Told in the East

XIII.

There was some smart work done inside the powder-magazine. To be able to appreciate it properly one would be obliged to do what they did—wander through a maze of tunnels in a city-wall, blinded by darkness, oppressed by the stored-up stuffiness and heat of ages and deafened by the stillness—then emerge unexpectedly in the lamp-lit magazine, among mutineers who sprawled, and laughed; and chewed betel-nut at their ease upon the powder-kegs.

Both sides were taken by surprise, but the mutineers had the nominal advantage, for their eyes were accustomed to the light. They had the advantage in numbers, too, by almost two to one. But they dared not fire, for fear of setting off the magazine, whereas Brown and his little force dared anything. They fully expected to die, and might as well die that way as any other. And a quick death for the women down below would be better than anything the rebels had in store for them. Brown yelled an order, and the rest was too quick, nearly, for the eye to follow.

Three rebels died with bullets in them, and the rest stampeded for the teak-and-metal door, to find it locked on them, and Brown and the Rajput standing in front of it on guard. The mutineers attacked fiercely. They flung themselves all together on the two. But they had yet to learn that they were tackling, or endeavoring to tackle, the two finest swordsmen in that part of India. And when they turned, to find more room to fight in, or to draw their breath, they had to face nine bayonets that hemmed them in, and drove them closer and even closer to the swords again. They shouted, but no sound could pierce the walls or escape through that tremendous door. Even the sound of firing merely echoed upward until it reached the dome, and then filtered out and upward through the opening above. They might as well have shouted to their friends in Bholat!

For ten minutes, perhaps, the battle surged and swayed on the stone floor first one side rushing, then the other. But man after man of the mutineers went down—appalled by the amazing swordsmanship, disheartened by the grim determination of their adversaries, bewildered to feebleness by the suddenness of the attack.

Soon there were but eight of them facing the blood-wet steel, and then Brown shouted for a fresh formation, swung his contingent into line and led them with a rush across the floor that swept the remaining mutineers off their feet.

Three more went down with steel through them, and then the rest surrendered, throwing down their arms, and begging mercy. Brown made a bundle of their arms, stowed it in a corner and made the prisoners stand together in a bunch, while he searched them thoroughly.

“If we can't get that trapdoor open now, with these to help us,” he remarked, panting and wiping the dotted blood off his sword on a Hindu prisoner's trousers, “it'll be a heavier proposition than I think!”

“There's a trick to it,” said Juggut Khan, panting too, for the battle had been fierce and furious while it lasted. “The fakir knows the trick. It is heavy, in any case. But, if we make him tell us, we can manage it.”

There followed delay while the fakir was induced to forego the pleasure of a sulking fit. He seemed like a child, anxious to emphasize their dependence on his knowledge, and needing to be recompelled to each new thing they needed of him. He was perfectly content, though, to surrender when he felt the weight of a cleaning-rod on his anatomy, or something in the way of fire—a match or cigarette for instance—placed where he would get the most sensation from it.

Then followed more delay, while they rigged a lever of sorts, and a rope through an iron ring in the trap, and while Juggut Khan hunted for the secret catch that the fakir swore was hidden underneath a smaller stone that hinged in the middle of the floor. He found it at last, moved it and came across to lend a hand with the lever and the rope.

The fakir sat still and smiled at them. His eyes gleamed more horridly than ever, and his withered arm seemed more than ever to be calling down dire vengeance on them.

“I believe that monster is up to tricks of some kind!” swore Brown.

“He can't do anything,” said Juggut Khan. “If we were all to put our weight against this, all together, we and the prisoners, sahib, we could get it open in a second.”

“All together, then!” said Brown. “Come on, there! Lend a hand!”

The prisoners and Brown's men and Juggut Khan and the Beluchi bent their backs above the lever, or hauled taut on the rope, and the fakir wriggled with some secret joke.

“At the word three!” said Brown. “Then all together!”

“One!”

“Two!”

The fakir writhed delightedly. He seemed more than ever like a wickedly malicious child.

“Three!”

They strained their utmost, and the huge stone trap gave way with a sudden jerk.

“For the love of—”

They all jumped, but they were strained in the wrong position for a quick recovery, and the ten-ton rock rolled back on unseen hinges to crush them all, and rolled back and yet farther back—and then stayed! Brown had snatched a rifle, and had placed it between the rolling rock and the wall!

He stood wiping the sweat from his forehead, while the rest recovered their lost balance and walked out from behind unscathed. The rifle creaked and bent and split. Then the stone leaned farther back, reached the wall and stayed there!

“A near thing that!” said Brown. “That fakir's a bright beauty, isn't he!”

“Shall I kick him, sir?” asked one of Brown's men.

“Kick him? No! What good'd that do? What next, Juggut Khan?”

But Juggut Khan was bending down, and listening at the hole laid bare by the huge hinged trap.

