Part 10

When Bob sailed away up the gorge, and as soon as the humming of his propeller could no longer be heard, Lawrence began to carry out his instructions for the night. He felt no little anxiety; indeed, it was a trying position for a lad who found himself, for the first time in his life, faced with difficulties and dangers for which he had had no preparation. But after all, it is character that tells. Lawrence was naturally cool and level-headed; he had been known at school as a "sticker" at cricket; he could wear out half-a-dozen bowlers. His school had taught him lessons of self-reliance, and though he had never been very enthusiastic in the cadet corps, he had won the mark of efficiency, could shoot straight, and had learnt to think quickly and act with promptitude. So, in spite of a natural nervousness, he saw quite clearly what he had to do, and had grit enough to make up his mind to do it.

He stationed two men behind the rocks near the bridge head, ordering them to fire if they saw the least sign of an attempt to cross. They were to be relieved every two hours. Mindful of Bob's advice, he determined to keep watch all night himself: there was no one to relieve him. Very soon, as night settled deep upon the valley, he began to feel the cold, and thought regretfully of the thick coat lying on his seat in the aeroplane. After the fatigues and wearing anxieties of the day he was not in a condition to face the added strain of a long vigil in the freezing air. He had great difficulty in keeping awake, and when one of the Pathans lent him a saddle cloth in which to wrap himself, he soon discarded it, lest the deceitful warmth should overcome his watchfulness.

He dared not move about, but sat crouched on the ground beside the Pathans with his rifle across his knees, listening for any sign of the approach of the enemy. More than once he had to stir up his companions when they dozed, until he grew tired of it; he would rely on himself, and wake them at the first threatening of danger. But he found it increasingly difficult to resist the soporific influence of the cold, and of the monotonous lullaby sung by the river as it flowed past at the foot of the shelving bank beneath him. Every now and then he got up, stretched himself, and sat down again, not venturing even to slap himself with his arms for fear of putting the enemy on the alert. He gazed up into the sky, and tried to count and to identify the stars, which, in this deep valley, appeared to him, he thought, as they would appear to an observer at the bottom of a well. From time to time he exchanged a few whispered words with his companions, until this resource failed him through their slumberousness. When, at the end of the first two hours, the men were relieved, the circumstances of the change had the effect of rousing him a little; but the second pair were even more sleepy than the first, and he lacked the energy to be continually prodding them.

At length, when, in spite of his utmost efforts, he was nodding with drowsiness, his ear was suddenly caught by a slight sound beneath him. He pulled himself together, and listened intently. There was no repetition of the sound. He began to think that he had been mistaken, or that the sound had been made by some small animal scurrying along the bank. But a few seconds later he heard it again; it was like that of a small stone rolling down the rocky shelf. Now fully awake, he nudged his companions and in a whisper bade them keep quiet and listen. The Pathan passes from profound sleep to complete wakefulness in an instant. They sat erect, all their senses on the alert. For a few moments nothing was heard but the gurgling rush of the river; then with startling suddenness the three watchers were aware that men were scrambling up the slope. They sprang up. Dark shapes were dimly outlined beyond the rocks. The Pathans fired, aiming as it were at shadows. Their shots did not check the rush. In another moment, clubbing their rifles, Lawrence and they were raining blows upon a swarm of figures that seemed to spring out of the black depths beneath them.

Neither Lawrence nor either of the men could afterwards give a lucid account of the confused scramble that ensued. All that they were sure about was that, if they saw a form between them and the river, they hit out at it. It soon became impossible to distinguish friend from foe. In spite of their swift and weighty strokes the enemy, whose number seemed only to increase, pressed ever more closely upon them.

Lawrence had just brought the butt of his rifle down with a rattling thud upon what he hoped was a Mongol skull, when the weapon was seized, and he felt himself jerked forward. He clung to the barrel tenaciously, but in trying to hold his own in this tug-of-war he lost his footing, let go the rifle perforce, and found himself rolling, or rather jolting, down the bank. Grasping at the sharp knobs of rock, he checked his fall before he came to the water's edge, and lay for an instant to collect himself. It was perhaps a minute since the tussle had begun.

