Voices in the Night

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

'Keep your head, sir, and git a holt of me.'

Only those voices; no more. Then everything was lost in an awful grating sound--a sound of iron grinding iron to powder--a jerk, a wrench, a dislocation; a shock that shook the very air and made the very water in the river ebb and flow as the piers, the retaining-wall, quivered to their foundations.

But the next instant the rocking engine recovered its smooth slide, and the carriages were sliding after it over the girders it had jammed home--sliding on to the station, to safety, to the fun and the fighting!

And yet a yell of horror rose from the watching crowd. Not because the onward sliding which left the bridge free of steam clouds left it free also of all trace of those wrestling figures. That was only to be expected, since, if they had not fallen victims to the steam-devil, the water must have claimed them.

It was because the river was claiming something else, and the bastion, cracked so long, had yielded to its importunity at last--yielded perhaps to the shock, perhaps to that reckless rush of spectators to one side, perhaps to fate! And with a silence, awful in comparison with the clamour around it, it was sliding outwards, downwards. Sliding so slowly that it was well on its way ere an answering yell of terror rose from the figures upon it. Sliding so softly--brick holding fast to brick--that the final rending was almost unheard in the sound of hissing water closing in on water.

So, for an instant, nothing remained except two kites whirling distractedly at the swift downpull on their strings, until, giving up the battle, giving in to fate, they yielded the Sovereignty of Air and sank slowly into the river.

By this time, however, some of the claimants to that sovereignty had come to the surface again, shrieking for help, and reaching round for anything to support them.

Lateefa, luckily for him, found that bundle of the vanquished close to his hand, and managed with its help to get a grip upon a jag of wall. Luckily, for something had struck him on the back as he went down.

But there was no sign of Jehân or Burkut Ali; no sign even of those other two whom the river had claimed.

And none came to seek for one; for none knew rightly what had happened or who the bridge-savers had been, save the bridge-wreckers, and they had fled. Most of the crowd, therefore, drifted back to the station or the city. The station that was full of the rattle of rifles being shouldered, of the tramp of feet falling into line.