunder Abbas was doing; and when, later on, I heard a good deal of rifle firing and one or two rounds from her six-pounder, they told me that the Afghans were sniping at the boat whilst it was trying to grapple the end of the cable.

I could not help wondering whether this was very soothing to Mrs. Fisher's nerves, and I pictured her in the cabin with that six-pounder going off just below her, and wishing that she had remained on shore. At sunset they reported that the boat had returned, unsuccessful, and that the Bunder Abbas had steamed round to her former anchorage.

I now had not spoken for forty-eight hours, and had lain like a log all the time. I felt distinctly stronger, and no blood had come into my throat and mouth since the early morning.

I slept fairly well that third night, and was awakened from a nightmare by real shrieking and yelling, by the firing of hundreds of rifles beneath the windows, and the tut-tut-tut-tut of the Maxim on the roof above me. A moment later came the comforting sound of the six-pounder and the noise of the other Maxim aboard the "B.A.".

Not a soul could I hear stirring in the house, and the feeling of being left quite alone, without knowing what was happening and how things were going, was almost insupportable. A bullet, splintering a shutter, flattened itself against the wall over my bed and dropped with a thud on the floor, a shower of plaster following it, and some dropping on my face. Outside the wall of the room there was a sound as if men were hammering on the stonework, and I gradually realized that these were bullets, not hammers.

The horrid noises seemed to be drawing closer, and I thought that they were growing louder away to the right, where those huts stood.

CHAPTER XVIII

To the Rescue

As I lay there on my trestle-bed, groaning at my miserable position, more bullets came in through the shutters and brought down showers of plaster from the wall behind me.

At last I could stand the strain no longer, and was on the point of trying to reach the shutters and open them, so that at least I could see what was happening, when Miss Borsen, white as a sheet, came in, and, seeing me with one leg over the side of the bed, bade me angrily to lie down and not move or speak.

I lay down, but had to speak to tell her to crouch on the floor, out of the way of the bullets, and the effort made more of that blood come into my mouth. Down I lay as flat as a pancake, and she huddled on the floor too, because, whilst she was bending over me to wipe the blood from my mouth, another bullet had smacked up against the wall and sprinkled her with plaster.

She crouched there, her face twitching as the Maxim overhead rattled, and the clamour and shrieking outside, coming from the direction of the slope and barbed-wire fence, seemed to grow nearer and louder.

At last the appalling uproar sounded as if it were right under the loopholed wall itself—almost under the windows of the house. Ellis's Maxim stopped—stopping, I realized, because the loopholed wall now screened the Afghans from its fire; but the Maxim aboard the "B.A." fired more vigorously than ever, and six-pounder shells were bursting rapidly, one after the other, quite close beneath us.

Miss Borsen had buried her face in her hands. Suddenly she raised herself, and, with open mouth and eyes, listened. The character of the yells had altered; they were screams now, they were going away from us. The attack was failing.

The Maxim on the roof opened again as the Afghans fell back from the cover of the loopholed wall. I heard Ellis and Hartley shouting joyously, and knew they had got them on the run.

The second attack had been driven back.

Miss Borsen gave a great gulp and sprang to a shutter, opened it, and looked out. In a moment she had recoiled, covering her eyes with her hands.

"They're flying down the slope; those awful white heaps are growing near the fence. Oh God, it is awful!" she cried, and she burst into tears and ran away.

Ellis's Maxim ceased firing, and gradually all became quiet.

In perhaps half an hour Mr. Fisher ran in to see me—flushed and excited. He stopped for a moment when he saw the blood-stain on my pillow, but then burst out with: "We've beaten them off! we've beaten them off! Thank God! Now they'll go! I'm sure they'll go! The Maxim from the Bunder Abbas got them whilst they were crowded under the wall and crumpled them up—crumpled them up—swept them down!"

Ellis came in too, grinning as he reported: "That little lot 'as gone 'ome—what was left of them, sir—'oping as 'ow you're going on all right; but we ain't more'n 'arf a beltful of cartridges left, sir, that we ain't. If it 'adn't been for them blooming 'uts they'd never 'ave got near 'arfway."

Mr. Fisher jerked out: "It's no good burning the huts now. They'll go back to the mountains to-night! I'm certain they will! It's no use burning them now!"

