The secret was well kept as such secrets must be. Still the afternoon of the 12th saw a vague stir on the Ridge, and though even the fighting men turned in to sleep, each man knew what the midnight order meant which sent him fumbling hurriedly with belts and buckles.
"The city at last, mates! No more playin' ball," they said to each other as they fell in, and stood waiting the next order under the stars; waiting with growing impatience as the minutes slipped by.
"My God! where is Graves?" fumed Hodson. "We can't go on without him and his three hundred. Ride, someone, and see. The explosion party is ready, the Rifles safe within three hundred yards of the wall. The dawn will be on us in no time--ride sharp!"
"Something has gone wrong," whispered a comrade. "There were lights in the General's tent and two mounted officers--there! I thought so! It's all up!"
All up indeed! For the bugle which rang out was the retreat. Some of those who heard it remembered a moonlight night just a month before when it had echoed over the Meerut parade ground; and if muttered curses could have silenced it the bugle would have sounded in vain. But they could not, and so the men went back sulkily, despondently to bed. Back to inaction, back to target practice.
"Graves says he misunderstood the verbal orders, so I understand," palliated a staff-officer in a mess tent whither others drifted to find solace from the chill of dis-appointment, the heat of anger. A tall man with hawk's eyes and sparse red hair paused for a moment ere passing out into the night again. "I dislike euphemisms," he said curtly. "In these days I prefer to call a spade a spade. Then you can tell what you have to trust to."
"Hodson's in a towering temper," said an artilleryman as he watched a native servant thirstily; "I don't wonder. Well! here's to better luck next time."
"I don't believe there will be a next time," echoed a lad gloomily. And there was not, for him, the target practice settling that point definitely next day.
"But why the devil couldn't--" began another vexed voice, then paused. "Ah! here comes Erlton from the General. He'll know. I say, Major----" he broke off aghast.
"Have a glass of something, Erlton?" put in a senior hastily, "you look as if you had seen a ghost, man!"