Part 17

He felt the hand again, then a pressure upon his arm--a pressure that increased and diminished in rapid alternation. He throbbed with joy. Some one--was it Fazl?--was sawing at his bonds. The sound made by the knife or sword was scarcely perceptible; yet to his feverish apprehension it seemed loud enough to waken the heaviest sleeper. Soon he was conscious that his arms were free, and he ventured to move them stealthily to ease them of their numbness. The pressure was transferred to his feet, and after some moments of quivering anxiety he felt that these also were released from their bonds. Then cold metal touched his hand, and his eager fingers clasped over a grooved hilt.

"Sahib, a minute to rest, then follow me," whispered the voice.

He could hardly endure the waiting, though he knew it was intended to give him command of his limbs.

"Sahib, now!"

He raised himself on all fours, and began to creep after his deliverer, a black form crawling towards the ring of sleeping Kalmucks.

The Gurkha--for it was he--had almost passed between and beyond the two men who lay stretched towards the track, when a hand shot out and gripped him by the ankle. At the same moment the owner of the hand gave a shout, his companions started up, and Bob leapt to his feet. As soon as he felt the touch upon him, Fazl wriggled like a snake, his right hand groping towards the dark form beneath him. There was a groan, and he stood free.

A foot or two behind him, Bob came to a halt when he dimly saw the two figures writhing on the ground. When one of them sprang up, he was not sure for the moment whether it was friend or foe. A murmured word reassured him, and he was ready to go on. But his way was blocked. Roused by their comrade's cry, the Kalmucks hurled themselves in a shouting mass across the open space. One of them kicked up the embers of the expiring fire, and a dull glow illuminated the scene. It lent aid to the fugitives, who were themselves in shadow. But for his sprained ankle Lawrence could have sprinted away into the darkness; Fazl might by this time have been out of harm's way, but the little man, perplexed and anxious at his master's dilatoriness, turned to his assistance. Lawrence had been checked by a man who sprang at him from the left. He had no time to swing round and bring into play the right hand clutching Fazl's knife; but, instinctively shooting out his left hand, by good luck he got home upon his opponent's chin. There was little 'body' in the blow, delivered so rapidly and at such close quarters; yet his muscles were hard, and the man staggered and fell in a heap.

At this moment Fazl rushed to his side, in time to engage a group of the enemy who had now got their bearings and were rushing towards him. That moss-carpeted enclosure was the scene of a struggle as extraordinary as it was short. The little Gurkha twirled and twisted, sprang high, bent low, legs and arms gyrating with a rapidity that the eye of a spectator could scarcely have followed. It was as though some infuriated gnome had sprung out of the bowels of the earth, and was executing a fantastic dance among men bewildered by his demoniacal antics. But it was a dance of death. The red glow of the newly rekindled fire flashed upon a terrible kukuri, which whirled in circles, ovals, parabolas, and fifty unnamed curves, carving intricate luminous patterns on the night. Nor were these evolutions purposeless: every stroke of the keen nimble blade was directed by the keener mind of the man wielding it. Here it struck up a knife, there a rifle; now it pierced a shoulder, now grazed a head; so swift in its darting movements that it seemed multiplied into a dozen weapons each barbed with fire.

While the Gurkha was thus in the ecstasy of sword-play, keeping half the party of Kalmucks urgently engaged, Lawrence was in difficulties. The knife given him by Fazl was no doubt sharp and deadly, but it was a weapon to whose use no Englishman is bred, and demanded, though not so much free space as a sword, yet a certain amount of elbow room for its effective employment. Lawrence had only just felled his first assailant when he was himself beset by two or three at once. Half conscious of stinging sensations in arm and thigh he lashed out with left fist and right hand grasping the knife, but lost his footing, stumbled, and fell to the ground with his aggressors on top of him, snarling like wolves. He found himself with his left hand gripping one of them by the throat: his own right wrist was held as in a vice. Struggling to wrench himself free, he rolled over, dragging the panting enemy with him, their movements carrying them nearer and nearer to the camp-fire; and in a sudden flicker of light he recognized the savage features of Black Jack.

