MANNERING’S MEN
BY MARJORIE L. C. PICKTHALL
IN that town,” said Blake to himself, peering cautiously through the scrub, “is Mannering’s grave, and the wreck of a brave man’s life-work. Oh, Sergeant, if those two beggarly Nyam-Nyams try to run away; deal with them straightly. At moonset we will go down.”
“O sons of Eblis,” murmured the Haussa sergeant with a grin, “scum of the market-place, little frogs of the mud-puddles of Wakonda, in that town is good soured milk, much grain, and chickens and goats as many as the prayers of the prophet. At moonset we will go down.”
The command gurgled pleasantly to itself and lay closer. Blake crawled nearer Macartney, who was raking the silver-patched blackness with a pair of night-glasses wrapped in dark cloth.
“I can make out a tin roof,” whispered Macartney at last; “that will be the roof of the residency.”
“Where Mannering was speared on his own door-step,” said Jim Blake, taking the glasses. “Dead, down and dead, wiped out, an absolute failure, Mannering. I can’t get over that, you know. He was such a keen old beggar, so wrapped up in his work. He simply spent himself on this beastly country. And he cleared out Wakonda, as far as mortal eye can see, on purpose to make room for seven other devils worse than the late king.”
“Couldn’t be,” put in Macartney.
“It’s not being speared that’s the worst part of it,” persisted Blake; “we all come to that sooner or later. It’s having absolutely nothing to show for his life or his death. Nothing even for the next man to build on. It’s that,” he continued, shivering as the dawn chill blew up the valley, “which I fancy must worry old Mannering—still.”
“What you need is chlorodyne,” whispered Macartney, indignantly.
They lay silent in the dank, upland grass, and the dew beaded and dripped on the thorns overhead. The command hunted for prickles in its feet, tightened belts, and babbled softly of stewed fowl.
From immense spaces, as spun out and thin as a thread, came the hunting-cry of a lion. The Haussa sergeant crept up and touched Blake’s foot.
“The moon sets, O Effendi, and it is not yet the dawn.”
Blake rose to his feet and looked at the sky. “We be ready,” he said.
The command moved as one man, eyes glinting whitely under the tarbooshes. The last few days had been hungry ones. Below in the valley was good food; it was only to fight a little, and all would be full. “Ya Illah, brethren, let us go down.”
They went down. Blake was no tactician, and his plan in such cases was simple. You took the main gate, held it, and swept the obstructionists out of the other gates or over the mud walls, broom fashion. He had worked with his present command for a year, and they followed him like a foot-ball team. The sergeant at his elbow presently touched his sleeve.
“There is made ground here.”
“Made ground?”
“Yes. The road built by Mannering Bimbashi.”
Already the road built by Mannering for the grain dealers and spice merchants was no more than a track in the undergrowth, and the grass swept to the thigh. Their way dipped sharply, and a river valley swirling in mist took them like shadows. Blake felt under his feet the rotten piles of a bridge, and a rifle clanged against rusted iron.
“I think these cattle of Wakonda have the alarm,” said the sergeant as they grunted up the opposite slope.
“Why?”
“There was a watchman at the bridge end; we should have crossed by the ford farther down. But these Wakondai cannot fight, and all is as Allah wills. O Ibrahim, son of Suleiman, keep thy rifle dry and remember to get under the walls.”
The town was clattering like a frightened hen-roost when a company of shadows flitted through the fog, and flung themselves under the walls and against the main gate. Five minutes of noisy, scrambling, hit-or-miss fighting followed, and they were inside, with their hardest work before them. Their fire had driven back the defenders, but they themselves had for the moment no cover. Presently the slugs began to flop on the walls behind them, and two men fell. Blake felt a stinging blow on the knee, and went down on all fours. He rose, laughing rather shakily into Macartney’s scared face.
“A spent bullet,” he cried in the din; “can’t put my foot to the ground. Clear those houses, old man; I’ll hold the gate.”
Macartney nodded and was gone, his men after him. Blake and his handful took cover behind a mud buttress and a dead camel, and prepared to hold the gate. It was only then that Blake saw the sergeant.
“Why art thou here?”
“I stay with thee, O Effendi. Besides,”—he sniffed wistfully,—“in that house they have been cooking good mutton. I would not go too far.”
The din and turmoil of the narrow ways rose and fell like the froth of a sea. The roofs were beginning to burn in a dozen places as Macartney, in rough-and-ready fashion, cleared out the slug-shooters. The red light of burning thatch danced in the fog and the thinning dark, and by this light Blake saw a score of white-wrapped figures leap from the reek and rush for the gate, shouting as they came.
“Steady, men, steady!”
“By the prophet’s beard!” cried the Haussa sergeant, flinging himself flat behind the camel, “these be no Wakondai, but ghazis of the far desert. Shoot well, O my children!”
It was all happening with the jerky rapidity of a cinematograph film, and the noise passed hearing. The command, inspired with visions of buttered mutton, loaded and fired as one man. Two, three close-range volleys swept between the walls, and the alley was blotched with whitish bundles that were the bodies of the desert men. But the others came on, and suddenly Blake was on his feet in the shadow of the gate, fighting hand to hand for his life.
“Stand firm, O my children!”
