Part 9

"I asked if you had plenty of empty bags in your storehouse."

"Heaps; a regular lot of them, sir."

"You must fill them with earth, havildar, and pile them against the wall. Make an embrasure in the middle for the machine gun."

"What, sir?" said the Babu, surprised.

"I forgot: you did not know about it. In the little chamber behind the house there is a machine gun, with plenty of ammunition. We will get it out in the morning."

"It is good, sahib," said the havildar.

"You knew about it?" said Bob, catching a curious expression on the Sikh's countenance.

"I knew about it, sahib. I saw the parts unpacked."

"And locked your knowledge in your silent bosom," said the Babu, with an aggrieved look. "That was cruelty to animals, sir. With knowledge of so ingenious a weapon of defence we should all have slept more securely in our beds."

"All this must be done as quietly as possible," continued Bob, ignoring the Babu's indignant protest. "We must try not to let the Kalmucks on the other side know that anything out of the ordinary is going on."

"That will not be easy, sahib," said the havildar.

"Perhaps not, but you must do the best you can. I said just now that I would send all the Pathans down the river, but you will want some of them to work. Will they be loyal?"

"The huzur is their father, sahib. They will fight for him and for you. To them the Kalmucks are sons of pigs."

"How is Muhammad, by the way?"

"His wound is healing; he will be well to-morrow--well enough to fight the Kalmucks."

"I will see him in the morning. I am rather troubled as to what to do with the Kalmuck miners. They will side with their countrymen if they come up in force, and every man extra will add to our difficulties."

"The sahib should send them away," said Gur Buksh.

"But we can't send them down-stream until my brother comes back, and that's their natural way. They won't go without their arms, and Lawrence Sahib and the Pathans might be attacked then on both sides; and they would certainly refuse to go in the opposite direction, away from their homes."

"Permit me to interpose, sir," said Ditta Lal, who had for some time taken no part in the discussion. "I have suggestion for cutting Gordian knot. Many years ago, sir, my uncle, member of celebrated Hunza Nagar expeditionary force, made proposal which, if taken at the flood, would have led to fortune. British force would have triumphed over dastardly foes, and many valuable lives would have been saved to honour and glory of king and country."

"Cut it short, Babu," said Bob. "What is your proposal?"

"Perpend, sir. Our friend and comrade Gur Buksh will cross bridge--or better Shan Tai--gather Kalmucks about him, and offer to beguile tedium of inaction by great feast, Chinese delicacies, stews and all that, regular blow out. While he engages Kalmucks in this artless conversation, make mouths water galore, one of noble garrison steals behind their backs into huts, inserts dynamite and fuse into walls, and retires with careful slowness, as if nothing was up, and he were merely strolling for constitutional. Then in midst of jollification huts all blow up like one o'clock, and scoundrels wallow in their gore."

"That was your uncle's suggestion, was it?" said Bob.

"That was it, sir, and my respected uncle was hurt in inmost soul when advice was contumeliously rejected. Such was his military ardour that he had made profound study of all books extant on art of war and duty of soldiers, and he assured me with tears welling out of dove-like eyes that nowhere did he find regulation forbidding adoption of artful dodge."

"Well, you'd better follow his example--only weep quietly."

"My word is this, sahib," said Gur Buksh. "Wait until Lawrence Sahib is back; then send the Kalmucks away. They will join their friends; who can resist Fate? we must fight them all. And I say too, sahib, send some of the Pathans this night to join Lawrence Sahib. They will go with great gladness of heart."

"That's a good idea. They will get to him before I start in the morning. But how can we get them off without making the Kalmucks suspicious? Some one would have to cross the bridge to give them orders. The bridge can't be let down without a good deal of noise, and that would certainly bring them out to see what was going on."

The havildar thought for a minute, then suggested that Bob in his company should pay a visit of inspection to each of the camps. Mr. Appleton had several times done this at night, and if Bob were to make his inspection as formal in appearance as possible, nothing would be so likely to lull their suspicions. To this proposal Bob agreed. He dressed quickly, and in a few minutes left the house, with the havildar marching behind.

They visited the Kalmuck camp first, going from hut to hut, in which the men were engaged in various games. Some of them looked up in stolid silence as the sahib glanced round, uttered a word or two, and passed on. Others were sufficiently curious to ask what was happening down the river, and why the huzur had not returned. Bob fenced with their questions, and when he left them felt that he had only heightened their curiosity, even though he had given no sign that anything was amiss. Then, to keep up the pretence, he went to the stables, finally crossing to the Pathan camp, where he found a still more eager curiosity. Calling out the man who was next in authority to the wounded Muhammad, he told him quietly what he wished him to do, without informing him of the disappearance of Mr. Appleton. The man was delighted with the opportunity of leading a night march against the hated Kalmucks. A sudden and secret raid is the breath of life to a Pathan. He selected a dozen men to accompany him. Gur Buksh, without attracting attention, supplied them with arms, better than their own, from the mine armoury; and before nine o'clock they left their camp stealthily, making their way in single file up the hill path that skirted the Kalmuck quarters.