“Silence!” commanded Brown.

The men held their breath, even, but not a sound came up from the darkness down below.

“Are they dead, d'you suppose?” asked Brown.

And, even as he asked it, some one in the darkness snuffled, and he heard a woman's voice that moaned.

“Snff-snff-snff! I wonder if I'm dead yet! I wouldn't be, I know, if Bill were here! He'd ha' got us out!”

“There is one of them alive!” said Juggut Khan.

“So I notice!” answered Brown, with a strange dry quaver in his voice. “Go down and bring her up, please! Take three or four men with you. It won't do to bring women and a child up here and let 'em see this awful fakir and these corpses. Take your time about bringing 'em up, while I make the prisoners carry their dead up on to the roof. I'll take the fakir up there too where he's out of mischief!”

Just as a six-foot-wide pathway ran round and round the outside of the dome, another one, scarcely more than a yard wide, ran round the inside, and formed a roadway to the top in place of a stair. It took the prisoners and Brown's men fifteen minutes of continuous effort to carry up the dead and the fakir, and lay them on the roof.

“Pitch the dead over!” ordered Brown, and the mutineers obeyed.

“I've a mind to pitch you over too!” he growled at the fakir, and the strange creature seemed to understand him, for his eyes changed from their baleful hatred to a look of fear.

The bodies slid and rolled down the rounded roof, and fell with a thud against the battlements, or else went rolling down the circular causeway that led to the street below.

Brown seemed to be garnering ideas from watching them. He gazed down at the noisy tumult of the city, watching for a while the efforts of an ill-directed crowd to put out a fire that blazed in a distant quarter of the bazaar.

There seemed to him something strangely preconcerted about much of the hurrying to and fro below him. It struck him as being far too orderly to be the mere boiling of a loot-crazed mob.

His prisoners gave the secret to him. They were leaning against the parapet on the other side—the side closest to the city-wall, and farthest from the top of the causeway—and they were chattering together excitedly in undertones. Brown walked round to where they stood, and stared where they stared. Just as they had done, he recognized what lay below him.

It was faintly outlined in the blackness, picked out here and there by lanterns, and still too far away for most civilians to name it until the sun rose and showed its detail. But Brown, the soldier, knew on the instant, and so did his men.

Suddenly and unexpectedly and sweetly, like a voice in the night that spoke of hope and strength and the rebirth of order out of chaos, a bugle gave tongue from where the lanterns swung in straight-kept lines.

“Oh, Juggut Khan! Oh, Juggut Khan!”

Bill Brown's voice boomed through the opening in the dome, and spread down the walls of the powder-magazine as though in the inside of a speaking-trumpet.

“Brown sahib?”

“The army has got here from the north! It has come down here from Harumpore! It's outside the walls now, lying on its arms, and evidently waiting to attack at daylight!”

“I, too, have news, Brown sahib! All four are living! All four lie here on the floor of the magazine, and they recover rapidly. They are all but strong enough to stand.”

“Good! Then come up here, Juggut Khan!”

That winding pathway up the inside of the dome took longer to negotiate than an ordinary stairway would have done, but presently the Rajput leaned against the parapet and panted beside Brown.

“D'you see them? There they are! Now, look on this side! D'you see the preparations going on? D'you realize what the next thing's going to be? They'll come for powder for the guns, so's to have it all ready for the gun-crews when the fun begins at dawn! Listen! Here they are already!”

A thundering had started on the great teak door below—a thundering that echoed through the dome like the reverberations of an earthquake. It was punctuated by the screams of women. The prisoners changed their attitude, and eyed Brown and the Rajput with an air of truculence again.

“They'll be up this causeway in a minute, sahib! Listen. There! They've seen the dead bodies that you tossed over. Better it had been to keep them up here for a while.”

“Never mind! We can hold this causeway until morning! Men! Take close order. Line up at the causeway-entrance. Kneel. Prepare for volley-firing. Now, let 'em come!”

“I am for making an immediate escape, sahib!”

“Go ahead!” said Brown, almost dreamily.

He seemed to be thinking hard on some other subject as he spoke.

“Sahib, one of the women there—she who is maid to the other two—asked me where Bill Brown might be! She swore to me that she had recognized his voice when the trapdoor opened up above her. Are you not Bill Brown?”

“Yes, I'm William Brown!”

“Her name, she says, is Emmett!”

“You don't surprise me, Juggut Khan! I thought I had recognized her voice. It seemed strangely familiar. Well—here come the rebels up the causeway. See? They're at the bottom now with lanterns! Ready, men!”

There came the answering click of breech-bolts, and a little rustling as each man eased his position, and laid his elbow on his knee.

“Can you find your way out through the way we came, Juggut Khan?”

“Of course I can!”

“Are all the women on the floor?”

“Three women and the child.”

“Can you close the trap-door again?”