Hitherto the enemy had preserved a remarkable silence. The two Pathans, on the other hand, had raised lusty shouts, calling to their companions by name. Roused by the shots, and urged on by their comrades' cries, the Pathans behind the rocks some little distance up-stream came bounding to the rescue. Lawrence heard scrambling footsteps above him; he was kicked in the side by a man coming hastily down the bank, and the sound of splashes near at hand seemed to show that the enemy, in full retreat, were plunging into the river. Their surprise having failed, they had lost heart. Climbing the bank on all fours, Lawrence found his whole party assembled above. Just as he reached them, the newcomers opened fire upon several figures which they saw swinging themselves over by the rope. At the first shot these men halted, turned, and began frantically to work themselves back towards the farther side. Then Fyz Ali sprang forward on to the tangled debris of the bridge, and with two sweeping strokes of his knife cut the rope in twain. There was a mighty splash, a howl of rage, and then silence.

"What orders, sahib?" said the Pathan. In the short, sharp, confused struggle, the men were unaware of Lawrence's narrow escape, and were no more concerned about him than about themselves. Every one of them bore some mark of the conflict--bruise, abrasion, or knife-cut. Lawrence felt bruised from top to toe. But in the dark no man could see his fellow's wounds, and it would have been thought childish to talk of them.

"We had better stay here for the rest of the night," said Lawrence, in reply to Fyz Ali's question. "You have quite done for the bridge, and it's no use to anybody. But those badmashes got over some other way, and they would do it again if we weren't here to stop them."

"That is true, sahib--if they like to put their fingers into the fire."

"How did they get across? They could hardly swim up against the current."

"Mashallah! Who can say? But we shall know in the morning, sahib."

There was no more dozing that night. The whole party sat nursing their rifles and chatting quietly. Lawrence got the men to relate some of the experiences of their life, and though he could not understand very much of what they said, he recognized that there was a rich mine of anecdote to be drawn upon as soon as he had sufficient command of their language.

The remaining hours of darkness were undisturbed, and at dawn there was no renewal of hostilities. The daylight gave a clue to the means by which the enemy had crossed the river. At the foot of the rocks south of the bridge, near Lawrence's rifle, lay several inflated water-skins. Fyz Ali guessed that the men had crept along the opposite bank to some distance above the bridge, then taken the water, and supporting themselves on the skins, had steered themselves over.

Lawrence wondered whether the enemy had evacuated their position beyond the bend in the track. Attempts to draw their fire were unsuccessful, and he remained in doubt until the passing of the aeroplane overhead was saluted with a volley. His doubts being now removed, he waited anxiously for Bob's return. His uncle's fate, never for long absent from his mind, made him uneasy as to his brother's chances of escaping scot-free. As time passed, and there was no sign of the aeroplane, he grew more and more restless, imagining all sorts of mishaps that might have occurred. He expected Bob to return within half an hour; it would not take longer to fly to the plateau and back; and his watch having stopped through his immersion on the previous day, he could only guess at the flight of time, with the result that he supposed Bob's absence to have been longer than it really was.

His intense relief when at last he saw the aeroplane in the distant sky, gave way to disquietude again when Bob swooped down towards the bridge within range of the enemy's fire. The fluttering of the red flag was welcome to him, even though he understood it as a sign that the enemy were in considerable force. It was also a signal to retreat to the mine, and he was glad of the chance of stretching his limbs and of soon rejoining his brother. He at once gave orders to the men to return to their horses. They crossed the open space at the double until they gained the shelter of the screen of rocks. No shots followed them. There was no horse for Lawrence, but Fyz Ali assured him that his own mount was capable of bearing a double burden, and he decided to ride behind him until they had got some distance up the track, and then to walk.