Bob and the havildar returned to their own side of the gorge and waited anxiously to assure themselves that the movement was not detected by the Kalmucks. The place at which the Pathans must descend to join the track was something less than two hundred yards north of the Kalmuck camp, and if one of them chanced to set a stone rolling, or struck his rifle against the rock, the sound would almost certainly be heard below. But not a click disturbed the stillness; no sound was added to the rustle of the river; and after waiting at the end of the drawbridge for about half an hour, Bob concluded that the men had reached the track safely, and returned with the havildar to the house.

There they remained for an hour discussing the measures which the havildar was to take next day. Ditta Lal had retired to his own quarters, to pass, it is to be feared, a very uneasy night: he was bold only when the odds were heavily on his side. Presently Fazl came to the house to report that he had cleaned the engine, replenished the tanks with petrol and lubricating oil, and examined all the gear. A thought struck Bob.

"I shall fly down-stream again as soon as it is light," he said. "Are you willing to come with me?"

"The sahib orders," said the man, smiling with pleasure.

"Then get Shan Tai to give you two or three baskets of food and take them to the ledge. Meet me there as soon as there's any light in the sky. Bring your kukuri."

Fazl smiled again. No Gurkha goes abroad without his national weapon, half bill-hook, and half falchion. He departed, salaaming cheerfully.

"He'll be useful in looking after the machine if I'm otherwise engaged," thought Bob, as he went wearily to his room, to snatch a few hours' rest before he set off again. "Poor old Lawrie!" he said to himself. "I'm afraid he's desperately cold."

In the hurry of departure he had forgotten to hand out the wadded coat which Lawrence, like himself, wore when flying. Whether the little party at the bridge were disturbed by the enemy or not, he feared that his brother must pass a very uncomfortable night.

Up before daybreak, Bob, after a hurried breakfast, paid the promised visit to Muhammad, to whom, however, he told nothing. If the man was to be of any use in the fighting that might be in store, it was necessary that he should recover his strength, and such recovery would only be retarded by excitement. Then Bob supplied himself with plenty of cartridges, borrowed a red handkerchief from Chunda Beg, and made his way along the path to the aeroplane platform. Fazl was already there: everything was in order: and as soon as the grey light of dawn began to creep over the hill-tops, the two men got into their places, and with a hum and swish the aeroplane set forth on its flight down-stream.

Bob's experience of the previous night was reversed. Then, the curtain of shade had rolled up from the valley, ever higher, until sky and earth were mingled in one blackness. Now, the dark crept gradually downward, every minute uncovering a few more feet of the barren hill-sides. But during the brief flight from the mine the depths of the valley were scarcely penetrated by the feeble rays of morning, and it was not until the aeroplane came to the neighbourhood of the bridge that the river and the track upon its bank were distinguishable. Bob knew not what he might have passed during that forty minutes. Once, when he judged that about two-thirds of the flight was completed, he thought he heard a shout from below, and guessed that the Pathans, marching down the track, had caught the sound of his propeller, and had called to let him know that all was well.

The twilight had banished darkness from the bottom of the valley by the time he came in sight of the bridge. He looked anxiously down for his brother's party, and was on the point of shifting the elevator so as to drop a little nearer earth when he saw puffs of smoke just beyond the bend in the left bank, and immediately afterwards heard the crack of rifles. Evidently the enemy were still in position. Reversing his movement, so as to rise instead of falling, and avoid the fate that had overtaken his uncle, he glanced down at the rocks near the bridge head, and saw grouped there a number of figures among whom he thought he recognized Lawrence. At the same moment a vociferous cheer reached him through the throbbing hum of the engine, and the greeting relieved him of anxiety about his brother.