The sergeant’s voice echoed his. He was the center of an indescribable confusion. Under the gate the smoke of the volleys hung heavily. Through this broke first one fierce face, then another, the gleam of arms, the surge and retreat of the attack, the blows and outcries of men. Ibrahim, the son of Suleiman, fell across Blake’s feet and coughed his life out in ten seconds. Another of his best men was down, speared through the heart. And then, as suddenly as they had come, the desert men retreated to the shelter of the huts, and Blake, looking up, saw that it was day.
“They are gone,” said the sergeant, looking at the dead, “but they will come again. O Effendi, this is no good place.”
“I should have kept more men,” Blake was thinking clearly and rapidly. “If Mac doesn’t come back inside ten minutes, it will be too late for us, and he’ll have to cut his way out.”
A moment’s dreamlike quiet had succeeded the dreamlike noise. Over his head the sky was clear and growing gold, barred with the black flocks of wild-fowl that flew to their feeding-grounds in the valley. The sun rose with the hard flash of metal, and the blink of metal answered from the ruined roof of Mannering’s house. Blake’s breath drew cold. Was he also to die uselessly, wastefully, his work unfinished, under the spears of Wakonda? “Steady, men, steady, and fire slowly! It is ours to hold the gate.”
The Haussa sergeant leaped to his feet.
“They come again! O jackals of the sands, we men are ready—”
“Silence—and lie down!”
Again with that dreaming sense of unreality Blake watched the rush of fluttering figures up the alley. The men were loading and firing as fast as they could, but the rush was scarcely checked. Someone behind him began to croon a wild death-song. A thrown spear flickered before his eyes and struck his head a glancing blow. He looked at it curiously as it clattered down on his boots, and wondered why his hands felt so weak, and why the earth reeled under his feet like an out-rolled ribbon. Then everything was lost in a warm, red mist through which savage faces seemed to peer and yell. Blinded and dizzy, he braced himself for the shock of the charge, the while some voice in his head was buzzing busily, “You will go down as Mannering did, a failure, a failure—”
An utter pity for Mannering filled him. He leaned back against the wall, leveled his revolver as well as he could on his knee, and waited—as Mannering had waited.
“Ya Illah!” shouted the sergeant hoarsely. “Who be these?”
Blake cleared the blood from his eyes and looked. The attack had wavered and had turned upon itself, for a compact little force of ten had filed out from behind a house and fallen upon the desert men in the rear. They were in all degrees of dress and undress. Their leader was very tall and very thin, with a great bush of hair, upon which he wore the remains of a tarboosh, and he had an empty bandoleer round his neck. He and his men were armed variously, ranging from a damaged Martini to an inlaid jezail from the North. These weapons they were using variously, but effectively, in disciplined silence. So much Blake saw in a photographic flash of amazement. Then strength came back to him, and he and the sergeant flung themselves across the dead camel.
“Come on, you black rascals!” shouted Blake, staggering as he stood.
“Follow me, sons of darkness!” yelled the sergeant.
The men obeyed with howls. Caught between two forces, the enemy, fighting like wolves, were driven down alleys, cut down in corners, scattered and broken. In five minutes Blake’s men and their unknown allies were staring and panting under the gate, their work done.
“Now,” suggested the Haussa, patting Blake all over with his delicate black hands in a search for fatal injuries—“now I go and picket that street whence came the good cooking smell.”
“Wait!” commanded Blake. He looked at the gate, at the dead lying in the light and the black shadow. Even now the gold had scarcely gone from the faint, hot blue of the sky; scattered bands of birds still flew across it, and the high air seemed stirred with a multitude of wings. He looked at the leader of the allies, who was standing on one leg and grinning anxiously.
“Who art thou?”
The man drew his dusty heels together and carefully saluted.
“We be the men of Mannering Bimbashi.”
“Of Mannering Bimbashi?”
“Yea, master. I was a policeman of the force wherewith he policed this town. He said to us, ‘Go here,’ or ‘Go there,’ and we went and punished the evil-doers. Twice and thrice have I fought under Mannering Bimbashi.” He gazed contemptuously at his command. “These others are also of his force, or of his house—warriors, as I am, or gardeners and herders of goats; but all Mannering Bimbashi’s men.”
“Go on,” said Blake, quietly.
“Mannering Bimbashi was slain, and many of his folk; but I was left. I remembered. I gathered these others together, and bade them remember also. Mannering Bimbashi was dead, but we were not freed from our service. We had to live. I was a seller of rock-salt in the market-place, and these others did work after their kind. Sometimes we met and spoke together. None knew us for his men, and his name might not be upon our lips; but we laid our hands upon our mouths—so—and then we remembered.”
“Go on.”
“There is no more. It is very difficult to remember. But I knew the English would come in the footsteps of our bimbashi, and I held these of his together in readiness, as thou hast seen. But our bimbashi—on whom be peace!—has been dead a long time, and now we would take service with thee, O master.”
“Thou hast done well.” Blake’s voice shook a little as he thought how well. “Thou hast done very well. But why?”
The man was very ugly and very black, but all the poetry and sadness of the Arab were in his face as he answered:
“We were his men. We loved him.”
Blake’s eyes were dim as he looked across at the ruined house. There Mannering had gone down, and his hope, his work, his deeds—all these had gone down with him into dust.
“But even here there was love left,” said Blake aloud, with a kind of wonder; “even here there was love left!”
Then he took his men and Mannering’s and went to join Macartney in the ordering of Wakonda.