John Buchan - The Half Hearted

J >> John Buchan >> The Half Hearted

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

CHAPTER XXXI

EVENTS SOUTH OF THE BORDER

Thwaite was finishing a solitary dinner and attempting to find interest
in a novel when his butler came with news that the telephone bell was
ringing in the gun-room. Thwaite, being tired and cross, told him to
answer it himself, expecting some frivolous message about supplies. The
man returned in a little with word that he could not understand it.
Then Thwaite arose, blessing him, and went to see. The telegraph office
proper was on the other side of the river, on the edge of the native
town, but a telephone had been established to the garrison.

Thwaite's first impulse was to suspect a gigantic hoax. A scared native
clerk was trying to tell him a most appalling tale. George had not
spared energy in his message, and the Oriental imagination as a medium
had considerably increased it. The telegrams came in a confused order,
hard to piece together, but two facts seemed to stand out from the
confusion. One was that there was an unknown pass in the hills beyond
Nazri through which danger was expected at any moment that night; the
other was that treason was suspected throughout the whole north. Then
came the name of Marker, which gave Thwaite acute uneasiness. Finally
came George's two words of advice--keep strict watch on the native town
and hold Bardur in readiness for a siege; and wire the same directions
to Yasin, Gilgit, Chitral, Chilas, and throughout Kashmir and the
Punjab. Above all, wire to the chief places on the new Indus Valley
railway, for in case of success in Bardur, the railway would be the
first object of the invader.

Thwaite put down the ear-trumpet, his face very white and perspiring.
He looked at his watch; it was just on nine o'clock. The moon had
arisen and the telegram said "moonrise." He could not doubt the
genuineness of the message when he had heard at the end the names
Winterham and Haystoun. Already Marker might be through the pass, and
little the Khautmi people could do against him. He must be checked at
Bardur, though it cost every life in the garrison. Four hours' delay
would arm the north to adequate resistance.

He telephoned to the telegraph office to shut and lock the doors and
admit no one till word came from him. Then he summoned his Sikh
orderly, his English servant, and the native officers of the garrison.
He had one detachment of Imperial Service troops officered by Punjabis,
and a certain force of Kashmir Sepoys who made ineffective policemen,
and as soldiers were worse than useless. And with them he had to defend
the valley, and hold the native town, which might give trouble on his
flank. This was the most vexatious part of the business. If Marker had
organized the thing, then nothing could be unexpected, and treachery was
sure to be thick around them.

The men came, saluted, and waited in silence. Thwaite sat down at a
table and pulled a sheaf of telegraph forms to pieces. First he wired
to Ladcock at Gilgit, beseeching reinforcements. From Bardur to the
south there is only one choice of ways--by Yasin and Yagistan to the
Indus Valley, or by Gilgit and South Kashmir. Once beyond Gilgit there
was small hope of checking an advance, but in case the shorter way to
the Indus by the Astor Valley was tried there might be hope of a delay.
So he besought Ladcock to post men on the Mazeno Pass if the time was
given him. Then he sent a like message to Yasin, though on the high
passes and the unsettled country there was small chance of the wires
remaining uncut. A force in Yasin might take on the flank any invasion
from Afghanistan and in any case command the Chitral district. Then
came a series of frantic wires at random--to Rawal Pindi, to the Punjabi
centres, to South Kashmir. He had small confidence in these messages.
If the local risings were serious, as he believed them to be, they would
be too late, and in any case they were beyond the country where
strategical points were of advantage against an invader. There remained
the stations on the Indus Valley railway, which must be
the earliest point of attack. The terminus at Boonji was held by a
certain Jackson, a wise man who inspired terror in a mixed force of
irregulars, Afridis, Pathans, Punjabis, Swats, and a dozen other
varieties of tribesmen. To him he sent the most lengthy and urgent
messages, for he held the key of a great telegraphic system with which
he might awake Abbotabad and the Punjab. Then, perspiring with heat and
anxiety, he gave the bundle into the hands of his English servant, and
told off an officer and twenty men to hold the telegraph office. A blue
light was to be lit in the window if the native town should prove
troublesome and reinforcements be needed.

