CHAPTER XIV.
THE BURST OF THE STORM.
Standing on the parapet of our bastion roof, Edwards and I gazed out into the blackness which preceded dawn. Across the town, we saw presently a pale glimmer in the eastern sky. Day was breaking. We watched the light gradually spreading upwards; then, turning, we looked westward, where the outline of a low range of hills, a little more than a mile away, bounded the view. Each portion of that outline remains engraven on my memory, although, since that day, I have never set eyes on it.
The fitful light appeared to me to be continually altering the shapes of the rounded hill-tops. Want of sleep, I imagined, had upset my powers of vision; for the more I looked the more I became convinced that the outline kept changing. Edwards also had noticed the phenomenon.
"It is an extraordinary thing," said he, "but those hills over there look as if they were moving."
"Just what I was thinking," said I; "I did not like to mention it, because I thought you would say that I had got the jumps."
"I tell you what it is," said Edwards, shading his eyes with both hands, "there are people walking about up there. Look. Do you see them?"
Before I could reply, a bright flash shot out from the hill-side, followed by a volume of smoke and then a loud report; and simultaneously a weird shrieking noise rent the air. We saw the shell fall short of the town by a hundred yards or more, and, exploding on impact with the hard sand, send up a column of dust.
Never did sleeping town receive a ruder awakening; and Edwards and I, rushing down to see what could be done, encountered Ali Khan hastening to meet us.
"What is it that has happened?" he shouted.