"Number!" called the Commandant, but a voice at his right hand pleaded swiftly. "Don't wait for sections, Huzoor! Let us go!" And another at his left whispered, "For God's sake, Huzoor! quick; get them out quick!"
Major Abbott hesitated a second, only a second. The voices were the voices of good men and true, whom he could trust. "Fours about! Quick march!" he corrected, and a sort of sigh of relief ran down the regiment as it swung into position and the feet started rhythmically. Action at last!--at long last!
"Good-by, old chap," said someone cheerfully, but Major Abbott did not turn. "Good-by! Good-by!" came voices all round; steady, quiet voices, as the disciplined tramp echoed on the drawbridge, and a bar of scarlet coats grew on the rise of the white road outside.
"Good-by, Gordon! Good-by!"
The tall figure in its red and gold was under the very arch, shining, glittering in the sunlight streaming through it. Another step or two and he would have been beyond it. But the time for good-by had come. The time for which the 38th had been waiting all day. He threw up his arms and fell dead from his horse without a cry, shot through the heart. The next instant the gate was closed, its creaking smothered in the wild, senseless cry "To kill, to kill, to kill," in a wild, senseless rattle of musketry. For there was really no hurry; the handful of Englishmen were helpless. Major Abbott and his men might clamor for re-entry at the gate if they chose. They could not get in. Nor could the remnant of the 74th, deprived of its loyal companions, of the only two men who seemed to have controlled it, do anything. And the 54th were helpless also by their own act; for they had pushed Major Paterson through the gate before it closed.
So there was no one left even to try and stem the tide. No one to check that beast-like cry.
"Mâro! Mâro! Mâro!"
But, in truth, it would have been a hopeless task. The game was up; the only chance was flight. And two, foreseeing this for the last hour, had already made good theirs by jumping from an embrasure in the rampart into the ditch, while one, uninjured by the fall, had scrambled up the counter-scarp, and was running like a hare for those same thickets of the Koodsia.
"Come on! Come on!" cried others, seeing their success. And then? And then the cries and piteous screams of women reminded them of something dearer than life, and they ran back under a hail of bullets to that upper room which they had forgotten for the moment. And somehow, despite the cry of kill, despite the whistling bullets, they managed to drag its inmates to the embrasure. But--oh! pathos and bathos of poor humanity! making smiles and tears come together--the women who had stared death in the face all day without a wink, stood terrified before a twenty-feet scramble with a rope of belts and handkerchiefs to help them. It needed a round shot to come whizzing a message of certain death over their heads to give them back a courage which never failed again in the long days of wandering and desperate need which was theirs ere some of them reached safety.
But Kate neither hesitated nor jumped. She had not the chance of doing either. For that longing look of hers through the open gates had tempted her to creep along the wall nearer to them; so that the rush to close them jammed her into a corner against a door, which yielded slightly to her weight. Quick enough to grasp her imminent danger, she stooped instantly to see if the door could be made to yield further. And that stoop saved her life, by hiding her from view behind the crowd. The next moment she had pushed aside a log which had evidently rolled from some pile within, and slipped sideways into a dark outhouse. She was safe so far. But was it worth it? The impulse to go out again and brave merciful death rose keen, until with a flash, the memory of that escape through the crowd came back to her; she seemed to hear the changing ready voice of the man who held her, to feel his quick instinctive grip on every chance of life.