"Give me your light a moment, Nicholson," he said.
No one spoke while he examined the list before him. All around them was a curious hush—a new thing in their struggle, and one that seemed surcharged with calamity. After a moment Colonel Carmichael looked up. He was many years the senior of his companions, but just then there seemed no difference in years between them. They were three wan, haggard men, weakened with hunger, exhausted with sleepless watching. That week had killed the youth in two of them.
"Geoffries has just given me this," Carmichael said. "It is a list of our provisions. We have enough food, but there is no fresh water. The enemy has cut off the supply. We could not expect them to do otherwise." He waited, and then, as neither spoke, he went on: "I have spoken with the others. You know, gentlemen, we can not go on another twenty-four hours without water. We have made a good fight for it, but this is the end. We must look the fact in the face."
"Surely they must know at headquarters what a state we are in—"
Saunders began.
The Colonel shrugged his shoulders.
"No doubt they know, but they can not help in time. This is not a petty frontier business. It is something worse—a rising with a leader. A rising with a leader is a lengthy business to tackle, and it requires its victims. In this case we are the victims." He smiled grimly. "We have only one thing left to do—make a dash for it while we have the strength. You must know as well as I do that there is scarcely anything worth calling a hope, but it's a more agreeable way of dying than being starved out like rats and then butchered like sheep. I know these devils." He glanced around the shadowy room with a curious light in his eyes. "My best friend was murdered in this room," he added. "Personally, I prefer a fair fight in the open."
"When do you propose to make the start, Colonel?" Nicholson asked.
"Within an hour. The night favors us. The women must be kept in the center as much as possible. I have given Geoffries special charge over them. They will be told at the last moment. There is no use in spoiling what little rest they have had." He drew out a pencil and began to scribble a despatch on the back of an old letter. "I advise you gentlemen to do likewise," he said. "Very often a piece of paper gets through where a man can not, and it is our bounden duty to supply the morning periodicals with as much news as possible."
For some minutes there was no sound save that of the pencils scrawling the last messages of men with the seal of death already stamped upon their foreheads. All three had forgotten Travers, and yet from the moment they had begun to speak he had been awake and listening. He sat up now, leaning upon his elbow.
"Nicholson!" he said faintly.