The success of Wardlaw's designs, the wisdom of his carefully-considered plans, the selection and apportionment of warlike material (in the preparation of which the chemist played a more important part than the armourer), had been only too amply justified. Results affirmed the first principle of fortification and of the art of gunnery, which principle lay in creating and arming a position of such strength and such resources that it could be held by a body of men greatly inferior in numbers to those by whom they were attacked. Fort Warden, the great outcome of the Major's career, the splendid achievement on the strength of which he had retired from active service, thus stood justified beyond all cavil or dispute.
Yet, as he gazed towards the work of his hands, Wardlaw's heart was full of grief and bitterness. There stood the Fort in all its pride and strength; around it lay the victims of its fury; within it less than three hundred foreigners still defied thousands of British troops on British soil. Above it floated, so far, in victory, two foreign Eagles—the flags of Germany and the United States.
IN THE HEART OF THE HILL.
While the dead were being buried and the wounded removed, there was a long cessation of the savage struggle. Indeed, the long lull in the firing almost led some people to believe that it would be heard no more. Crowds on the Western heights glanced curiously, anxiously, towards Fort Warden, with some idea that its picked garrison would now abandon their desperate and daring attempt to hold the position. It became known that the enemy's plans had been in part defeated—either by reason of some official blunder or through the watchfulness of the French at the other extremity of the Channel Tunnel. The German troops that were to have raided the French terminus, and then poured into England, under the protection of the guns of Fort Warden, already seized by their advance guard, had not arrived, and could not now approach to aid their countrymen. Movements of foreign warships and transports were hourly reported by telegraph and wireless messages, but the British Fleet had by this time formed a deadly barrier of iron and steel around the coast line of Kent and Sussex. There must be a great battle and a great defeat of our squadrons before another foreigner could set his foot on Kentish shore.
The brooding day wore on, tense with suspense and fear. In the stillness that accompanied the deepening of twilight, hundreds of field-glasses were finally directed towards the silent fort to discover whether the American and German flags had yet given place to the white flag of submission. Any such anticipation, however, proved unfounded. For suddenly, as the dusk increased, the roar of artillery was heard; the masked batteries of the British once more had opened simultaneous fire upon the Fort. Instantly the challenge was accepted. Fort Warden roared its defiance. The big naval gun thundered its repeated demand for surrender; the siege guns crashed in unison; the howitzers savagely chimed in, barking as in sudden fury, like monster dogs of war; and fifty field guns combined to swell the dreadful, deafening chorus.
Presently the fire from the Fort slackened. It seemed clear they were husbanding their strength for work more crucial. Or could it be that they were running short of ammunition? Perhaps, it was conjectured, more damage had been done to Wardlaw's Works than the British had supposed. Such speculations cheered the spirits of officers and men. But the wiser among them only shook their heads. They appreciated the mettle of the men who held the fort, realised that they had counted the cost, expected no quarter, and meant to win or die. The British staff knew that it would be folly to cry until they were out of the wood. They realised that many a man must bite the dust in agony before the British Standard floated over Wardlaw's Works again, if, indeed, it ever fluttered there at all! The invaders would, and must, hold the Fort till their last gasp—not because they in themselves could hope for ultimate triumph over the increasing forces that now surrounded them, but because to them time was everything—time for their countrymen to develop elsewhere the work of conquest; time for the American and German combined squadrons to land troops at unprotected spots of Great Britain and Ireland, while they, the daring three hundred, monopolised the attention of the flower of England's troops. The plans of the Allies were elaborate. This was but their first great move.
Meanwhile, imperative orders had been given for the British to attack the Fort again. The attempt was to be made directly darkness had set in, and it was only to pave the way for a new and even more determined onslaught that the guns had broken forth in the renewed bombardment already chronicled. Troops, Regular and Territorial, still were pouring into Kent.