Soon the force of the garrison was assembled in the yard, all but a few
who had been sent on messages to the more isolated houses of the English
residents. Thwaite addressed them briefly: "Men, there's the devil's
own sweet row up the north, and it's moving down to us. This very night
we may have to fight. And, remember, it's not the old game with the
hillmen, but an army of white men, servants of the Tsar, come to fight
the servants of the Empress. Therefore, it is your duty to kill them
all like locusts, else they will swallow up you and your cattle and your
wives and your children, and, speaking generally, the whole bally show.
We may be killed, but if we keep them back even for a little God will
bless us. So be steady at your posts."

The garrison was soon dispersed, the guns in readiness, pointing up the
valley. It was ten o'clock by Thwaite's watch ere the last click of the
loaders told that Bardur was awaiting an enemy. The town behind was in
an uproar, men clamouring at the gates, and seeking passports to flee to
the south. Chinese and Turcoman traders from Leh and Lhassa, Yarkand
and Bokhara, with scared faces, were getting their goods together and
invoking their mysterious gods. Logan, who had returned from Gilgit
that very day, rode breathless into the yard, clamouring for Thwaite.
He received the tale in half a dozen sentences, whistled, and turned to
go, for he had his own work to do. One question he asked:

"Who sent the telegrams?"

"Haystoun and Winterham."

"Then they're alone at Nazri?"

"Except for the Khautmi men."

"Will they try to hold it?"

"I should think so. They're all sportsmen. Gad, there won't be a soul
left alive."

Logan galloped off with a long face. It would be a great ending, but
what a waste of heroic stuff! And as he remembered Lewis's frank
good-fellowship he shut his lips, as if in pain.

The telegrams were sent, and reply messages began to pour in, which kept
one man at the end of the telephone. About half-past ten a blue light
burned in the window across the river. There seemed something to do in
the native town of narrow streets and evil-smelling lanes, for the sound
of shouting and desultory firing rose above the stir of the fort. The
telegraph office abutted on the far end of the bridge, and Thwaite had
taken the precaution of bidding the native officer he had sent across
keep his men posted around the end of the passage. Now he himself took
thirty men, for the native town was the most dangerous point he had to
fear. The wires must not be cut till the last moment, and, as they
passed over the bridge and then through the English quarter, there was
small danger if the office was held. He found, as he expected, that the
place was being maintained against considerable odds. A huge mixed
crowd, drawn in the main from the navvies who had been employed on the
new road, armed with knives and a few rifles, and encouraged by certain
wild, dancing figures which had the look of priests, was surging around
the gate. The fighting stuff was Afridi or Chitrali, but there was
abundance of yelling from this rabble of fakirs and beggars who
accompanied them. Order there was none, and it was clear to Thwaite
that this rising had been arranged for but not organized. His men had
small difficulty in forcing a way to the office, where they served to
complete the cordon of defence and the garrison of the bridge-end. Two
men had been killed and some half-dozen of the rioters. He pushed into
the building, and found a terrified Kashmir clerk sternly watched by his
servant and the Sikh orderly. The man, with tears streaming down his
face, was attempting to read the messages which the wires brought.

Thwaite picked up and read the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering
characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit,
saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and
that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the
trouble in time he would try and hold the Mazeno Pass, and meanwhile he
had done his best to wake the Punjab. As the wires would be probably
cut within the next hour there would be no more communications, but he
besought Thwaite to keep the invader in the passes, as the whole south
country was a magazine waiting for a spark to explode. The message ran
in short violent words, and Thwaite had a vision of Ladcock, short,
ruddy, and utterly out of temper, stirred up from his easy life to hold
a frontier.

There was no word from Yasin, as indeed he had expected, for the tribes
on the highlands about Hunza and Punial were the most disaffected on the
Border, and doubtless the first to be tampered with. Probably his own
message had never gone, and he could only pray that the men there might
by the grace of God have eyes in their heads to read the signs of the
times. There was a brief word from Jackson at Boonji. There attacks
had been made on the terminus and the engine-sheds since sunset, which
his men had luckily had time to repulse. A large amount of
rolling-stock was lying there, as five freight trains had brought up
material for the new bridge the day before. Of this the enemy had
probably had word. Anyhow, he hoped to quiet all local disturbances,
and he would undertake to see that every station on the line was warned.
He would receive reinforcements from Abbotabad by the afternoon of the
next day; if Bardur and Gilgit, or Yasin as it might be, could delay the
attack till then everything might be safe--unless, indeed, the whole
nexus of hill-tribes rose as one man. In which case there would be the
devil to pay, and he had no advice to give.