Rising as quickly as possible, he held on his course, and in half a minute flew directly over the Kalmucks, and came in sight of the reach of the river beyond the bend. As he searched the banks, running the gauntlet of a fusillade, he was conscious of a feeling of dismay. For a full mile the river bank appeared to have been turned into a Kalmuck encampment. At irregular intervals above and below the winding track, the hill-side was dotted with tents and akois. Advantage seemed to have been taken of every square yard of level space to erect these portable shelters, which could be put up and taken down within a few minutes. It was clear that he had to reckon, not merely with the small party who had pursued him up-stream, but with a much larger number who had come up from the distant encampment during the previous afternoon and night. Horses were grouped wherever there was standing room for them. On the track and about the tents men were gathered, all gazing up into the sky, some taking shots at the aeroplane as it flew over them. It was flying swiftly, however, and with a vertical as well as a horizontal movement, so that even a practised sportsman, accustomed to shoot birds on the wing, could scarcely have hit his mark. Bob heard two or three bullets whistle past, but none struck the aeroplane or either of its occupants. Having seen so much, he determined to pursue his reconnaissance down the valley; it would be worth while to see if the camp on the plateau had been struck, for he would then be sure that the mine was indeed the objective of this force, and as he flew back be able, perhaps, to estimate its size. For the next few miles only a few straggling horsemen were visible, riding slowly up-stream. Then for a mile or two the track was bare, and he suspected that the men he had last seen were the rear of the enemy's force. Still flying on, he came at length to the place where the valley broadened, and finally to the plateau which had been the limit of his flight on the day before. Here he swept round several times in ever widening circles, carefully scanning the ground. The camp had completely disappeared. Thinking that in so wide an area the small object which the encampment would present at so great a depth might escape his notice, he wheeled again and again, until he assured himself that no trace of it was discoverable. Then he was setting his course to return to the valley, looking southward to pick up his bearings, when there was a sudden shout from the Gurkha. He glanced round: the man was pointing excitedly to the north-west.

Slowing down a little, but without altering his course, Bob looked in the same direction. The country was now bathed in sunlight; the air was clear; but he could perceive nothing to account for his companion's excitement. He had faith enough in the man's intelligence, however, to wheel round once more, and steer away from the valley.

"What is it, Fazl?" he asked.

"Tents, sahib; many tents, like flowers in a field."

It was at least a minute before Bob's less keen eyes were able to confirm the man's strange announcement. Then he recognized that a huge brown patch, which he might well have mistaken for an outcrop of rock, or some other natural feature of the landscape, was in reality an aggregation of nomad tents, similar to those which he had passed on the hill-side behind.

If he had felt dismay at the sight of the force assembled in the valley, his feeling now bordered on stupefaction. His brain was in a whirl. The misdeeds of Nurla Bai were as a pebble cast into a pond. The spreading circles had embraced a troop of Kalmuck horsemen, then a regiment, finally what appeared to be an army. The motive had developed from the spite and revenge of a single man to the greed of a company, and now--to what? Surely the inhabitants of this vast array of tents were not assembled for the puny purpose of snapping up a solitary silver mine. What design had brought them to this remote and barren tract in a desolate land?

These were questions to which Bob was utterly unable to guess at the answers. His surprise and alarm did but increase as he approached the scene. Around a point where a small tributary joined the river from the south-east, extended a large bare space several miles in area. Of this open tract a portion that must have been at least a square mile in area, bounded on one side by the left bank of the tributary and on the other by the right bank of the river, was dotted with a series of encampments, arranged in regular order, and looking in the distance not unlike a kind of chess-board. Counting them as he drew nearer, Bob found that there were twenty of these separate camps. As he approached the nearest, he tried to number the rows of tents, and the individual tents in each row. But his pace was too swift and his mind too bewildered to allow of an exact reckoning. His impression was that there were twenty rows of tents about ten deep. The tents were apparently small; if he were not deceived by the distance, none of them could harbour more than five or six men. But as his eye ranged over the whole encampment, and he made a rapid calculation, he came to the staggering conclusion that the total force there on the ground beneath him could not be far short of twenty thousand men.

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

THE FIGHT AT THE BRIDGE

In the first moments of this amazing discovery, Bob's mind was confused by the multiplicity of his sensations and imaginings. There were several problems all clamouring at once for solution: his uncle's fate, the plight of Lawrence, the future of the mine. But he soon realized that no good result would come of aimless conjectures; "One thing at a time, and concentrate your attention" had been the motto dinned into him by one of his schoolmasters. The one insistent thing now was to learn all that he could about this encampment--too large to be a fortuitous gathering of nomads, too regular to be other than military in its organization.

Bob flew straight for the camp, and when he came above its centre he began to circle round and round with the object of getting a clear and orderly idea of its nature. Observation from the great height to which he had risen was not easy, and the necessity of keeping part of his attention upon the aeroplane was a drawback. Naturally he could not entrust the machine to Fazl, who was making his first flight. On the other hand the Gurkha, who was wholly without nervousness, could devote himself entirely to the task of observing. Thus, combining what Fazl reported with what he was himself able to see, Bob obtained in the course of twenty minutes a pretty good notion of the disposition of the camp and the various movements that were going on.

