The Hosts of the Lord Part 34

So it was Erda who recalled him to the wider issue. "What are you going to do, if Dr. Dillon doesn't hear?"

She had to raise her voice a little, for something--either coming wind or far-distant thunder--had brought a curious, faint reverberation to the air.

It seemed to come from all quarters, scarcely distinguishable, yet unmistakable, like the roll of a half-m.u.f.fled drum, or a deep organ note quivering into silence.

The darkness all about them grew thicker and thicker. Lance, close beside her in that red lamp circle, showed as if seen through gauze.

How unreal it all was! Herself, most of all, in a mess jacket, and, of course--but this thought came second--her wedding dress! And then it struck her that she, herself, was more unreal than anything else. To be there at dead of night, feeling no fear, only a sort of savage interest--

"But if he doesn't hear," she persisted, "you will have to go down the river and warn him."

He nodded. And yet his thought went first to the fact that, if he had to do this, if Roshan Khan had to be left in charge of the relief, it would be still more awkward for Vincent Dering.

_Tring-a-tring-tring!_

The answering tinkle brought a little breath of joy to them both; but Erda felt inclined to stamp her feet at the slow precision with which Lance--who had to remember each equivalent sign--spelt out his message.

He could not be quicker, of course, and yet surely he might! She longed to s.n.a.t.c.h at the handles herself, though she could not signal at all.

"There, that's done!" she cried, as a continuous short rattle followed from the other end, which Lance translated into--"_All right, await you_." "Now! what is to be done next?"

"Roshan Khan--he'll get the men together," answered Lance, already on his way to the wicket in the gate. To his surprise, it was closed. He knocked, no answer came. Erda, holding the lamp, looked at him startled.

"Sentry!" he called. "Sentry! Open the door! _Miracle!_'"

It was the pa.s.sword for the night, given by Captain Dering in contemptuous memory of the day; but it produced no result. The wicket remained obstinately closed.

"They've locked us in!" whispered Erda; the lowering of her voice being due to a swift instinct that the less fuss made the better; the less chance of interruption.

Lance bent his ear to the keyhole to listen. Those dull, m.u.f.fled reverberations--either distant thunder, or faint, ineffective explosions of electricity close at hand--were louder now; but he could hear no sound above them. He shook his head.

Erda had the lamp on the ground in a second, and was beside it, her red-gold hair in the dust, as she peered through a three-inch iron grating between the iron-rimmed door and the iron lintel.

When she rose up her face was like the iron also.

"They've trapped us!" she whispered. "There is a sentry outside--I saw his feet. Come away, and let us settle what to do. And say something, something angry--you know what I mean."

"d.a.m.n that brute!" said Lance, cordially, in a loud voice, "where the deuce has the sentry gone to? I'll have it out with him to-morrow, the infernal--"

Erda, ahead with the lamp, turned to look back, and put her finger on her lips reproachfully. "That's quite enough," she said; but she said it with a smile. That vigorous delight in action which some women feel was making her blood race through her veins.

"Now what's to be done?" she said swiftly, as she put the lamp down on the mess table again. "Let's think hard."

The gate was closed against interference with--with--_something!_

That was evident. Proof positive, therefore, that Am-ma's tale was true.

So it followed that the most urgent need for help was at the gaol.

But how to reach it, and with whom?

Lance's thoughts turned instantly to Roshan Khan. Was he--could he be in the plot? Surely not. Yet with or without his knowledge, the outer court was in the hands of rebels who thought their English officers were caught like rats in a trap; for, of course, they did not know Dering was absent.

And so it was. He and his pioneers--twenty or thereabouts--were in a trap. What could they do to get out of it? Their arms, scaling ladders, everything, were in the outside courtyard. What would be the use, either, of trying to force the door? Mere waste of time. The thing required was to prevent those fifteen hundred men with a criminal past being let loose on Eshwara, let loose--as men like them had been in the Mutiny--to give a lead over.

And that--how was that to be done?

He looked across to Erda, and took sudden comfort in the quick intelligence of her face.

"You had better take my place with Am-ma," she said sharply. "Go down stream to the spit, cut across by the mission house, and chance getting over to the police camp."

He had thought of this before. The extra police, with their two officers, who had come over to see the festival through peacefully, were encamped above the boat-bridge and though, of course, most of the men would be scattered on duty through the town, even some help would be better than none. Yet how to leave Erda, not alone even, but with twenty men whose loyalty would depend largely--as it always did--on action, on their having someone to fight?

"But you," he began--

"I'll stay here. They won't try to come in--yet a while. I am not afraid of being alone."

"I wouldn't mind your being alone," he put in, "but my Sikhs--

"Your Sikhs," she echoed. "Are they here? Then why--?"

"They have no arms--I could find some, perhaps--"

--His words--both their words--jostled each other in sheer haste.

"Yes! then why don't you call them?"--

"How can I use them--trapped like a rat. They--they might be worse than useless, without something to do--without a lead over--don't you see?--and there is nothing--"

--"Nothing!" she echoed, almost savagely, as she clasped and unclasped her hands, dragging the fingers through each other, in sheer straining after some thought on which to clutch, in cruel whipping and spurring of her wits against that inaction.

Nothing! Nothing! The word seemed to fill the world.

Nothing in earth or air or fire or--

"Stay!" she cried, with a gasp. "The raft! The raft! Am-ma shall fetch it--it must be close by, now. There will be room. It can float down to opposite the gaol."

He stared at her as she stood in her white, and scarlet, and gold.

"By Jove!" he said softly "by Jove, you've got it!"

The next instant he was off to rouse his men, and she was on the bottom step giving Am-ma his orders, short, sharp, clear.

But when Lance came back again to look out what arms and ammunition he could lay hands on, he found her, in his room, sorting cartridges as if she had done it all her life; and her face turned to him all aglow and splendid.

"We shall manage it! Am-ma's gone. He didn't want to, but I told him I'd kill the baby if he didn't. I suppose it was wrong,"--though her woman's tongue sought speech, her woman's hands stuck to their work--"but I couldn't help it. I felt so savage."

"You are very brave," he said simply.

"Brave!" she echoed. "Why not? People talk as if women always had to try and not be afraid; but we are not all like that. Some of us want to fight. I do, always."