In sheer muscular strength he was no match for the Kalmuck dwarf. Under the crushing pressure of Black Jack's fierce grip his hold on the knife was relaxing: the weapon was slipping from him. His hold upon the man's throat weakened; the Kalmuck was digging his nails into his left arm. As the under dog he was not able to cope with the man pressing him down. The knife dropped to the ground; his wrist was suddenly released; he felt a bony hand at his own throat, and had given himself up for lost, when a wild discordant clamour broke out close by, drowning all other sounds. For an instant Black Jack was perfectly still: then, wrenching himself away, he sprang to his feet and leapt into the darkness.

Lawrence got up more slowly, every muscle and nerve quivering. He had just seen that the space around was empty of living men, when a film seemed to fall upon his eyes. He tottered, and sank fainting upon the ground.

When he reopened his eyes, the flush of morning lay upon the valley. He raised his head.

"That's right," said Major Endicott, stepping from behind him. "How do you feel?"

"Rather groggy, Major," replied Lawrence. "Those fellows struck me, I think."

"A gash or two: nothing to speak of. What bowled you over was hunger and fatigue, I suspect. We've got a few scraps left, which will keep you going until we reach your mine."

"Is Fazl all right?"

"As jolly as a sandboy, though rather dilapidated. It's lucky I carry a case of sticking plaster with me; he's pretty considerably patched--much more than you are. You slept pretty soundly through my amateur surgery."

"And the Kalmucks?"

"Gone elsewhere--all that were left of them. That machine of yours played you false then?"

"Yes, the engine failed, and I had to come down. I was rather bothered with getting rid of my bombs and controlling the thing at the same time, and made a hash of it--sprained my ankle, too. I was waiting for you, and the beggars stalked me. I was a silly ass to let them take me unawares."

"What were they going to do with you?"

"Offer me and the aeroplane in exchange for the mine--as if Bob would listen to any rot like that!

"Well, the aeroplane isn't worth much now, I suspect, but I fancy Bob might be disposed to think you good value for the mine. However, that's all off. The aeroplane's done for, of course?"

"Not a bit of it. We can put it to rights in a day."

"Warrant it?"

"Yes. Our bargain holds if you'll risk it. I'm more than sorry this happened, if it's going to dish your plan, Major."

"It shan't do that. Taking risks is part of my job--and yours too, as it happens."

"I'm jolly glad you came up when you did. In another minute you would have been too late."

"You've got to thank your Gurkha for that. We were marching up pretty briskly--had no trouble from the Afghans--and the Gurkha declared he heard the sound of your bombs far ahead. None of us had heard anything, but the little chap was so positive that I thought we'd be on the safe side and hurry up. Judging by the march we made, the sound must have travelled nearly ten miles--not impossible in this air, I suppose; I confess I was sceptical at first, and only began to feel anxious when you didn't return within the time stated.

"We came upon the tracks of the aeroplane some miles up; there was litter of all sorts about--scraps of food, broken branches and what not, and I feared you'd smashed yourself and your machine, only we couldn't find any pieces of it. But we found your rifle and field-glass in a little hollow, and the Gurkha guessed that you had tumbled among the Kalmucks. An hour after dark we caught sight of the camp-fire. The Gurkha volunteered to creep up and reconnoitre, so the rest of us halted, waiting for his report.

"He's a clever little chap, with a double dose of Gurkha courage. He came back very soon and told me he'd seen you tied up among them, and about the raft and so on. My sowars wanted to rush the place, but it struck me that that might be the end of you. The first instinct of such barbarians would be to knife their prisoner. It was a bit of a quandary--and the Gurkha came out strong again. It was his suggestion that he should creep into the camp and release you before we moved."

"Plucky little chap!" said Lawrence warmly.

"A treasure! The noise of the scuffle brought us up hot-foot, and the only thing I regret is that, as the Gurkha informed me, the ringleaders, those rascally miners of yours, got away.... Now the sooner we get to your mine the better. You had better sit my horse. As all our food is gone, we shall have a strong motive for hurry, so we ought to get home before night. Of course if you think you can't stand it we'll take our time."

