Part 8

That did not seem their way, though they wanted the place for the sake of the great store of arms and ammunition it contained. They wanted to buy it cheap.

I found Captain Dyer ready enough to listen to my plan, though he shook his head, and said it was desperate. But after a little thought, he said:

"There are some hours now between this and night--help may come before then; if not, Smith, we must try it. My hands are full, so I leave the preparations with you: let every one carry food and a bottle of water-- nothing more--all we want now is to save life."

I promised I'd see to it; and I went and spoke cheerfully to the women, but Mrs Maine seemed quite hysterical. Miss Ross listened to what I had to say in a hard strange way; and really, if it had not been for Mrs Bantem putting a shoulder first to one wheel and then the other, nothing would have been done.

The next person I went to was Measles, who, during a cessation of the firing, was sitting, black and blood-smeared, with his head tied up, wiping out his gun with pieces he tore spitefully off the sleeves of his shirt.

"Well, Ikey, mate," he says, "not dead yet, you see. If we get out of this, I mean to have my promotion; but I don't see how we're going to manage it. What bothers me most is, letting these black devils get all this powder and stuff we have here. Blow my rags if we shall ever use it all! I've been firing away till my old Bess has been so hot that I've been afraid to charge her; and I'll swear I've used twice as many cartridges as any other man. But I say, Ikey, old man, do you think it's wrong to pot these niggers?"

"No," I said; "not in a case like this."

"Glad of it," he says earnestly; "because, do you know, old man, I've polished off such a thundering lot, that I've got to be quite nervous about getting killed myself. Only think, having forty or fifty black-looking beggars rising up against you in kingdom come, and pointing at you and saying: `That's the chap as shot me!'"

"I don't think any soldier, acting under orders, who does his duty in defence of women and children, need fear to lie down and die," I said.

I never saw Measles look soft but that once, as, laying down his ramrod, he took my hand in his, and looked in my face for a bit; then he shook my hand softly, and nodded his head several times.

"How's Harry Lant?" he says at last.

"Very bad," I said.

"Poor old chap. But tell him I've paid some of the beggars out for it. Mind you tell him; it'll make him feel comfortable like, and ease his mind."

I nodded, and then told him about the plan.

"Well," he said, as he slowly and thoughtfully polished his gun-barrel, "it might do, and it mightn't. Seems a rum dodge; but, anyhow, we might try."

"I shall want you to help make the bridge," I says.

"All right, matey; but I don't, somehow, like leaving the beggars all that ammunition."

And then he loaded his rifle very thoughtfully, but only to rouse up directly after, for the mutineers began firing again; and Captain Dyer giving the order, our men replied swift and fast at every black face that showed itself for an instant.

That was a day: hot, so that everything you went near seemed burning. The walls even sent forth a heat of their own; and if it hadn't been for the chatties down below, we should have had to give up, for the tank was now completely dried, and the flies buzzing about its mud-caked bottom. But the women went round from man to man with water and biscuit, so that no one left his post; and every time the black scoundrels tried to make a lodgment near the gate, half were shot down, and the rest glad enough to get back into shelter.

Towards that weary slow-coming evening, though, after we had beaten them back--or, rather, after my brave comrades had beaten them back half a score of times--I saw that something was up; and as soon as I saw what that something was, I knew that it was all over, for our men were too much cut up and disheartened for any more gallant sorties.

I've not said any more about the guns, only that we spiked them, and left them standing in the market plain, about fifty yards from the gates. I may tell you now, though, that the next morning they were gone, and we forgot all about them till the night I'm talking about, when they were dragged out again, with a lot of noise and shouting, from a building in the far corner of the square.

We didn't want telling what that meant.

It was plain enough to all of us that the scoundrels had drilled out the touch-holes again, and that during the night they would be planted, and the first discharge would drive down all our defences, and leave us open to a rush.

"We must try your plan, Smith," says Captain Dyer, with a quiet stern look. "It is time now to evacuate the place."

Then he knelt down and took a look at the guns with his glass, and I knew he must have been thinking of how he stood tied to the muzzle of one of them, for he gave a sort of shudder as he closed his glass with a snap.

Just then, Miss Ross came round with Lizzy and Mrs Bantem, carrying wine and water, and I saw a sort of quiet triumph in Lieutenant Leigh's face, as, avoiding Captain Dyer, Miss Ross went up to him, when he half-beckoned to her, and stood by him like a slave, giving him bottle and glass, and then standing by his side with her eyes fixed and strange-looking; while, though he fought against it bravely, and tried to be unmoved, Captain Dyer could not bear it, but walked away.

