“I’m laying six fuses, and some of them must work. I’ve drilled my party day after day at Miletis until they’re word perfect. I had a mud replica of the gateway made, same as we used to do before attacks in the war, and every man knows his job. I suppose we’ve laid that charge thirty times, and the dummy puffs I put in at the end generally went off. The only thing missing was the Shamans popping at us through the loopholes. But with a decent modicum of luck we shall do it.”
Certainly if it could be done he was the man to do it; and early next morning, as I watched the shadowy masses of men collecting noiselessly in position for the assault, saw the dim glitter of cap and weapon, heard the soft chink of mail and the swish of leather, listened to the whispered words of command, I felt that, if energy and resolution counted at all in the scales, we deserved to win. With three seasoned fighters like Andros, Henga, and John Wrexham to direct, youths of the type of Stephnos to lead, and infantry of the kind I had commanded at the Astara to follow, given an open road not all the Shamans in Shamantown could block our way.
“Time’s getting on,” said Wrexham, looking at his wristwatch, luminous in the darkness. “We shall be able to see the walls in another twenty minutes.”
Five minutes later Henga reported his storming party in position. Then came Andros for a last word or two before the ball opened. The jagged mountains to the eastward were clear-cut against the lightening sky as John with his powder-men and their escort moved silently toward the bridge—now faintly visible in the gloom—to disappear in the formless dark ahead. A sleepy sentry’s hail broke the still silence, and a moment later, as the sandbag party dashed on to the bridge, a wavering torch sprang into light above the battlements to whirl downwards and vanish as one of Wrexham’s party flung himself upon it. Loud shouts and cries above the walls told us that the Shamans had realized that an attack was again afoot, and arrows began to whiz down upon the bridge, striking sparks from the stonework, while above the gates a great beacon flamed into red light, showing the explosive party clustered under the great doors at the far end of the narrow entry-passage.
Then back across the bridge, running heads down for dear life among the glancing arrows, came the powder-men. Nine of them we counted—the tenth lay still where he had fallen on the bridge, one limp arm dangling above the dark gulf, the slender arrow-shaft in his back stark black against the stonework, now grey in the growing light.
Two minutes later the shrill call of Wrexham’s bugler brought the lighting party racing over the arrow-swept causeway, the last man across spinning forward over the unguarded side, splash into the sluggish stream below, as an arrow took him full in the chest. And as they crossed, the sandbag party came leaping back over the bridge. By some chance seventeen of them returned untouched, though now the full dawn light had come, but the other three lay dead in the passage beyond. John was all right, they told us, and the powder in position. There was now light enough to shoot, and we three opened with our rifles upon the wall above the gates, while away to right and left our bowmen loosed flight after flight of arrows against the packed defences. The dawn silence had given place to a medley of shouts, of high-pitched cries, of clamorous bugle notes, and on the walls in front hurried rush and clash of armed and half-armed men.
Then suddenly back in a whirl down the passage came a dozen men, some bleeding from wounds, the bugler with an arrow sticking through his arm, and—thank goodness!—at the back of the bunch, John’s unmistakable sturdy figure with Firoz and the crooked-nosed engineer behind him. They neared the bridge, arrows flying all about them. Then the man in front of Wrexham pitched forward on his face, struggled and lay still. The Sakae engineer tripped over him, went down, and, as he rose again, slid down once more, clutching his leg below the knee, trying to pull out an arrow.
He had dropped behind John and Firoz, who, not noting his fall, came flying across, untouched. The engineer tried to crawl on to the bridge amid the hail of arrows. But Forsyth, running like a greyhound, was out and over the gulf before we even realized what he was doing. Stopping, stooping, and turning all at once, he started back with the engineer—a light wiry man—in his arms. With great long strides he raced back over the bridge, and, unscathed, laid the wounded man down under cover just ahead of us. Our men cheered him like mad as he returned, for the Sakae prize personal courage above all things in the world. Certainly Ziné would have no cause to worry about the way her favour had been borne.
Almost as he reached us there was a great sheet of red flame in front, a hot breath, a jar like a blow in the face, and a thunderous roar as the fort gate and the surrounding walls vanished in a dense cloud of thick white smoke, and Henga and his company—Forsyth in the van—swept across the bridge, axe and sword and spear-point gleaming in the morning light. With them went John, followed by Firoz to see if the powder had done its work.
But as the smoke cleared with it went our doubts. One of the great iron-bound wings of the door had clean vanished, while the other hung drunkenly from its shattered hinges, and in the dark gap we could see the last of Henga’s men crowding into the defences. A moment later Andros’s bugles sang to the assault, and his men poured over the bridge in an unceasing stream of close-packed ranks. We watched them crush through the shattered gateway, while on the walls above we saw Henga’s men fighting their way back, clearing the parapets on either side to secure the entrance passage.