Thwaite read and laughed grimly. It was not a question of a day's
delay, but of an hour's, and the hill-tribes, if he judged Marker's
cleverness rightly, would act just as Jackson feared. The business had
begun among the navvies at Bardur and Gilgit and Boonji. In a little
they would have news of real tribal war--Hunzas, Pathans, Chitralis,
Punialis, and Chils, tribes whom England had fought a dozen times before
and knew the mettle of; now would be the time for their innings. Well
supplied with money and arms--this would have been part of Marker's
business--they would be the forerunners of the great army. First savage
war, then scientific annihilation by civilized hands--a sweet prospect
for a peaceful man in the prime of life!

He returned to the fort to find all quiet and in order. It commanded
the north road, but though the eye might weary itself with looking on
the moonlit sandy valley and the opaque blue hills, there was no sight
or sound of men. The stars were burning hard and cold in the vault of
sky, and looking down somewhere on the march of an army. It was now
close on midnight; in five hours dawn would break in the east and the
night of attack would be gone. But death waited between this midnight
hour and the morning. What were Haystoun and the men from Khautmi
doing? Fighting or beyond all fighting? Well, he would soon know. He
was not afraid, but this cursed waiting took the heart out of a man!
And he looked at his watch and found it half-past twelve.

At Yasin there was the most severe fighting. It lasted for three days,
and in effect amounted to a little tribal war. A man called Mackintosh
commanded, and he had the advantage of having regulars with him, Gurkhas
for the most part, who were old campaigners. The place had seemed
unquiet for some days, and certain precautions had been taken, so that
when the rioting broke out at sunset it was easy to get the town under
subjection and prepare for external attack. The Chiling Pass into
Chitral had given trouble of old, but Mackintosh was scarcely prepared
for the systematic assaults of Punialis and Tangiris from the east and
south. Having always been famous as an alarmist he put the right
interpretation on the business, and settled down to what he half hoped,
half feared, might be a great frontier war. The place was strong only
on the north side, and the defence was as much a question of engineering
as of war. His Sepoys toiled gallantly at the incomplete defences,
while the rest fought hand to hand--bayonet against knife, Metford
against Enfield--to cover their labour. He lost many men, but on the
evening of the next day he had the satisfaction of seeing the
fortifications complete, and he awaited a siege with equanimity, as he
was well victualled.

On the second night the enemy again attacked, but the moon was bright,
and they were no match for his sharpshooters. About two in the morning
they fell back, and for the next day it looked as if they proposed to
invest the garrison. But by the third evening they began to melt away,
taking with them such small plunder as they had won. Mackintosh, who
was a man of enterprise, told off a detachment for pursuit, and cursed
bitterly the fate which had broken his ankle with a rifle-bullet.

In the south along the railway the warnings came in good time. At Rawal
Pindi there was some small difficulty with native officials, a large
body of whom seemed to have unaccountably disappeared. This delayed for
some time the sending of a freight-train to Abbotabad, but by and by
substitutes were found, and the works left under guard. The telegram to
Peshawur found things in readiness there, for memories of old trouble
still linger, and people sleep lightly on that frontier. Word came of
native riots in the south, at Lahore and Amritsar, and the line of towns
which mark the way to Delhi. In some places extraordinary accidents
were reported. Certain officers had gone off on holiday and had not
returned; odd and unintelligible commands had come to perplex the minds
of others; whole camps were reported sick where sickness was least
expected. A little rising of certain obscure rivers had broken up an
important highway by destroying all the bridges save the one which
carried the railway. The whole north was on the brink of a sudden
disorganization, but the brink had still to be passed. It lay with its
masters to avert calamity; and its masters, going about with haggard
faces, prayed for daylight and a few hours to prepare.

George had sent his men to Khautmi before he entered the telegraph hut,
and he followed himself in twenty minutes. Somewhere upon the hill-road
he met St. John with a dozen men, who abused him roundly and besought
details.

"Are you sure?" he cried. "For God's sake, say you're mistaken. For,
if you're not, upon my soul it's the last hour for all of us."

George was in little mood for jest. He told Lewis's tale in a few
words.

"A pass beyond Nazri," the man cried. "Why, I was there shooting buck
last week. Up the nullah and over the ridge, and then a cleft at the
top of the next valley? Does he say there's a pass there? Maybe, but
I'll be hanged if an army could get through. If we get there we can
hold it."