He had been very enthusiastic about the slaughter and the terrible punishment the Afghans had received, but when he came to count the dead there were only thirty-two on the slope; and although that meant thirty-two fewer Afghans, it was more than counter-balanced by a very grave signal from Mr. Scarlett saying that he had fired forty-eight rounds of six-pounder ammunition and eight hundred rounds from the Maxim, leaving only thirty-five more six-pounder and three thousand rifle and Maxim rounds on board. This meant, as I knew only too well, that to repulse one more attack would leave the "B.A." practically helpless to assist again.

I kept this knowledge to myself, and sent a signal to Mr. Scarlett to come and see me and bring ashore with him another thousand rounds of ammunition for Ellis's Maxim.

A good deal of firing began again, as if to contradict Mr. Fisher's optimism, and I heard isolated shots, from a considerable distance, with occasionally the smack of a bullet on the outer wall of the house, though, as no one was with me, I did not know what was actually happening.

Presently the gunner arrived, with a very long face. "I was careful as I could be, sir, but you know what it is, and things looked so precious ugly at one time that we had to fire fast. It's my belief they simply did it a' purpose, just to make us waste ammunition. They haven't lost heart over it either, for they're skulking all over the place, down among the trees round the Old Fort, and along the beach. They potted at me all the way from the 'B.A.', that they did. They are firing at everyone who shows his nose outside the wall, and none of these here people can go on with levelling the breastwork. They've given that up as a bad job and gone inside again.

"It's a nasty bit of work this, sir, and the sooner I have you safe and sound aboard the 'B.A.,', sir, the better I shall be pleased. And the little lady too; she ought to come and keep Mrs. Fisher company. Mrs. Fisher, sir," he added, lowering his voice and smiling grimly, "tried to come ashore again, but I locked her up in the cabin before I started, and told Percy to shove her breakfast through the port-hole."

I smiled too, for I could quite imagine him doing this, and not wasting any words over it either.

"It was the only thing I could do, for the cabin's made of good steel plate, and if she'd been left to wander round she might have been hit by some of them bullets," he explained.

"I'm certain we shall find them gone to-morrow morning," Mr. Fisher cried, coming abruptly into the room; "and if we don't, the Muscat people will know that the cable is interrupted and something wrong, so will tell the Intrepid as soon as she gets back from the coast. We shall have her here in no time."

"Do you know that we've only got enough ammunition for one more show like this morning? That's a fact," Mr. Scarlett growled, turning furiously on him. "This is going to be a regular siege; none of your rushing and firing, packing up and going home again. Them Afghans mean to get inside here, and if we can't stop them you can't. The sooner everyone comes aboard the 'B.A.' safe and sound, and waits there for the Intrepid—well—the sooner the better. This isn't any darned tomfoolery business, I tell you—twenty times I'll tell you. If your chaps can't stand a few bullets smacking among 'em down by that trench," he went on savagely, "they'd better get along ramming sand into more sacks, bags, anything they can get hold of, and make this house shipshape."

I don't think that Mr. Fisher much cared about being spoken to like that.

"If you can get any work out of them you're welcome to try; I can't," he said sharply. "They've been awake and working, off and on, for the last thirty hours."

"Right you are, sir; you bet I will. If I can't do a bit of slave-driving there is no one in the British Navy who can," and, taking him at his word, Mr. Scarlett darted off.

He had hardly gone when Hartley ran in to say that a hundred or more Afghans had rushed up the slope from the Old Fort, and behind the sand-hills there.

"They've gone and 'idden among those blessed huts, sir."

Firing broke out again almost immediately, and bullets came thudding against the wall outside my room. Mr. Fisher darted away to line the loopholed wall with his men, and Hartley, singing out: "They're trying to knock out the Maxim; Ellis and me must get more sand-bags round it," disappeared too.

I knew that if one lucky bullet pierced the water-jacket the gun would be useless, and I lay there listening to Ellis and Hartley cursing, as they dragged heavy weights across the roof over my head, and to the patter-patter of bullets thudding against the outer wall and parapet.

Those chaps must not be allowed to stay down by the huts—that was imperative. If they got a firm footing there the others would join them during the night, and they would be within a stone's throw of the loopholed wall. Others could creep round at the foot of the rocks on the east of the building and attack the wall on that side; we could not stop them. Mr. Scarlett and Mr. Fisher both came to my room, and both were of the same opinion.

"I'll signal to the 'B.A.' to plug in a few shells till they see us come out of the door, and Ellis and Hartley can work the Maxim, whilst we rush down and drive 'em out," Mr. Scarlett said, his eyes glowing with excitement. What a change had come over him!

