They reached the Chinese sun, turned it around and, five or six of them, began running it down-hill. The others lingered, clustering together. A shot from one of the red heaps was met by a blow of a clubbed rifle; that was seen by the Australian through the glasses. There were more shots from the compound walls beyond.
The Australian quietly returned the glasses to his chief, sighted along his machine gun, and sprayed bullets along those walls, first to the left of the raiding party, then, very carefully, to the right.
M. Pourmont descended to the compound and ordered a party of coolies out with wheelbarrows. These began mounting the slope, obediently, painfully. The raiders dropped behind the little heaps of dead and waited. To the many watching eyes along the wall it seemed as if those deliberate coolies would never end their climb; inch by inch they seemed to move. Even the more rapidly moving gun, descending the slope, seemed to crawl. When it did at length draw near, the eager observers noted that the men handling it were all Chinese; the whites had stayed up there. Swain was there, and Brachey, and the others.
Betty witnessed the scene from an upper window of the residence with Mme. Pourmont and her daughters. She heard the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun; through a pair of glasses she saw the red-clad Lookers fall, all without clearly realizing that this was battle and death. It seemed a calm enough picture. But when Brachey started up the hill her heart stopped.
More and more slowly, as the climb told on the porters, the barrows moved up the slope; but at last they reached their destination. Then all worked like ants about them. Within ten minutes all were back in the compound creaking and squealing, each on its high center wheel, under the loads of shells.
Betty watched Brachey through the glasses. Naively she assumed that he would return to her after passing through such danger. And when she saw him drop casually into the little pit on the hillside it seemed to her that she couldn't wait out the day. Now that she had watched him leading his men straight into mortal danger—had so nearly, in her own heart, lost him—she began to sense the terrible power of love. All that had gone before in this strange relationship of theirs seemed like the play of children beside her present sense of him as her other self. Indeed the danger seemed now to be—she thought of it, in lucid moments, as a danger—that she should cease to care about outside opinion. Her heart throbbed with pride in him.
At dusk the outposts were relieved. When Brachey entered the gate, Betty was there, waiting, a tremulous smile hovering about her tender little mouth and about her misty eyes.
He paused, in surprise and pleasure. She gave him a hand, hesitantly, then the other; then, impulsively, her arms went around his neck.... His men straggled wearily past, their day's work done. Not one looked back. She was almost sorry, for that and for the dusk. Arm in arm they entered the compound and walked to the steps of the residence.
That night, three shells struck within the compound. One wrecked a corner of Mme. Pourmont's kitchen. Another carried away a section of galvanized iron roof and killed a horse. The third destroyed a tent, killing a Chinese woman and wounding a man and two girls. Thus, before morning, Dr. Cassam and her helpers were at the grim business of patching and restoring the piteous debris of war.
By daylight the red and yellow' lines were closed about the compound. Shells roared by at intervals all day, and bullets rattled against the walls. The upper windows of the residence were barricaded now with sand-bags. Five more were wounded during the day, two of them white. Enemy trenches appeared, above and below the compound. During the following night M. Pourmont set a considerable force of men at work running a sap out to the rifle pits, and digging in other outposts on the lower slope. His night runners moved with difficulty, but brought in reports of feasts and orgies at Kang's headquarters down the valley, where, surrounded by his full retinue, the old Manchu was preparing to revel in slaughter. As the days passed, the sense of danger grew deeper; the faces one saw about the compound wore a dogged expression. An armed guard stood over the storehouses, men were killed and wounded, and women and children. They talked, heavily where the casual was intended, of settling down to a siege. They spoke of other, larger sieges; of Mafeking and Ladysmith of recent memory. But no one, now, mentioned the prospects of early relief. One night Mr. Po went out with a Chinese soldier on a scouting trip; and neither returned. On the following night, one of the Wei Hai Wei men was sent. At daybreak they found his head, wrapped in a cloth, just inside the gate. The enemy had crept close enough, despite the outposts, to toss it over the wall... After this, for a time, no word went out or came in.