Nine o'clock! In seven hours the ten miles had been marched, the battle of Budli-ke-serai won, and below them lay Delhi. Within twelve hundred yards rose the Moree Bastion, the extreme western point of that city face which, with the Cashmere gate jutting about its middle and the Water Bastion guarding its eastern end, must be the natural target of their valor--a target three-quarters of a mile long by twenty-four feet high.
Seven hours! And the Murderers had been driven into the city, while the men had gained "twenty-six guns and the finest possible base for the conduct of future operations." For the Ridge, the old cantonments were once more echoing to the master's step, and the city folk, as they looked eagerly from the walls, had the first notice of defeat in the smoke and flames of the sepoy lines which the English soldiers fired in reckless revenge; reckless because the tents were not up, and they might at least have been a shelter from the sun.
But the Delhi force, taken as a whole, was in no mood to think; and so perhaps those at the head of it felt bound to think the more. There was Delhi, undoubtedly, but the rose-red walls with their violet shadows looked formidable. And who could tell how many Murderers it harbored? A thousand of them or thereabouts would return to Delhi no more; but, even so, if all the regiments known to have mutinied and come to Delhi were at their full strength, the odds must still be close on four to one. And then there was the rabble, armed no doubt from the larger magazine below the Flagstaff Tower, which, alas, had found no Willoughby for its destruction on the 11th of May. And then there was the May sun. And then--and then----
"What's up? When are we going on?" asked Major Erlton, sitting fair and square on his horse, in the shadow of the big trees by Hindoo Rao's house, as an orderly officer rode past him.
"Aren't going on to-day. Chief thinks it safer not--these native cities----"
He was gone, and Herbert Erlton without a word threw himself heavily from his horse with a clatter and jingle of swords and scabbards and Heaven knows what of all the panoply of war; so with the bridle over his arm stood looking out over the bloody city which lay quiet as the grave. Only, every now and again, a white puff of smoke followed by a dull roar came from a bastion like a salute of welcome to the living, or a parting honor to the dead.
Was it possible? His eyes followed the familiar outline mechanically till they rested half-unconsciously on some ruins beside the city wall. Then with a rush memory came back to him, and as he turned hurriedly to loosen his horse's girths, the tears seemed to scald his tired angry eyes. Yet it was not the memory of Alice Gissing only, which sent these unwonted visitors to Herbert Erlton's eyes; it was a wild desperate pity and despair for all women.
And as he stood there ignoring his own emotion, or at least hiding it, one of the women whom he pitied was looking up with a certain resentful eagerness at a man, who, from the corner turret of that roof in the Mufti's quarter, was straining his eyes Ridgeways.
"They must rest, surely," she said sharply; "you cannot expect them to be made of iron----"; as you are, she was about to add, but withheld even that suspicion of praise.
"Well! There goes the bugle to pitch tents, anyhow," retorted Jim Douglas recklessly. "So I suppose we had better have our breakfast too--coffee and a rasher of bacon and a boiled egg or so. By God! its incredible--it's----" He flung himself on a reed stool and covered his face with his hands for a second; but he was up facing her the next. "I've no right to say these things--no one knows better than I how worse than idle it is to press others to one's own tether--I learned that lesson early, Mrs. Erlton. But"--he gave a quick gesture of impotent impatience--"when the news first came in, the men who brought it ran in at the Cashmere and Moree gates in hundreds, and out at the Ajmere and Turkoman, calling that the masters had come back; and people were keeking round the doors hopefully. I tell you the very boys as I came in here were talking of school again--of holiday tasks, perhaps--Heaven knows! People were running in the streets--they will be walking now--in another hour they will be standing; and then! Well! I suppose the General funks the sun. So I'll be off. I only came because I thought I had better be here in case; you see the men would have had their blood up rushing the city----"