"And we'll burn the huts whilst we're about it," Mr. Fisher added in a crest-fallen, disappointed, rather shamefaced manner.

The two of them went away to collect some men, and I heard either Ellis or Hartley running down the stairs from the roof to join them. Firing went on vigorously from the direction of those huts. I heard the buzz of excited voices as people collected under the windows, somewhere near the door in the wall, and waited to hear it opened and the sortie commence. Presently "boom" came the report of the six-pounder from the "B.A.", and the Maxim overhead began rattling. Then the bolts of the door were thrown back, and I heard Mr. Scarlett's voice yelling hoarsely, "Come along," and the crush of people pressing out through the door-way after him with rather half-hearted cheers.

Miss Borsen entered the room and stood listening. "They've left me all alone," she said; "I am frightened," and the next moment, with a scared face, was at a window looking down the slope.

"They are rushing down," she cried. "Mr. Fisher and your gunner and the man ahead of the others. A shell has just burst in the huts. I can't see anyone firing at them. Oh, Mr. Fisher has tumbled down! He's up again. He's catching up your gunner." The Maxim overhead ceased firing. "Now they're right among the huts. The telegraph people are nearly there—yes, they've got there too. Some of them have cans with them—paraffin cans. There they go! there they go! The Afghans are bolting down the slope! Smoke's coming out of the huts. Why don't they come back?

"Now they're coming. Your gunner is helping Mr. Fisher. He's hurt; I know he is. I must go and see" and she ran away again.

The "B.A." fired a few rounds of precious Maxim ammunition, and by the time all was quiet Mr. Scarlett had come to tell me, with a chuckle, that "That little business is all done correct, sir. Mr. Fisher got a bullet through his left shoulder, but it ain't done much damage."

Soon I heard the crackle of the flames and smelt the smoke from those huts, so knew they would not bother us any more.

That bullet through his shoulder muscles (I think it broke off a bit of bone there) seemed to alter Mr. Fisher completely. When I saw him next—rather pale, and with his arm in a sling—he had given up all pretence of imagining that the Afghans would retire. In fact it was he now who suggested, feverishly, doing things to make the house ready to stand an assault. "But for goodness' sake," he told me, "don't let anyone suggest abandoning the telegraph buildings or going aboard the Bunder Abbas. I won't do so until the very last moment—I can't—I daren't. If the Afghans got inside for even half an hour they'd wreck the whole of the transmitting instruments, and it would be six months before the cable would work again."

With Mr. Scarlett, Ellis, and Hartley to help him, the four of them began to get things into order, divide the people into parties—those they could trust with rifles into batches, under Eurasians, to man the wall whilst the others rested; those for whom there were no rifles, or who couldn't be trusted with them, being set to work to complete the defence and provision the house.

All the rest of that day they laboured; the house was turned upside down and a litter of sand-bags filled up every aperture in the walls and along the verandas and balconies. Pillow-covers, blankets, sheets, everything that could be made to hold sand was requisitioned—and I could not help smiling when finally two burly nigger Zanzibaris dragged through my room one of Mrs. Fisher's dresses bulged out with sand and threw it on top of a wall of other sand-bags blocking a window. It was a jolly good thing that she was safely out of the way, and I wished most earnestly that Miss Borsen could be induced to go as well.

After the Afghans had been driven from the huts, and these had been burnt to the ground, they remained quiet for the rest of the day. Mr. Scarlett returned to the "B.A.", the sun set, there was a very unpleasant half-hour before the moon rose sufficiently to give light, and almost as soon as it did so distant firing began—a scattered occasional shot every now and again, quite sufficient, however, to keep everyone on the alert and nervous. The old head boy brought me some food and fed me. He also brought me a lamp, for which I was very grateful, as on account of the sand-bags in the windows the moonlight could not enter, and it was almost completely dark.

This was, I think, the worst night since my wound; for the atmosphere of the room was stuffy and smelly, hardly a breath of air came through the blocked windows, rifle bullets occasionally thudded up against the sand-bags, and with Mr. Fisher wounded I did not know who was carrying on in command in case the Afghans attacked during the night. Why they didn't Heaven knows. If they had done so there was nothing to keep them out; but I suppose that they would not depart from their usual habits. At any rate they waited till dawn, when just the same awful din broke out, and they made just such another rush up the slope. The "B.A." chipped in as she had done before, and eventually the attack recoiled; but I had counted twenty-three rounds of six-pounder, so knew that for all practical purposes she had none left—not half a dozen, anyway.