But none came.
Just as the rush reached the courtyard, Eugene Smith's search-ray, having exhausted itself, went out, leaving, not darkness, but the grey mystery of dawn, in which for an instant all sound, all movement, seemed arrested. There was one utterly peaceful second, and then, from behind the splintered gateway, from the shadows of the tunnel, came a breathless voice:--
"Close the outer gate, sergeant; if you can, you have them in a trap! a regular trap!"
A trap!
The word reached those who had followed Roshan in his causeless retreat. Had he foreseen this? Was he escaping from the trap? Their eyes flew to the tunnel, but the light which, till then, had lit up its darkness, the swinging lamp by which the batterers of the gate had worked, was dashed down by someone's hand--a small, white hand--and there was nothing to be seen. Only that voice to be heard repeating, "They're in a trap; keep them there!"
Keep them! Not if they could fight their way into the open! The cry rose in a second:--
"A trap. Yea! a trap! Out of it! Outside, brothers, outside, where we can fight free!"
Roshan, who would have paused at this chance of fair resistance, was caught in the rush from behind, and found himself through the gap in the gate fighting desperately in the crowd, calling on his men to rally. But they had construed his half-frenzied flight from that look on Vincent Dering's face into a lead, and they were mixed up inextricably with the horde of undisciplined conspirators who, having been till now safe under cover of the tunnelled archway, yelled for the open, not so much in which to fight, but in which to run away.
The mere handful of men, whose number was fortunately hidden by the darkness, could never have prevented the rush, but a quick wit amongst them seized on a possibility, and the breathless voice called, "Let them pass--let them pass!"
So, in a second or two, amid confused yells, and mad slashings at friends and foes alike, the positions were reversed. The inside was out, the outside in, like Brian O'Lynn's breeches; and Dr. Dillon's first hint at what the amazing turn of affairs below him meant came with the words:--