Wardlaw nodded, and, still as one that dreamed, followed the aide-de-camp into the house.
On the following day great news was wired throughout the length and breadth of England, and cabled far and wide throughout the civilised world.
The newspapers of London and the provinces, in eager competition, issued special editions in quick succession. Everywhere great placards announced in heavy type and infinite variety of colours, a gladdening fact: the Fort had fallen!
The hero of the hour was Major Wardlaw, but no sound of joy or triumph could ever reach his ears—Wardlaw was dead. The published particulars, though brief, were all-sufficient and convincing. The Major had calmly and deliberately laid down his life for his country and his comrades. What shot and shell and bayonet had failed to do, he, single-handed, had achieved. The episode was all the more tragic and impressive by reason of its great simplicity. A method was known to Major Wardlaw, as the designer, by which he could flood the Fort. The enemy would be drowned like so many rats in a gigantic trap. The master-key was in his hands, and though—high honour be to them—there were other volunteers for the fatal work, he had steadfastly refused to let another British soldier lose his life in that prolonged and dreadful struggle. He was prepared, resolved, to die—and death had come to him.
Single-handed he had gone into the heart of the hill. The furious inrush of the water stored in the reservoir, which his own hand had deliberately let loose, claimed him, as he knew it must, first victim of the overwhelming flood.
But the Fort was ours again! It was a counter-stroke with which the enemy had not reckoned; a danger which the invader was wholly unable to avert. As the waters of the Red Sea overwhelmed the Egyptian Warriors; as that ancient river, the river Kishon swept away the foes of the armies of Israel, so, in a new and terrible way, the water floods had destroyed the invaders of England.
With a dull, elemental roar, with a suddenness that allowed of no flight, and a force that admitted of no resistance, ton after ton of water poured into the interior of the Fort. The sealed fate of its occupants was almost instantaneous. Of the survivors barely twenty men escaped with their lives, and these immediately fell into the hands of the encircling troops, and became prisoners of war.