“Feel any easier now, old chap?” asked the surgeon, who was striding by the dhoolie.
“Yes, thanks, Whitchurch; much easier,” replied Captain Baird, suppressing a groan as one of the bearers stumbled over a stone.
Contrary to the general opinion expressed at the fort, neither of the two missing men had been killed or captured by the enemy. When Baird had fallen with a bullet in his side, his men had carried him quickly to the shelter of an orchard close at hand, and here they had escaped notice. All around them, however, lurked the Chitralis, on the look-out to cut off any stragglers from the retreating force.
In a few minutes Whitchurch’s party had filed down the hillside and reached the road, but a cry of warning from the native officer in front pulled them up short.
“We’re cut off, sahib,” he exclaimed, as the surgeon hastened to his side. “The enemy have got in front of us!”
It was, alas! too true. Although he could see nothing through the gloom, the shouts and occasional shots that reached his ears told Whitchurch plainly that the Chitralis were on the road ahead. What was to be done?
A sudden thought occurred to him. “Isn’t there a way round to the fort by the river, Bidrina Singh?” he asked of the officer.
The other nodded affirmatively. There was a track along the river bank, he said, but it would take them a mile out of their way and across some very difficult ground.
“Never mind,” said the surgeon briskly. “We’ve got to get to the fort to-night. So pull your men together, Bidrina Singh, and make for the river at once.”