"No: I'm fit enough. Your men will look after the raft?"

He explained the method by which the aeroplane had been taken safely past the gorges, and the Major went off to instruct his men.

Lawrence summoned Fazl, who was resting on a grassy knoll overlooking the river.

"I owe you my life; you're a brave fellow, and I thank you," he said.

Fazl's plastered face broadened in a grin.

"Wah! sahib, the Kalmucks are pigs, and their hearts melt like butter. The sahib's servant is unworthy of praise. It is a small thing to do for the heaven-born."

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST

THE FRONTIER HOUSE

Some ninety miles southward of the tower in which Major Endicott had been besieged, on the bare summit of a low hill, stood a solitary building of stone, known to the British officers of the borderland as a frontier house. It had no pretentions to architectural excellence, consisting of a square tower, somewhat resembling a truncated chimney-stack, crowned by a small turret on a platform, which looked like a square straight-brimmed Quaker hat. Adjoining the tower was a sloping wall twenty feet high, that formed one side of an enclosure, within which were a number of rudely built huts, set up against the inward side of the wall. Neither tower nor wall had any windows, but in the latter a doorway gave entrance to the interior.

One day Dafadar Narrain Khan was squatting with a few of his sowars on the wall of the enclosure, looking out over the country before him. The building commanded a prospect extending for many miles. Its immediate vicinity was barren, stony ground; one scraggy tree raised its wizened branches at the angle of the wall. A narrow track wound through this wilderness from the doorway down the hill to the plain below, meandering northward among boulders and patches of sparse vegetation until it was lost to sight amid the dark pine-trees that covered the lower slopes of the distant hills. Beyond, as far as the eye could reach, these hills stretched, an endless series of scarps and eminences, cleft by tortuous ravines and breaking away here and there into sheer precipices. In the remote distance, a jagged snow-clad ridge flashed with purple and gold in the rays of the sun. In the opposite direction, southward, the country was rugged but less hilly. A metalled road wound away into the distance. At regular intervals on one side of it stood tall posts, carrying a telegraph wire that emerged from a hole in the tower wall.

As the troopers sat there chatting, with their rifles in the hollow of their arms, there was a sudden cry from the sentinel posted alone on the top of the tower.

"Hai, dafadar! I see a speck moving in the sky far away," he shouted.

"How far away, Coja?" called the dafadar.

"Seven kos at least," was the reply.

"The speck is in your own eye, my son," cried the dafadar, and the men about him laughed: Coja was always seeing something!

The sentinel shouted a word of expostulation, then was silent, and the others resumed the conversation he had interrupted.

Half an hour passed away. The time came for changing the guard. One of the men rose, sauntered along the wall, disappeared through a narrow opening in the tower, and presently emerged on the summit. Apparently he had a brief altercation with the man he had relieved. In five minutes Coja came from the tower along the wall.

"Wah! you may mock, dafadar," he said; "but I declare by the beard of my father I saw a speck--a black speck moving."

"You have chewed too much betel, Coja," said the dafadar with composure. "I too have seen dancing specks when my stomach was out of order."

"Yes, but do those motes in the eye grow larger? Do they swell from the size of a pinpoint to the size of a little bird, and then to a great one? I thought at first it was peradventure an eagle of the mountains, but, inshallah! no eagle could look so large such a great way off. Is there a bird bigger than an eagle? Speak out of your great knowledge, dafadar."

"There is none, foolish one--none that flies, though I have heard of a great bird that runs upon the ground swifter than the iron horse that runs on rails; the mem-sahibs wear its feathers in their hats."

"Hai! what was this great thing, then? I saw it, and rubbed my eyes, and lo! when I looked again, it wheeled about, and soared away towards the Afghan country, and passed behind a crag yonder, and I saw it no more."

"Wonderful eyes you have, Coja, and a wonderful tongue! Do we not know your tales? What of the tiger with two heads you saw once in a tree? and the elephant that caught you up and put you on his head? and that time when you swallowed a cherry-stone, and leaves began to sprout among your hair? Wah! we know his stories, my children; we know how the lies flow out of his mouth like water from a spring."