I was just then drinking some water given me by Lizzy, whose pale troubled little face looked up so lovingly in mine that I felt half-ashamed for me, a poor private, to be so happy--for I forgot my wounds then--while my captain was in pain and suffering. And then it was that it struck me that Captain Dyer was just in that state in which men feel despairing, and go and do desperate things. For of course he felt that as soon as he was out of the way, Miss Ross and the lieutenant had made up matters. I felt that I ought before now to have told him all about what I had heard, but I was in hopes that things would right themselves, and always came to the conclusion that it was Miss Ross's duty to have given the captain some explanation of her treatment; anyhow, it did not seem to be mine; but when I saw the poor smitten fellow go off like he did, I followed him softly till I came up with him, my heart beating with fear.

There was nothing to fear, though: he had only gone up to the roof, and when I came up with him he was evidently calculating about our escape, for he finished off by pulling out his telescope, and looking right across the plain, towards where there was a tank and a small station.

"I think that ought to be our way, Smith," he said. "We could stay there for half an hour's rest, and then on again towards Wallahbad, sending a couple of the stoutest men on for help. By the way, we'll try and start a man off to-night, as soon as it's dark. But who will you have to help you?"

"I should like to have Bigley, sir," I said.

"Will one be sufficient?"

"Quite, sir," I said; for I thought Measles and I could manage it between us.

Half an hour after, Measles was busy at work, fetching up muskets, with bayonets fixed, from down in the vault, and laying them in order on the flat roof, taking care the while to keep out of sight; and I went to the room where the women were, under Mrs Bantem's management, getting ready for what was to come, for they had been told that we might leave the place all at once.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER NINETEEN.

I suppose it was my wound made me do things in a sluggish dreamy way, and made me feel ready to stop and look at any little thing which took my attention. Anyhow, that's the way I acted; and going inside that room, I stopped short just within the place, for there were those two little children of the colonel's sitting on the floor, with a whole heap of those numbers of the Bible--those that people take in shilling parts--and with two or three large pictures in each. Some one had given them the parts to amuse themselves with; and, as grand and old-fashioned as could be, they were showing these pictures to the soldiers' children.

As I went in, they'd got a picture open of Jacob lying asleep, with his dream spread before you, of the great flight of steps leading up into heaven, and the angels going up and down.

"There," says little Jenny Wren to a boy half as old again as herself; "those are angels, and they're coming down from heaven, and they've got beautiful wings like birds."

"O," says little Cock Robin thoughtfully, and he leaned over the picture. Then he says quite seriously: "If they've dot wings, why don't they fly down?"

That was a poser; but Jenny Wren was ready with her answer, old-fashioned as could be, and she says:

"I should think it's toz they were moulting."

I remember wishing that the poor little innocents had wings of their own, for it seemed to me that they would be a sad trouble to us to get away that night, just at the time when a child's most likely to be cross and fretful.

Night at last, dark as dark, save only a light twinkling here and there, in different parts where the enemy had made their quarters. There was a buzzing in the camp where the guns were, and as we looked over, once there came the grinding noise of a wheel, but only once.

We made sure that the gate and the broken window opening were well watched, for there was the white calico of the sentries to be seen; but soon the darkness hid them, and we should not have known that they were there but for the faint spark now and then which showed that they were smoking, and once I heard, quite plain in the dead stillness, the sound made by a "hubble-bubble" pipe.

We waited one hour, and then, with six of as on the roof, the plan I made began to be put into operation.

My idea was that if we could manage to cross the north alley, which as I told you was about ten feet wide, we might then go over the roof of the quarters where the mutineers were; then on to the next roof, which was a few feet lower; and from there get down on to some sheds, from which it would be easy to reach the ground, when the way would be open to us to escape, with perhaps some hours before we were missed.

The plan was, I know, desperate, but it seemed our only chance, and, as you well know, desperate ventures will sometimes succeed when the most carefully arranged plots fail. At all events, Captain Dyer took it up, and then, under my directions, a couple of muskets were taken at a time, and putting them muzzle to muzzle, the bayonet of each was thrust down the other's barrel, which saved lashing them together, and gave us a sort of spar about ten feet long, and this was done with about fifty.

I told you that there was a tree grew up in the centre of the alley,--a stunty, short-boughed tree, and to this Measles laid one of the double muskets, feeling for a bough to rest it on in the darkness, after listening whether there was any one below; then he laid more and more, till, with a mattress laid upon them, he formed a bridge, over which he boldly crept to the tree, where, with the lashings he had taken, he bound a couple more muskets horizontal, and then shifted the others. He arranged them all so that the butts of one end rested on the roof of the palace; the butts at the other end were across those he had bound pretty level in the tree. Then more and more were laid across, and a couple of thin straw mattresses on them; and though it took a tremendously long time through Measles fumbling in the dark, it was surprising what a firm bridge that made as far as the tree.

The other half was made in just the same fashion, and much more easily. Mattresses were laid on it; and there, thirty feet above the ground, we had a tolerably firm bridge, one that, though very irregular, a man could cross with ease, creeping on his hands and knees; but then there were the women, children, and poor Harry Lant.