To the north, a large body of horsemen, who were exercising when he first caught sight of them, came to a halt, and were evidently intent on watching the flying machine. Still farther northward, long trains of primitive ox wagons were lumbering towards the camp, with a caravan of camels here and there. Attached to the body of cavalry on the plain there were no fewer than six batteries of field artillery. There was no regular road into or out of this solitary region, but from the appearance of the ground it was clear that the army had reached its present position from the north-west. There was a narrower and fainter track leading from the camp in the direction of the valley--no doubt the route followed by the men now posted on the river bank.

It was inevitable that the sight of the aeroplane, wheeling over the encampment in regular circles, should arouse lively curiosity and excitement among the throngs of men below. Its appearance was greeted at first with shouts either of surprise or alarm. Bob had twice made the circuit before any action was taken: apparently the spectators had not made up their minds as to the nature of this strange visitor, or were waiting for orders. But as he began to circle for the third time a change came over the scene. His systematic movements forced upon the men the notion that he was scouting, spying upon them; and as soon as this was realized they came to the conclusion that he was an enemy who must be dealt with. At first there were a few scattered shots; then regular volleys; at last an almost continuous crackle of musketry. By this time Bob had discovered all that was possible from his altitude, and feeling that nothing was to be gained by running risks, he decided to swing round and head for the valley.

The marksmanship of the enemy's riflemen had not been such as to alarm him hitherto; but it was a different matter when, soon after he turned, the aeroplane became the target of one of the field batteries. Hearing the deeper crack of two of the guns, he instantly steered to the left, to gain a minute's grace while the guns were being trained in the new direction. No third shot was fired; the gunners evidently recognized that the odds were all against their hitting him. At the same time a troop of horse who had started at a gallop in pursuit reined up; since the guns were ineffectual it was not worth while chasing him on the chance of a sudden mishap bringing him to the ground.

Another five minutes brought him to the entrance of the valley. He still maintained a great height until he had passed over the encampment on the lull-side; then, instructing Fazl to wave the red handkerchief as they flew over the bridge, he executed a steep vol plane down to the neighbourhood of the rocks held by Lawrence and the Pathans. It went altogether against the grain to skim over the open space without landing; but he knew that he could not have done so without becoming the mark for hundreds of bullets. No other course was open to him than to adhere to the plan already arranged with Lawrence, and sweep on up the gorge towards the mine.

Another cheer greeted him from the little party below. All, then, was still well with them. Accepting the signal of the red flag, Lawrence would now withdraw his men, and hasten up the track as swiftly as possible. No doubt he would get a mount behind one of the Pathans. That pursuit by the enemy would be doubly difficult Bob recognized when he noticed--what had escaped his observation as he flew down-stream--that the handrail of the bridge had now disappeared. There was no means of crossing the river at this point. He supposed that Lawrence, during the night, had taken the precaution to cut the rope. This was reassuring; it seemed to show that Lawrence, though without military training and, as he himself had said, without military instincts, yet was possessed of readiness and common sense, qualities of much value both to soldiers and civilians.

At the same time Bob was rather loth to leave his brother to deal with the enemy alone, in case they managed in some unimaginable way to cross the river. He felt tempted to land somewhere within a few miles of the bridge, and return on foot to take command of the party. But on second thoughts this seemed to him a short-sighted policy. Though he could not conceive that this army corps was directed against the Appleton mine, the situation clearly demanded that he should return and assist in completing the havildar's arrangements for the defence. The capture of the mine might be regarded by the enemy as a trifling exploit by the way. It was particularly important that the large force of Kalmuck miners should be disposed of. They, if they realized the position, held the key of the situation. There was little doubt that with a sudden rush they could scatter the few Pathans now left at the mine, in the teeth of the Sikh garrison. They would then be able to cut off the retreat of Lawrence and his party, trapped between the Kalmuck miners and their countrymen advancing up the valley. It was imperative, then, that he should get back to the mine as quickly as possible, and his uneasiness at leaving Lawrence was partially removed when, a dozen miles from the bridge, he met the party of Pathans whom he had dispatched overnight. Yet, if he could have foreseen the events of the next few hours, he would have cast to the winds all questions of policy, and risked a descent.

As he flew over the bridge, there had been nothing, except the broken rope, to indicate that any change had taken place in the situation since he left the spot on the previous evening. But Lawrence, during the hours of darkness, had in fact passed through the most exciting experience of his life.