"Mashallah! Do I not speak truth?" cried the man indignantly. He was a by-word for romancing among his fellows, and, like all liars, resented any imputation on his veracity. "There is no wisdom in you. Many a great thing that I have told you you have believed: now when I tell you a little thing, you say 'Wah! he is a liar.'"

"But it was a great thing you saw, Coja-ji--bigger than an eagle, said you, when we know there is nothing bigger than an eagle that flies. Wah! at least when you are on duty, you must resist these promptings of the Evil One, else it will end in Jehannum. And look you, Coja, when your turn for watching comes again, keep your eyes on the ground, my friend; do not look for the stars in daylight."

Highly offended, the man walked away, descended the steps within the wall, and retired to sulk, like Achilles, in his tent.

About an hour later the dafadar and his men, who had scarcely changed their position, were again hailed from the roof.

"A speck on the track, dafadar," cried the sentinel; "moving this way, like a fly crawling, very far off."

"Hai! that is news," said the dafadar, slowly rising to his feet. "A speck on the ground is worth looking at; in the sky it proceeds from overeating." Raising his voice, he called to the sentinel: "Hai, Selim, I come to see."

Followed by several of the troopers, he mounted to the roof, and taking the telescope from Selim's hand, examined the track, tracing it back for miles until he discerned the moving object. So remote was it that even with the telescope he could distinguish it only as a human being: whether shepherd, mendicant, or fakir he could not tell, and a single pedestrian must, he thought, be one of these three.

"Perhaps he is a dak runner from Ennicott Sahib," suggested one of the men. "The sahib went in that direction."

"Wah! a dak runner would run, not crawl," said another. "Let us look through the long glass, dafadar."

The telescope was passed round. No one could as yet identify the figure. They were all keenly interested. For several days they had not seen a solitary man outside the walls, though they had kept unremitting watch, having been instructed to be on the alert to discover any movements of men in that region. The figure approached slowly--too slowly for their impatience. All eyes were riveted upon it, and when Selim with the telescope reported that it was completely clad in khaki uniform and not in shepherd's choga, or the scanty tatters of a mendicant, the troopers' excitement grew.

"Hai! he stops!" cried Selim presently. "He waves a white cloth. It is a signal, dafadar."

Narrain Khan took the telescope and gazed at the figure. He felt a little perplexed as to what he ought to do. In time of peace he would not have hesitated to send out a couple of men to discover who the stranger was; but there were rumours of war, and the Captain Sahib had given orders that no man should be allowed to leave the post except under the gravest circumstances. He wondered whether the present case came within his licence. The man was clad in khaki: that was something in his favour. He was waving a white flag: that was reassuring. He had seated himself on a knoll beside the track: perhaps he wanted help.

The dafadar lowered the telescope and turned to his men.

"Go, you two," he said, "ride out on your ponies and see who the stranger is, and what his business. Have a care, lest there are badmashes lurking near. The stranger may be a decoy. Have a care, I say, for when you have ridden down the slope we cannot protect you."

The men descended through the tower, and were presently seen trotting down the track. Every yard of their progress was followed intently by the garrison. Their diminishing forms were lost to the watchers at intervals through the windings of the track and the inequalities of the ground. Presently they were seen, little more than dots, moving side by side along the straight stretch at the farther end of which the solitary stranger could still be discerned.

They approached him, came to a halt, and dismounted. After a minute or two the party separated. Two men proceeded northward along the track, one on horseback, the other on foot. The third man rode in the opposite direction towards the house.

The whole garrison of eighteen men were now mustered, some on the roof, some on the wall, silent, their eyes fixed on the slowly approaching horseman. By and by it was seen that he was not either of the two who had lately ridden down. Then the dafadar, who had the telescope at his eyes, suddenly exclaimed:

"Mashallah! It is Ennicott Sahib!"

