The order was obeyed with incredible promptness. But the Waziris had the advantage of playing a prepared game; and before the officers had time to disperse a murderous fire was poured upon them from all sides at once: from the village, the watch-tower, and the huts on the left. Swift as magic the walls bristled with picked marksmen, armed with matchlocks, Winchesters, and Martini Henry's stolen from Border sentries: and it was clear that the enemy held the nullah in great strength.
"Massacre, by God!" Desmond muttered between his teeth as he dodged a whizzing bullet, while a second glanced off his brass buckle, and buried itself in the tree behind him.
Colonel Montague, advancing to meet his men, who came forward at the double, fell, mortally wounded, with two bullets through his body. He staggered to his feet; only to fall again, face downward, as Desmond and Courtenay hurried up to him, and—covered by the fire of his Sikhs—carried him into comparative safety behind a stack of bhusa,[4] within reach of the ambulance; his bugler following close at their heels.
"I'm done for," he panted, as they laid him down. "Make the best job you can of me; and prop me . . against the stack. I'll direct operations . . while I can . . hold out."
There was clearly nothing else to be done; and while Courtenay obeyed the dying man's injunctions, Desmond made haste to join his own sowars, who were already doing smart work with their rifles, under Ressaldar Rajinder Singh.
By now the din was terrific. It was as if a special department of hell had been suddenly opened up. Firing had become general from all the surrounding hills; for an attack of this kind, once started, speedily degenerates into a matter of ghazá.[5] Every moment brought fresh reinforcements to the Waziris; every moment their fire grew hotter; and every moment, through the rattle of musketry and the yells of the tribesmen, came the deep-throated duet of the sturdy little screw-guns under the wall, as they pitched shell after shell into the nullah, from whose depths a hidden foe responded with pitiless accuracy and vigour.
For, simultaneously with Montague's advance, Lenox and Richardson had doubled to their guns through a hailstorm of humming, leaping bullets. One, passing through Lenox's coat-sleeve, grazed his upper arm; while a second struck Richardson's breast-pocket, and was only prevented from wounding him mortally by a pad of first-aid bandages which Courtenay had served out to him, in joke, two days earlier. Reaching the guns unscathed, they found the gunners at their posts, the infantry escort blazing merrily and effectively at the marksmen on the wall: and at once opened fire on the nullah with case-shot and shell.
But their height and exposed position rendered them too conspicuous to be missed for long by an enemy whose skill in picking off British officers makes the little wars of the Frontier such cruelly costly affairs. In less than two minutes, a burning pain near his shoulder-blade told Lenox he was hit. But not being disabled, he paid small heed to so trivial an incident at the time. The incessant firing took up all his attention.
Before ten minutes were out, shells, case-shot, and shrapnel had all been exhausted. The Mahsuds were firing more steadily than ever; and on the terrace itself, the infantry and sowars were in no enviable case. Unwin had fallen, shot through the head. Montague had momentarily succumbed to pain and exhaustion; and Desmond, with little Martin of the Punjab Infantry and a Sikh Subadar, was in command of affairs.
Sudden faintness, and a damp discomfort down his back, warned Lenox that his wound must be bleeding more freely than he knew. He gripped the shoulder of a gunner standing near him; and for an instant all things swam together before his eyes.