“Surely! It is only opening it that is difficult.”

“Then close it before you go. I've got a reason! Send one of my men up here with a lantern—one of those that are burning in the magazine. I want to signal.”

“Very well, sahib!”

“Then take the women, with four of my men to help them walk, and get out as quickly as you can by the way we all came in. Wait for the rest of my men when you reach the opening in the outer wall, and when they reach you allot two men to carry each woman, and run—the whole lot of you—for the army over yonder. One of the women will object. She will want to see me first. Use force, if necessary!”

“Are you, then, not coming, sahib?”

“I have another plan. Here they come! Hurry now, be off with the women! Volley-firing—ready—present!”

Pattering footsteps sounded on the causeway, and a little crowd of nearly doubled figures came up it at a run.

“Fire!”

The volley took the rebels absolutely by surprise, and no man could miss his mark at that short range. Five of the rebels fell back headlong, and the rest, who followed up the causeway, turned on their heels and ran.

“'Bout turn!” Brown shouted suddenly. “Use the steel, men! Use the steel!”

His own sword was flashing, and lunging as he spoke, and he had already checked a sudden rush by the prisoners.

They had thought the moment favorable for joining in the scrimmage from the rear.

“All right! That'll do them! I'll attend to 'em now!”

A man came running up with the lantern Brown had asked for, and Brown took it and began waving it above his head.

“They must have heard that volley!” he muttered to himself. “Ah! There's the answer!”

A red light began to dance over in the British camp, moving up and down and sidewise in sudden little jerks. Brown read the jerks, as he could never have read writing, and a moment later he answered them.

“Now, down below, the lot of you! Give me your rifle, you. I'll need it.”

“Not coming, sir.”

“Not yet. There's something else yet, and I can do it best. Besides, some one has got to guard the causeway still. There might be a rush again at any minute. Listen now. Obey Juggut Khan implicitly as soon as you get down. His orders are my orders. Understand? Very well, then. And you without a weapon, your job is to shut the door that you leave the magazine by tight from the outside—d'you understand me? Call up when you're all through the door, and then shut it tight!”

“But, how'll you get out, sir?”

“That's my business. One minute, though. Here they come again. Get ready to fire another volley!”

The mutineers made another and a more determined rush up the causeway, coming up it more than twenty strong, and at the double. Brown let one volley loose in the midst of them, then led his men at the charge down on them and drove them over the edge of the causeway by dint of sheer impact and cold steel. Not one of them reached the ground alive, and in the darkness it must have been impossible for the mutineers below to divine how many were the granary's defenders.

“That'll keep 'em quiet for a while, I'll wager! Now, quick, you men! Get down below, and follow Juggut Khan, and don't forget to shut the door tight on you. These prisoners here are going to follow you—they may as well go down with you for that matter. No! that won't do. They could open the door below, couldn't they? They'll have to stay up here. Got any rope? Then bind them, somebody. Bind their hands and feet. Now, off with you!”

Brown spent the next few minutes signaling with the lantern, and reading answering flashes that zig-zagged in the velvet blackness of the British lines. Then, as a voice boomed up through the granary, “All's well, sir! I'm just about to shut the door!” he fixed his eyes on the fakir, and laughed at him.

“You and I are going to turn in our accounts of how we've worked out this 'Hookum hai' business, my friend!” he told him. “You've given orders, and I've obeyed orders! We've both accounted for a death or two, and we've both accepted responsibility. We're going to know in less than five minutes from now which of us two was justified. There's one thing I know, though, without asking. There's one person, and she a woman, who'll weep for me. Will anybody weep for you, I wonder?”

A lantern waved wildly from the British camp, and Brown seized his own lantern and signaled an answer.

“See that? That's to say, you glassy-eyed horror you, that our mutual friend Juggut Khan has been seen emerging like a rat from a hole in the wall. I'll give him and his party one more minute to get clear. Then there's going to be a holocaust, my friend!”

He cocked his rifle, and examined the breech-bolt and the foresight carefully. The fakir shuddered, evidently thinking that the charge was intended for himself.

“No! It won't be that way. I know a better! I'm taking a leaf from your book and doing harm by wholesale!”

Brown leaned down into the opening of the dome, and brought the rifle to his shoulder. There was a chorus of yells from the prisoners, and a noise like a wounded horse's scream from the fakir. The rest were bound, but the fakir rose and writhed toward him on his heels, with his sound arm stretched up in an attitude of despair beside the withered one.

A chorus of bugles burst out from the British camp, and a volley ripped through the blackness.

“All right! Here goes!” said Brown. And he aimed down into the shadowy powder-magazine, and pulled the trigger.

Ten minutes later, an army three thousand and five hundred strong marched in through the gap made in the outer wall by a granary that had spread itself through—and not over—what was in its way. There were seventeen tons of powder that responded to the invitation of Brown's bullet.