"We haven't time. They may be here at any moment. Send men to Forza
and get them to light the fires. Oh, for God's sake, be quick! I've
left Haystoun down there. The obstinate beggar was too tired to move."

Over all the twenty odd miles between Forza and Khautmi there is a chain
of fires which can be used for signals in the Border wars. On this
night Khautmi was to take the west side of the Nazri gully and Forza the
east, and the two quickest runners in the place were sent off to Andover
with the news. He was to come towards them, leaving men at the
different signal-posts in case of scattered assaults, and if he came in
time the two forces would join in holding the Nazri pass. But should
the invader come before, then it fell on the Khautmi men to stand alone.
It was a smooth green hollow in the stony hills, some hundred yards
wide, and at the most they might hope to make a fight of thirty minutes.
St. John and George, with their men, ran down the stony road till the
sweat dripped from their brows, though the night was chilly. Mitchinson
was to follow with the rest and light the fires; meantime, they must get
to Nazri, in case the march should forestall them. St. John was
cursing his ill-luck. Two hours earlier and they might have held the
distant cleft in the hills, and, if they were doomed to perish, have
perished to some purpose. But the holding of the easy Nazri pass was
sheer idle mania, and yet it was the only chance of gaining some paltry
minutes. As for George, he had forgotten his vexatious. His one
anxiety was for Lewis; that he should be in time to have his friend at
his side. And when at last they came down on the pass and saw the
camp-fire blazing fiercely and no trace of the enemy, he experienced a
sense of vast relief. Lewis was making himself comfortable, cool beggar
that he was, and now was probably sleeping. He should be left alone; so
he persuaded St. John that the best point to take their stand on was on
a shoulder of hill beyond the fire. It gave him honest pleasure to
think that at last he had stolen a march on his friend. He should at
least have his sleep in peace before the inevitable end.

He looked at his watch; it was almost half-past eleven.

"Haystoun said they'd be here at midnight," he whispered to his
companion. "We haven't long. When do you suppose Andover will come?"

"Not for an hour and a half at the earliest. Afraid this is going to be
our own private show. Where's Haystoun?"

George nodded back to the fire in the hollow, and the tent beside it.
"There, I expect, sleeping. He's dog-tired, and he always was a very
cool hand in a row. He'll be wakened soon enough, poor chap."

"You're sure he can't tell us anything?"

"Nothing. He told me all. Better let him be." Mitchinson came up with
the rearguard. Living all but alone in the wilds had made him a silent
man compared to whom the taciturn St. John was garrulous. He nodded to
George and sat down.

"How many are we?" George asked.

"Forty-three, counting the three of us. Not enough for a good stand.
Wonder how it'll turn out. Never had to do such a thing before."

St. John, whose soul longed for Maxims, posted his men as best he
could. There was no time to throw up earthworks, but a rough cairn of
stone which stood in the middle of the hollow gave at least a central
rallying-ground. Then they waited, watching the fleecy night vapours
blow across the peaks and straining their ears for the first sound of
men.

George grew impatient. "It can't be more than five miles to the pass.
Shouldn't some of us try to get there? It would make all the
difference."

St. John declined sharply. "We've taken our place and we must stick to
it. We can't afford to straggle. Hullo! it's just on twelve. Thwaite
has had three hours to prepare, and he's bound to have wakened the
south. I fancy the business won't quite come off this time."

Suddenly in the chilly silence there rose something like the faint and
distant sound of rifles. It was no more than the sound of stone
dropping on a rock ledge, for, still and clear and cold though the night
was, the narrowness of the valley and the height of the cliffs dulled
all distant sounds. But each man had the ear of the old hunter, and
waited with head bent forward.

Again the drip-drip; then a scattering noise as when one lets peas fall
on the floor.

"God! That's carbines. Who the devil are they fighting with?"
Mitchinson's eye had lost its lethargy. His scraggy neck was craned
forward, and his grim mouth had relaxed into a grimmer smile.

"It's them, sure enough," said St. John, and spoke something to his
servant.

"I'm going forward," said George. "It may be somebody else making a
stand, and we're bound to help."

"You're bound not to be an ass," said St. John. "Who in the Lord's
name could it be? It may be the Badas polishing off some hereditary
foes, and it may be Marker getting rid of some wandering hillmen. Man,
we're miles beyond the pale. Who's to make a stand but ourselves?"