He felt that there was no serious risk of pursuit at present. Although the enemy had shown that they could cross the river with the aid of water-skins, they would have great difficulty in bringing their horses over. So he reckoned on getting a long enough start to meet the reinforcements that Bob had promised to send down. Then the combined party, taking advantage of the many defensive positions which the broken ground afforded, could make good their retreat to the mine even against a more numerous enemy in pursuit.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

A SKIRMISH ON THE BANK

Lawrence, riding behind Fyz Ali, reflected with rueful amusement on the fate which had made him a sort of soldier in his own despite. "I'm not cut out for this kind of job," he thought. "Bob would be elated at having shivered through a night watch, and beaten off an attack. I don't feel particularly jolly; in fact, I feel thoroughly rotten; and there's more to come, worse luck."

It is said that the greatest commanders have felt depressed rather than exalted after a victory; so that, remembering the hardships and anxieties of the past twenty-four hours, one can sympathize with Lawrence Appleton. It did not occur to him that he had come through his recent ordeal with much credit, and he was quite unaware that the Pathans ahead were discussing him as they rode, summing him up, and deciding that the chota sahib was a first-rate fighting man.

After riding at a trot for about half a mile, Lawrence said:

"Now I'll get off and walk, Fyz Ali. The pony's lagging."

"Not so, sahib," replied the man. "I will walk; the sahib is used to a softer life."

"The more reason why I should harden myself."

"That is true, sahib; but it is foolishness to yoke a calf to an ox-wagon."

By which Lawrence understood that this stalwart man regarded him as still an ungrown boy. He made no more objection; Fyz Ali dismounted, and kept pace with him over the rugged ground to which they had now come.

Thus the little party marched for another mile. They went for the most part in single file, the track only rarely widening so much as to give them room to ride abreast. It was at one of such broader stretches that a sudden demand was made upon Lawrence's quickness and resource. He was riding in front with two of the Pathans; the other two mounted men were a few yards behind, with Fyz Ali on foot between them. Quite suddenly, about two hundred yards ahead, there came into view from round a high rock a band of at least a score of men, marching towards them. Lawrence had been expecting to meet the Pathan reinforcements from the mine, and he might at the first moment have mistaken the strangers but for a savage yell from the men at his side. Then he recognized in a flash that they were Kalmucks.

Both parties had momentarily halted; each was as much surprised as the other. Then, as Lawrence saw some of the Kalmucks lifting rifles to their shoulders, he became instantly alive to the situation. Without a moment's hesitation he dug his heels into the flanks of his pony, and, shouting to his men to come on, he rode straight at the enemy. It was the psychological moment. The Kalmucks were apparently without a leader; or their leader, if they had one, was a shade less quick-witted than the Englishman. With a spirited captain the warlike Pathans will go anywhere and do anything. Responding to his call with a true mountaineer's yell the men urged their steeds to a gallop, and swooped down upon the still hesitating enemy.

Lawrence could not have decided better if all the circumstances had been known to him. Some of the Kalmucks, after the failure of their night attack, had crossed the river some distance below the bridge, and marching on foot for long hours in the darkness over the difficult and tortuous path through the hills, had turned back along the track to take the defenders in the rear. They were weary: they had no regular leader; and being accustomed to fight on horseback they were demoralized at the sight of mounted Pathans, few as they were, galloping straight at them. With a well-directed volley they might have annihilated the little band; but they let the opportunity slip. A few stood their ground and fired; the rest took flight, and while some scurried up the hill-side, seeking cover in the broken ground, where horses could not well follow them, others turned tail and bolted straight back along the track.

The few shots thus wildly fired missed all the Pathans save one, and he was only scratched. Lawrence and his men pressed their advantage. Two of the Pathans wheeled to the right, and in spite of the steepness of the hill-side and the many natural obstacles, they dashed up in pursuit of the fleeing Kalmucks, cutting down several with their terrible tulwars before they could reach safety. Lawrence rode straight at the men who had fired. He overturned one by the impact of his horse, struck another down with his clubbed rifle, and then led his men after the others, who were running, some up, some down the bank. Two or three Kalmucks sprang into the river; within ten minutes the whole body was completely scattered. Only at the last did one who had climbed to an inaccessible crag on the hill-side and recovered from his panic, take good aim and roll a Pathan from his horse with a mortal wound.

