Part 35 (1/2)

How could it do otherwise? The decisive answer of the magazine, with its thousand-and-odd good reasons against the belief that the master was helpless, had died away. The refuse and rabble of the city had ceased to wander awestruck among the ruins, murmuring, ”What tyranny is here?”--that pa.s.sive, resigned comment of the weaker brother in India. In the Palace, too, they had recovered the shock of the mean trick of the Nine, who, however, must, thank Heaven, be all dead too.

So as the gate stood open, and the sun streamed through it into the wide courtyard, glinting on the buckles and bayonets, Major Abbott's voice rose quietly. ”Are you ready, Gordon?” The drawbridge was clear of the guns now, clear of everything save the slant shadows.

”All ready, sir,” came the quiet reply.

”Number!” called the Commandant, but a voice at his right hand pleaded swiftly. ”Don't wait for sections, Huzoor! Let us go!” And another at his left whispered, ”For G.o.d's sake, Huzoor! quick; get them out quick!”

Major Abbott hesitated a second, only a second. The voices were the voices of good men and true, whom he could trust. ”Fours about! Quick march!” he corrected, and a sort of sigh of relief ran down the regiment as it swung into position and the feet started rhythmically.

Action at last!--at long last!

”Good-by, old chap,” said someone cheerfully, but Major Abbott did not turn. ”Good-by! Good-by!” came voices all round; steady, quiet voices, as the disciplined tramp echoed on the drawbridge, and a bar of scarlet coats grew on the rise of the white road outside.

”Good-by, Gordon! Good-by!”

The tall figure in its red and gold was under the very arch, s.h.i.+ning, glittering in the sunlight streaming through it. Another step or two and he would have been beyond it. But the time for good-by had come.

The time for which the 38th had been waiting all day. He threw up his arms and fell dead from his horse without a cry, shot through the heart. The next instant the gate was closed, its creaking smothered in the wild, senseless cry ”To kill, to kill, to kill,” in a wild, senseless rattle of musketry. For there was really no hurry; the handful of Englishmen were helpless. Major Abbott and his men might clamor for re-entry at the gate if they chose. They could not get in.

Nor could the remnant of the 74th, deprived of its loyal companions, of the only two men who seemed to have controlled it, do anything. And the 54th were helpless also by their own act; for they had pushed Major Paterson through the gate before it closed.

So there was no one left even to try and stem the tide. No one to check that beast-like cry.

”_Maro! Maro! Maro!_”

But, in truth, it would have been a hopeless task. The game was up; the only chance was flight. And two, foreseeing this for the last hour, had already made good theirs by jumping from an embrasure in the rampart into the ditch, while one, uninjured by the fall, had scrambled up the counter-scarp, and was running like a hare for those same thickets of the Koodsia.

”Come on! Come on!” cried others, seeing their success. And then? And then the cries and piteous screams of women reminded them of something dearer than life, and they ran back under a hail of bullets to that upper room which they had forgotten for the moment. And somehow, despite the cry of kill, despite the whistling bullets, they managed to drag its inmates to the embrasure. But--oh! pathos and bathos of poor humanity! making smiles and tears come together--the women who had stared death in the face all day without a wink, stood terrified before a twenty-feet scramble with a rope of belts and handkerchiefs to help them. It needed a round shot to come whizzing a message of certain death over their heads to give them back a courage which never failed again in the long days of wandering and desperate need which was theirs ere some of them reached safety.

But Kate neither hesitated nor jumped. She had not the chance of doing either. For that longing look of hers through the open gates had tempted her to creep along the wall nearer to them; so that the rush to close them jammed her into a corner against a door, which yielded slightly to her weight. Quick enough to grasp her imminent danger, she stooped instantly to see if the door could be made to yield further.

And that stoop saved her life, by hiding her from view behind the crowd. The next moment she had pushed aside a log which had evidently rolled from some pile within, and slipped sideways into a dark outhouse. She was safe so far. But was it worth it? The impulse to go out again and brave merciful death rose keen, until with a flash, the memory of that escape through the crowd came back to her; she seemed to hear the changing ready voice of the man who held her, to feel his quick instinctive grip on every chance of life.

Chance! There was a spell in the very word. A minute after logs jammed the door again, and even had it been set wide, none would have guessed that a woman, full of courage, ay! and hope, crouched behind the piles of brushwood. So she lay hidden, her strongest emotion, strange to say, being a raging curiosity to know what had become of the others, what was pa.s.sing outside. But she could hear nothing save confused yells, with every now and again a dominant cry of ”_Deen! Deen!_” or ”_Jai Kali ma!_” For faith is one of the two great pa.s.sions which make men militant, The other, s.e.x. But as a rule it has no cry; it fights silently, giving and asking no words--only works.

So fought young Mainwaring, who, with his back to that same wall against which Kate had found him leaning, was using his sword to a better purpose than digging holes in the dust; or rather had adopted a new method of doing the task. He had not tried to escape as the others had done; not from superior courage, but because he never even thought of it. When he was free to choose, how could he think of leaving those devils unpunished, leaving them unchecked to touch her dead body, while he lived? He gave a little faint sob of sheer satisfaction as he felt the first soft resistance, which meant that his sword had cut into flesh and blood; for all his vigorous young life made for death, nothing but death. Was not she dead yonder?

So, after a bit, it seemed to him there was too little of it there--that it came slowly, with his back to the wall and only those who cared to go for him within reach--for the crowd was dense, too dense for loading and firing. Dense with a hustling, horrified wonder, a confused prodding of bayonets. So, without a sound, he charged ahead, hacking, hewing, never pausing, not even making for freedom, but going for the thickest silently.

”_Amuk! Sayia! A-muk!_” The yell that he was mad, possessed, rang hideously as men tumbled over each other in their hurry to escape, their hurry to have at this wild beast, this devil, this horror. And they were right. He was possessed. He was life instinct with death; filled with but one desire--to kill, or to be killed quickly.

”_Saiya! Amuk! Saiya!_--out of his way--out of his way! _Amuk! Saiya!_ Fate is with him! The G.o.ds are with him. _Saiya! Amuk!_”

So, by chance, not method; so by sheer terror as well as hacking and hewing, the tall figure found itself, with but a stagger or two, outside the wooden gates, out on the city road, out among the gardens and the green trees. And then, ”Hip, hip, hurray!” His ringing cheer rose with a sort of laugh in it. For yonder was her house!--her house!

”Hip, hip, hurray!” As he ran, as he had run in races at school, his young face glad, the fingers on the triggers behind him wavered in sheer superst.i.tious funk, and two troopers coming down the road wheeled back as from a mad dog. The scarlet coat with its gold epaulettes went cras.h.i.+ng into a group red-handed with their spoil, out of it impartially into a knot of terrified bystanders, while down the lane left behind it by the hacking and hewing came bullet after bullet; the fingers on the triggers wavered, but some found a billet.

One badly. He stumbled in the dust and his left arm fell oddly. But the right still hacked and hewed as he ran, though the crowd lessened; though it grew thin, too thin for his purpose; or else his sight was failing. But there, to the right, the devils seemed thicker again.

”Hip, hip, hooray!” No! trees. Only trees to hew--a garden--perhaps the garden about her house--then, ”Hip, hip----”

He fell headlong on his face, biting the soft earth in sheer despite as he fell.