Again came the patter of little sounds, and then a long calm.

"They're through now," said St. John. "The next thing to listen for is
the sound of their feet. When that comes I pass the word along. We're
all safe for heaven, so keep your minds easy."

But the sound of feet was long in coming. Only the soft night airs, and
at rare intervals an eagle's cry, or the bleat of a doe from the valley
bottom. The first half-hour of waiting was a cruel strain. In such
moments a man's sins rise up large before him. When his future life is
narrowed down to an hour's compass, he sees with cruel distinctness the
follies of his past. A thousand things he had done or left undone
loomed on George's mental horizon. His slackness, his self-indulgence,
his unkindness--he went over the whole innocent tale of his sins. To
the happy man who lives in the open and meets the world with a square
front this forced final hour of introspection has peculiar terrors.
Meantime Lewis was sleeping peacefully in the tent by the still cheerful
fire. Thank God, he was spared this hideous waiting!

About two Andover turned up with fifteen men, hot and desperate. He
listened to St. John's story in silence.

"Thank God, I'm in time. Who found out this? Haystoun? Good man,
Lewis! I wonder who has been firing out there. They can't have been
stopped? It's getting devilish late for them anyhow, and I believe
there's a little hope. It would be too risky to leave this pass, but I
vote we send a scout."

A man was chosen and dispatched. Two hours later he returned to the
mystified watchers at Nazri. He had been on the hill-shoulder and
looked into the cleft. There was no sign of men there, but he had heard
the sound of men, though where he could not tell. Far down the cleft
there was a gleam of fire, but no man near it.

"That's a Bada dodge," said Andover promptly. "Now I wonder if Marker
trusted too much to these gentry, and they have done us the excellent
service of misleading him. They hate us like hell, and they'd sell
their souls any day for a dozen cartridges; so it can't have been done
on purpose. Seems to me there has been a slip in his plans somewhere."

But the sound of voices! The man was questioned closely, and he was
strong on its truth. He was a hillman from the west of the Khyber, and
he swore that he knew the sound of human speech in the hills many miles
off, though he could not distinguish the words.

"In thirty minutes it will be morning," said George. "Lord, such a
night, and Lewis to have missed it all!" His spirits were rising, and he
lit a pipe. The north was safe whatever happened, and, as the inertness
of midnight passed off, he felt satisfaction in any prospect, however
hazardous. He sat down beneath a boulder and smoked, while Andover
talked with the others. They were the frontier soldiers, and this was
their profession; he was the amateur to whom technicalities were
unmeaning.

Suddenly he sprang up and touched St. John on the shoulder. A great
chill seemed to have passed over the world, and on the hill-tops there
was a faint light. Both men looked to the east, and there, beyond the
Forza hills, was the red foreglow spreading over the grey. It was dawn,
and with the dawn came safety. The fires had burned low, and the
vagrant morning winds were beginning to scatter the white ashes. Now
was the hour for bravado, since the time for silence had gone. St.
John gave the word, and it was passed like a roll-call to left and
right, the farthest man shouting it along the ribs of mountain to the
next watch-fire. The air had grown clear and thin, and far off the dim
repetition was heard, which told of sentries at their place, and the
line of posts which rimmed the frontier.

Mitchinson moistened his dry lips and filled his lungs with the cold,
fresh air. "That," he said slowly, "is the morning report of the last
outpost of the Empire, and by the grace of God it's 'All's well.'"

CHAPTER XXXII

THE BLESSING OF GAD

"Gad--a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last."

Lewis peered into the gorge and saw only a thin darkness. The high
walls made pits of shade at the foot, but above there was a misty column
of light which showed the spectres of rock and bush in the nullah
beyond. It was all but dark, and the stars were coming out like the
lights on a sea-wall, hard and cold and gleaming. Just in the throat of
the pass a huge boulder had fallen and left a passage not two yards
wide. Beyond there was a sharp descent of a dozen feet to the gravelled
bottom which fell away in easier stages to the other watershed. Here
was a place made by nature for his plans. With immense pains he rolled
the biggest stones he could move to the passage, so that they were
poised above the slope. He tried the great boulder, too, with his
shoulders, and it seemed to quiver. In the last resort this mass of
rock might be sent crashing down the incline, and by the blessing of God
it should account for its man.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20