Amid a chorus of ejaculations he hurried down to the courtyard, mounted his horse, and galloped down the track to meet the officer. The strangeness of that meeting formed the theme of a discourse to the men of the garrison later in the day.

"When I came near enough to see the face of the huzur," said Narrain Khan, "I beheld that it was the face of a sick man. His left arm hung straight at his side like the broken leg of a sheep. I was on the point of invoking the mercy of Allah upon the huzur--is he not the light of our eyes?--when his great voice sounded in my ears like the voice of a trumpet, and before even I could make my salaam he cried--what think you were the words of the great one?"

"'Water, for I am athirst,'" suggested one man.

"Wah! does the huzur think of himself? You speak as a witless babe."

"'Is all well?'" said another.

"Wah!" cried the dafadar with scorn and indignation. "Could the heaven-born ask so foolish a question knowing that I, Narrain Khan, am in charge of this house? No: the words of the huzur--and they were very strange--were these: 'Hai, dafadar! have you got any paraffin?'"

"Inshallah! what is paraffin to the heaven-born? And what said you, dafadar?"

"I was so astonished that I could but speak out the simple truth. 'Truly, sahib!' said I, 'we have some few tins with which to replenish our lamps.' And then the huzur commanded me to send six men with one large tin, that one man might easily carry, along the track to the foot of the hills yonder, and give it to a sahib they would find reclining there."

"Another sahib! Who is he?"

"And for what purpose the paraffin, dafadar?"

"That I know not. The huzur did not tell me that, but told me that he had already sent to the sahib those two young men I had ordered to meet him. And you saw how, when the huzur dismounted at the gate, he staggered, and caught me to prop him: and when I asked him to lie down and let us see to his hurt, he made that sound with the lips that the sahibs make when they are impatient, as if I had said some foolish thing, and bade me lead him straightway to the clicking-room, and there he is now: you can hear the clicking-devil, like little hammers tapping. Truly I begin to think there are many strange things to tell the Sirkar far away."

"Hai! I did see a speck in the sky," said Coja solemnly.

Major Endicott, though half fainting with pain and exhaustion, had gone straight to the room in which the telegraph instruments were kept, and shut himself in. For nearly an hour he worked at the keys with a rapidity acquired by much practice. Before he had finished, the second instrument at his side was mechanically recording the answers to his message. Having read these off, he staggered to the door and summoned the dafadar.

"Fenton Sahib will be here in three hours," he said. "There will be also the sahib from the hills. Get some food and a bath ready for him, and tell Hosein to come and see to my arm."

Some two hours later the Major was awakened from a profound sleep by a hubbub among the men on the wall. Going out to them, he found them excitedly watching an aeroplane soaring rapidly towards them from the hills. Coja was loudly proclaiming that the flying object proved his truthfulness: no one could any longer deny that he had seen a speck in the sky.

A few minutes after it had been sighted the aeroplane sank to rest on the open space in front of the tower. Loud cries of wonder broke from the men when there stepped out of it a young sahib, limping slightly, followed by one of the two sowars who had gone out to meet the major. The trooper greeted his comrades with an air of triumph, and swaggered up to them with an ineffable look of importance. They surrounded him, and listened with admiring envy while he detailed his first impressions of flight through the air.

Meanwhile the Major took Lawrence into the officers' room, where he bathed, and ate the lunch Narrain Khan had provided. He had just finished when there was the clatter of hoofs outside, and in a few minutes entered Captain Fenton, who had ridden up with half a dozen sowars from the fort fifteen miles to the south.

"Hullo, major, you look pretty dicky!" said the newcomer, glancing curiously from the major's bandaged arm to Lawrence.

"Yes, I've had a knock. Let me introduce you. Lawrence Appleton--you've heard of Harry Appleton--Captain Fenton."

"I see they've sent us an aeroplane, Endicott," said the captain, shaking hands with Lawrence. "An unexpected gift! I thought all the aeroplanes were scouting Kabul way--all there are; they've got a dozen or so, on paper, and a regiment of airmen, also on paper: most of us believed they weren't born yet! Which way did you come, Mr. Appleton?"