The charge was over; the victory was complete; and Lawrence reined up his panting pony. Not till then did he remember that Fyz Ali was not mounted, and must have been left far behind. What had become of him? Lawrence turned and looked back along the track. He was not in sight.

"Stay here," he said to the Pathans; "I'll go back and look for Fyz Ali."

"Hai, sahib!" said one of the men, "it is foolishness. See, Ayoub is dead. Some of the dogs of Kalmucks are hiding behind the rocks above; they will shoot you even as they shot Ayoub."

"Nonsense: I'm riding Fyz Ali's horse: I can't leave him in the lurch."

He rode back along the track, and after a moment's hesitation one of the Pathans followed him. Warned by the fate of Ayoub they proceeded with caution, scanning the hill-side for signs of the enemy. For half a mile or more they saw neither foe nor friend, except the bodies of those who had fallen in the fray. Then they came in view of a strange procession. At this point the hill-side to the left of the track rose so steeply as to be unscalable. It was here that the Kalmucks, hard pressed, had flung themselves into the river. A few hundred yards ahead they saw two men approaching them, walking slowly backward. One of them was Fyz Ali, the other a Kalmuck. Fyz Ali had the man by the middle, holding him so that he formed a screen against a dozen Kalmucks who were slipping from rock to rock on the hill-side some distance beyond. Evidently they were watching for a chance to take a shot at the Pathan, but were baffled by his ingenious device. By keeping the prisoner constantly between him and them, he rendered it impossible for them to fire without the risk of hitting their own man.

Smiling with appreciation of Fyz Ali's manoeuvre, Lawrence dismounted, and ordered his man to dismount also. Then leading the ponies behind a rock, they knelt down, took aim at the distant Kalmucks, and fired. It was doubtful whether their shots took effect, but they checked the pursuit, and Fyz Ali seized the opportunity to hasten his retreat. Hugging the perpendicular wall, he came nearer and nearer, never loosing his hold of the Kalmuck, nor allowing his own person to be exposed.

The Kalmucks beyond returned Lawrence's fire, but they made no attempt to advance. They were not equal to the desperate venture of leaving their cover among the rocks and running the gauntlet along the open space which Fyz Ali and his prisoner were now traversing. In another two minutes the Pathan had joined his master.

"That was well done," said Lawrence, welcoming him.

Fyz Ali, breathing hard, set his prisoner against the rock, and holding him there with his left hand, drew his tulwar.

"No, no," said Lawrence hastily.

"Why, sahib? He is a Kalmuck," said Fyz Ali, and his eyes glared as he looked round.

"It is not our way," said Lawrence, "to kill prisoners. And he is unarmed."

"But I am not!" growled the Pathan. "Would he not kill me? Did not Nurla Bai try to kill Muhammad, unarmed and sleeping? It will be short, sahib."

"No, I can't allow it. Tie his hands together so that he can do no mischief; then we'll leave him to his friends."

Fyz Ali muttered between his teeth, but obeyed. He tore off the man's coat; it was dripping wet; the Kalmuck was one of those who had sprung into the river, and he had clambered up the bank in the nick of time to serve the quick-witted Pathan as a screen. With a few strokes of his tulwar Fyz Ali slit the coat into shreds, with which he bound the trembling man's hands together. Then, striking him heavily on the face--the Pathan is not chivalrous towards his enemies--he hauled him to the top of a rock, and left him there.

Lawrence and the two Pathans then hastened back to the place where they had left the others. These had given their dead comrade burial in the river. Then all resumed their march. They looked back whenever they reached a spot where they could get a view of the track behind them, but there was no sign of pursuit.

