Part 34 (1/2)

Helpless!

The masters were helpless. Past two o'clock and not a blow in revenge.

Helpless! The word made cowards brave, and brave folk cowards. And many who had spent the long hours in peeping from their closed doors at each fresh clatter in the street, hoping it was the master, looked at each other with startled eyes.

Helpless! Helpless!

The echo of the thought reached the main-guard, still in touch with the outside world, whence, as the day dragged by, fresh tidings of danger drifted down from the Ridge, where men, women, and children lay huddled helplessly in the Flagstaff Tower, watching the white streak of road. It seems like a bad dream, that hopeless, paralyzing strain of the eyes for a cloud of dust.

But the echo won no way into the magazine, for the simple reason that it knew it was not hopeless. It could hold its own.

”Shoot that man Kureem Buksh, please, Forrest, if he comes bothering round the gate again. He is really very annoying. I have told him several times to keep back; so it is no use his trying to give information to the people outside.”

For the Head-of-the-nine was very courteous. ”Scaling ladders?” he echoed, when a native superintendent told him that the princes, finding him obdurate, had gone to send some down from the Palace. ”Oh!

by all means let them scale if they like.”

Some of the Eight, hearing the reply, smiled grimly. By all means let the flies walk into the parlor; for if that straight streak of road was really going to remain empty, the fuller the four square walls round the lemon bush could be, the better.

”That's them, sir,” said one of the Eight cheerfully, as a grating noise rose above the hum outside. ”That's the grapnels.” And as he turned to his particular gun of the ten, he told himself that he would nick the first head or two with his rifle and keep the grape for the bunches. So he smiled at his own little joke and waited. All the Nine waited, each to a gun, and of course there was one gun over, but, as the head of them had said, that could not be helped. And so the rifle-triggers clicked, and the stocks came up to the shoulders; and then?--then there was a sort of laugh, and someone said under his breath, ”Well, I'm blowed!” And his mind went back to the streets of London, and he wondered how many years it was since he had seen a lamplighter. For up ropes and poles, on roofs and outhouses, somehow, clinging like limpets, running like squirrels along the top of the wall, upsetting the besiegers, monopolizing the ladders, was a rush, not of attack but of escape! Let what fool who liked scale the wall and come into the parlor of the Nine, those who knew the secret of the lemon-bush were off. No safety there beside the Nine! No life-insurance possible while that lay ready to their hand!

Would he ever see a lamplighter again? The trivial thought was with the bearded man who stood by his gun, the real self in him, hidden behind the reserve of courage, asking other questions too, as he waited for the upward rush of fugitives to change into a downward rush of foes worthy of good powder and shot.

It came at last--and the grape came too, mowing the intruders down in bunches. And these were no mere rabble of the city. They were the pick of the trained mutineers swarming over the wall to stand on the outhouse roofs and fire at the Nine; and so, pressed in gradually from behind, coming nearer and nearer, dropping to the ground in solid ranks, firing in platoons; so by degrees hemming in the Nine, hemming in the lemon-bush.

But the Nine were busy with the guns. They had to be served quickly, and that left no time for thought. Then the smoke, and the flashes, and the yells, and the curses, filled up the rest of the world for the present.

”This is the last round, I'm afraid, sir; we shan't have time for another,” said a warning voice from the Nine, and the Head of them looked round quietly. Not more than forty yards now from the guns; barely time, certainly, unless they had had that other man! So he nodded. And the last round pealed out as recklessly, as defiantly, as if there had been a hundred to follow--and a hundred thousand--a hundred million. But one of the gunners threw down his fuse ere his gun recoiled, and ran in lightly toward the lemon-tree, so as to be ready for the favor he had begged.

”We're about full up, sir,” came the warning voice again, as the rest of the Nine fell back amid a desultory rattle of small arms. The tinkle of the last church bell, as it were, warning folk to hurry up--a last invitation to walk into the parlor of the Nine.

”We're about full up, sir,” came that one voice.

”Wait half a second,” came another, and the Head-of-the-nine ran lightly to that river bastion for a last look down the white streak for that cloud of dust.

How sunny it was! How clear! How still! that world beyond the smoke, beyond the flashes, beyond the deafening yells and curses. He gave one look at it, one short look--only one--then turned to face his own world, the world he had to keep. Full up indeed! No pyrotechnist could hope for better audience in so small a place.

”Now, if you please!”

Someone in the thick of the smoke and the flashes heard the yells and curses and raised his cap--a last salute, as it were, to the school and schoolmaster. A final dismissal to the scholars--a thousand of them or so--about to finish their lesson of what men can do to hold their own. And someone else, standing beside the lemon-bush, bent over that faithful black streak, then ran for dear life from the hissing of that snake of fire flas.h.i.+ng to the powder magazine.

A faint sob, a whispering gasp of horror, came from the thousand and odd; but above it came a roar, a rush, a rending. A little puff of white smoke went skyward first, and then slowly, majestically, a great cloud of rose-red dust grew above the ruins, to hang--a corona glittering in the slant sunbeams--over the school, the schoolmasters, and the scholars.

It hung there for hours. To those who know the story it seems to hang there still--a b.l.o.o.d.y pall for the many; for the Nine, a crown indeed.

CHAPTER V.

SUNSET.

”What's that?”

The question sprung to every lip; yet all knew the answer. The magazine had saved itself.