In the middle of the night Captain Raymond was hit in the shoulder and carried, fainting, to the closely guarded club-house, where his wife was waiting.
The command devolved upon Lieutenant Steele, who took up the task undismayed. Down in the hastily dug trenches Toby Carey was fiercely holding his men to their work.
And Derrick Rose was with him, unrestrained for that night at least.
"Relief at dawn!" Toby said to him once.
And Derrick responded with a wild laugh.
"Relief be damned! We can hold our own without it."
Relief came with the dawn, at a moment when the tribesmen were spurring themselves to the greatest effort of all, sustained by the knowledge that their Great Fakir was among them.
General Harford, with guides, Sikhs, Goorkhas, came down like a hurricane from the south-east, cut off a great body of tribesmen from their fellows, and drove them headlong, with deadly force, upon the defences they had striven so furiously to take.
The defenders sallied out to meet them with fixed bayonets. The brief siege, if siege it could be called, was over.