"They must have come over the hills in the night," said Lawrence, walking beside Fyz Ali, whom he had insisted on remounting. "Where does the hill-path join the track?"

"I know not, sahib," replied the man. "The Kalmucks know the path: it is their country."

"Well, keep your eyes open as we go, and see if you can find it. We may as well know."

They scanned the hill-side narrowly, and about twenty minutes later Lawrence noticed a narrow cleft in the precipice above the track which might possibly be the lower end of the hill-path. He stopped and examined the ground at the entrance, but it was so hard that the skin boots of the Kalmucks could have left no trace on it. Had they been mounted, the hoof marks would have been easily discoverable. Lawrence glanced up the winding cleft. It seemed an unlikely enough passage-way; indeed, at a height of several hundred feet above the track it appeared to come abruptly to an end. Lawrence deliberated for a few moments whether to climb and satisfy himself one way or the other; but decided that he had better not delay.

Ten minutes later they met the reinforcements from the mine. The men had heard firing in the distance and hurried on at full speed. On learning from their comrades of what had happened, they were eager to push on and annihilate the surviving Kalmucks, and one of them, when Lawrence refused to go back, muttered under his breath that the Englishman was afraid. Fyz Ali caught the words, and turned fiercely on the man.

"I'll slit your throat if you talk foolishness, Hosein," he said. "The chota sahib is a man; get that into your silly head. Did he not fight at the bridge? And when we met those Kalmuck pigs, did he not in a twinkling see what was to be done, and ride straight at them, cheering as the sahibs always do? And when I was left behind, he came back for me, though the dogs were hidden among the rocks and had just killed Ayoub. He is a man, I tell you; mashallah! what he says is good, and what he does is better, and I will cut your hand off if you do not swear to follow wherever he leads."

"Peace, brother," said the man. "How was I to know? His beard is not yet grown. Allah is great! All the sahibs are men, even in the cradle."

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH

THE REVOLT OF THE KALMUCK MINERS

While Lawrence was thus making his first essays in an apprenticeship to soldiering, his brother had found work to do which outran the little military experience he had gained.

After giving Lawrence the signals agreed on, Bob steered straight up the valley. His mind was very busy during the half-hour's flight to the mine. The management of the aeroplane had become so much a matter of habit and instinct that he was able to give a good deal of attention to his thoughts and imaginings. Telling Fazl to keep a good look-out, he sought to grapple with the strange problems so suddenly thrust upon him.

First and greatest of them all was the meaning of the concentration of troops at the mouth of the valley. He dismissed as patently absurd the idea that their objective was his uncle's mine. The gathering of so large a force for so trifling an end would be like employing a steam-hammer to crack a nut. He could not avoid the conclusion that their presence was quite independent of Nurla Bai, though on the other hand Nurla Bai's actions had probably been calculated with the knowledge or suspicion that a body of his countrymen was at hand.

What then was the explanation of the muster? The direction of their march, and the fact that they had thrown forward an advanced guard into the valley itself, seemed to indicate an intention to proceed through the valley to some further goal. What was that goal? He remembered the intelligence that had come in at odd times, of a levy _en masse_ of the Mongols, and his uncle's suspicion that the Mongolian prince was meditating an attack on Russia. But this was not the way to Russia. Could it be that Afghanistan was the object of an invasion? Bob's knowledge of the geography of the region was not very extensive, but he knew that, if Afghanistan was their objective, this valley was one of the most toilsome and indirect routes they could have chosen. The passes of the Hindu Kush to the westward offered few or no obstacles to an invading force; it was by these passes that the Mongolian hordes had always made their inroads, from the earliest times. Not only would the nature of the valley render the advance of a large army extremely arduous and prolonged; if the invaders should traverse it successfully, they would find themselves at what was probably the most intricate and inaccessible portion of the Amir's dominions. It would be like marching from London to Chester through the Welsh mountains, with every difficulty monstrously exaggerated. Wellington's passage of the Pyrenees was a slight operation compared with it.