Captain Dyer thought it would be better to say nothing to them about it, but to bring them all quietly up at the last minute, so as to give them no time for thought and fear; and then, the last preparation being made, and a rough short ladder, eight feet long, Measles and I had contrived, being carried over and planted at the end of the other quarters, reaching well down to the next roof, we prepared for a start.

Measles and Captain Dyer went over with the ladder, and reported no sentries visible, the bridge pretty firm, and nothing apparently to fear, when it was decided that Harry Lant should be taken over first-- Measles volunteering to take him on his back and crawl over--then the women and children were to be got over, and we were to follow.

I know it was hard work for him, but Harry Lant never gave a groan, but let them lash his hands together with a handkerchief, so that Measles put his head through the poor fellow's arms, for there was no trusting to Harry's feeble hold.

"Now then, in silence," says Captain Dyer; "and you, Lieutenant Leigh, get up the women and children. But each child is to be taken by a man, who is to be ready to gag the little thing if it utters a sound. Recollect, the lives of all depend on silence. Now, Bigley, forward!"

"Wait till I spit in my hands, captain," says Measles, though what he wanted to spit in his hands for, I don't know, without it was from use, being such a spitting man.

But spit in his hands he did, and then, with Harry on his back, he was down on his hands and knees, crawling on to the mattress very slowly, and you could hear the bayonets creaking and gritting, as they played in and out of the musket-barrels; but they held firm, and the next minute Measles was as far as the tree, but only to get his load hitched somehow in a ragged branch, when there was a loud crack as of dead wood snapping, a struggle, and Measles growled out an oath--he would swear, that fellow would, in spite of all Mrs Bantem said, so you mustn't be surprised at his doing it then.

We all stopped and crouched there, with our hearts beating horribly; for it seemed that the next moment we should hear a dull, heavy crash; but instead, there came the sharp fall of a dead branch, and at the same moment there were voices at the end of the alley.

If Captain Dyer dared to have spoken, he would have called "Halt!" but he was silent; but Measles must have heard the voices, for he never moved, while we listened minute after minute, our necks just over the edge of the roof, till what appeared to be three of the enemy crept cautiously along through the alley, till one tripped and fell over the dead bough that must have been lying right in their way.

Then there was a horrible silence, during which we felt that it was all over with the plan--that the enemy must look up and see the bridge, and bring down those who would attack us with renewed fury.

But the next minute there came a soft whisper or two, a light rustling, and, directly after, we knew that the alley was empty.

It seemed useless to go on now; but after five minutes' interval, Captain Dyer determined to pursue the plan, just as Measles came back panting to announce Harry Lant as lying on the roof beyond the officers' quarters.

"And you've no idea what a weight the little chap is," says Measles to me. "Now, who's next?"

No one answered; and Lieutenant Leigh stepped forward leading Miss Ross. He was about to carry her over; but she thrust him back, and after scanning the bridge for a few moments, she asked for one of the children, and so as to have no time lost, the little boy, fast asleep, bless him! was put in her arms, when brave as brave, if she did not step boldly on to the trembling way, and walk slowly across.

Then Joe Bantem was sent--though he hung back for his wife, till she ordered him on--to go over with a soldier's child on his back; and he was followed by a couple more.

Next came Mrs Bantem, with Mrs Colonel Maine, and the stout-hearted woman stood as if hesitating for a minute as to how to go, when catching up the colonel's wife, as if she had been a child, she stepped on to the bridge, and two or three men held the butts of the muskets, for it seemed as if they could not bear the strain.

But though my heart seemed in my mouth, and the creaking was terrible, she passed safely over, and it was wonderful what an effect that had on the rest.

"If it'll bear that, it'll bear anything," says some one close to me; and they went on, one after the other, for the most part crawling, till it came to me and Lizzy Green.

"You'll go now," I said; but she would not leave me, and we crept on together, till a bough of the tree hindered us, when I made her go first, and a minute after we were hand-in-hand upon the roof of the officers' quarters.

The others followed, Captain Dyer coming last, when, seeing me, he whispered: "Where's Bigley?" of course meaning Measles.

I looked round, but it was too dark to distinguish one face from another. I had not seen him for the last quarter of an hour--not since he had asked me if I had any matches, and I had passed him half-a-dozen from my tobacco-pouch.

I asked first one, and then another, but nobody had seen Measles; and under the impression that he must have joined Harry Lant, we cautiously walked along the roof, right over the heads of our enemies; for from time to time we could hear beneath our feet the low buzzing sound of voices, and more than once came a terrible catching of the breath, as one of the children whispered or spoke.

It seemed impossible, even now, that we could escape, and I was for proposing to Captain Dyer to risk the noise, and have the bridge taken down, so as to hold the top of the building we were on as a last retreat; but I was stopped from that by Measles coming up to me, when I told him Captain Dyer wanted him, and he crept away once more.

