He did not point out further that a stick drawn along the dado in a certain direction would have revealed a series of gaps in the mud work behind it; and that if the point of the stick were used vigorously to sound such gaps a lightly mortared stone would have fallen outwards from each of them, and the Fort become a better ventilated and loop-holed building.
Concealment was so essential to the undertaking that only Sir Colvin, Afzul Singh, Terrington's trusted Subadar, and the sappers who did the work were in the secret. Other noises had to be contrived to cover the daily perforations, and only in darkness could the final drilling of the walls be done: the outmost portion being replaced and the dado extended before dawn.
Sir Colvin did not appreciate these preparations; but he could not condemn them. They meant a winter's defence of Sar Fort against overwhelming odds, and that was not a pretty thing to contemplate.
An uglier one, however, was to face those odds unprepared, and be himself responsible for the improvidence.
So his consent was given, as an insurance on his reputation, but he wished that Terrington's prevision had been more accommodating or less acute.
So far, however, as the Commissioner was forced to admit, they had been justified by results. Nothing had come of the Mission, and nothing seemed to be on its way. More than a month had gone by in Sar, and though the sun still filled its sheltered valley with a summer heat, snow had fallen on the eastern passes; and, visibly from the hills about it, the everlasting whiteness of the northern peaks was spreading in frozen silence towards the plain.
Terrington had watched that whiteness, knowing what it meant, and, half ashamed of himself, hoping what it meant.
It was for the falling of that icy portcullis, he felt, that Sar was waiting: waiting till it closed across their chance of escape, across their hope of rescue.
Then the gathering conspiracy would burst: burst, as it supposed, on unprepared defenders; and the end would rest with him. It would be a siege, whatever its outcome, as great as any that had lived in story, and the man who saw it through would need no further fame.
He was a cavalryman; but this was his ideal of combat: a fight which should test every quality of manhood; a struggle through months of despairing vigilance with unconquerable hordes.