We got down the short ladder in safety, and then crossed a low building, to pass down the ladder on to another, which fortunately for us was empty; and then, with a little contriving and climbing, we dropped into a deserted street of the place, and all stood huddled together, while Captain Dyer and Lieutenant Leigh arranged the order of march.

And that was no light matter; but a litter was made of the short ladder, and Harry Lant laid upon it; the women and children placed in the middle; the men were divided; and the order was given in a low tone to march, and we began to walk right away into the darkness, down the straggling street; but only for the advance guard to come back directly, and announce that they had stumbled upon an elephant picketed with a couple of camels.

"Any one with them?" said Captain Dyer.

"Could not see a soul, sir," said Joe Bantem, for he was one of the men.

"Grenadiers, half-left," said Captain Dyer; "forward!" and once more we were in motion, tramp, tramp, tramp, but quite softly; Lieutenant Leigh at the rear of the first party, so as to be with Miss Ross, and Captain Dyer in the rear of all, hiding, poor fellow, all he must have felt, and seeming to give up every thought to the escape, and that only.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER TWENTY.

I could just make out the great looming figure of an elephant, as we marched slowly on, when I was startled by a low sort of wimmering noise, followed directly after by a granting on my right.

"What's that?" says Captain Dyer. Then in an instant: "Threes right!" he cried to the men, and they faced round, so as to cover the women and children.

There was no farther alarm, though, and all seemed as silent as could be; so once more under orders, the march was continued till we were out from amidst the houses, and travelling over the sandy dusty plain; when there was another alarm--we were followed--so said the men in the rear; and sure enough, looming up against the darkness--a mass of darkness itself--we could see an elephant.

The men were faced round, and a score of pieces were directed at the great brute; but when within three or four yards, it was plain enough that it was alone, and Measles says aloud: "Blest if it isn't old Nabob!"

The old elephant it was; and passing through, he went up to where Harry Lant was calling him softly, knelt down to order; and then, climbing and clinging on as well as they could, the great brute's back was covered with women and children--the broad shallow howdah pretty well taking the lot--while the great beast seemed as pleased as possible to get back amongst his old friends, rubbing his trunk first on this one and then on that; and thankful we were for the help he gave us, for how else we should have got over that desert plain I can't say.

I should think we had gone a good eight miles, when Measles ranges up close aside me as I walked by the elephant, looking up at the riding-party from time to time, and trying to make out which was Lizzy, and pitying them too, for the children were fretful, and it was a sad time they had of it.

"They'll have it hot there sometime to-morrow morning, Ike," says Measles to me.

"Where?" I said faintly, for I was nearly done for, and I did not take much interest in anything.

"Begumbagh," he says. And when I asked him what he meant, he said: "How much powder do you think there was down in that vault?"

"A good five hundredweight," I said.

"All that," says Measles. "They'll have it hot, some of 'em."

"What do you mean?" I said, getting interested.

"O, nothing pertickler, mate; only been arranging for promotion for some of 'em, since I can't get it myself. I took the head out of one keg, and emptied it by the others, and made a train to where I've set a candle burning; and when that candle's burnt out, it will set light to another; and that will have to burn out, when some wooden chips will catch fire, and they'll blaze a good deal, and one way and another there'll be enough to burn to last till, say, eight o'clock this morning, by which time the beauties will have got into the place; and then let 'em look out for promotion, for there's enough powder there to startle two or three of 'em."

"That's what you wanted the matches for, then?" I said.

"That's it, matey; and what do you think of it, eh?"

"You've done wrong, my lad, I'm afraid, and,"--I didn't finish; for just then, behind us, there was a bright flashing light, followed by a dull thud; and looking back, we could see what looked like a little firework; and though plenty was said just then, no one but Measles and I knew what that flash meant.

"That's a dead failure," growled Measles to me as we went on. "I believe I am the unluckiest beggar that ever breathed. That oughtn't to have gone off for hours yet, and now it'll let 'em know we're gone, and that's all."

I did not say anything, for I was too weak and troubled, and how I kept up as I did, I don't know to this day.

The morning broke at last with the knowledge that we were three miles to the right of the tank Captain Dyer had meant to reach. For a few minutes, in a quiet stern way, he consulted with Lieutenant Leigh as to what should be done--whether to turn off to the tank, or to press on. The help received from old Nabob made them determine to press on; and after a short rest, and a better arrangement for those who were to ride on the elephant, we went on in the direction of Wallahbad, I, for my part, never expecting to reach it alive. Many a look back did I give to see if we were followed, but it was not until we were within sight of a temple by the roadside, that there was the news spread that there were enemies behind; and though I was ready enough to lay the blame upon Measles, all the same they must have soon found out our flight, and pursued us.