“Have it your own way, ma’am,” said Captain Crosse pacifically. “No doubt the General will argue it out with you, but I know better.”
That the General was quite ready to deal with every one as he or she deserved was made plain when the steamers arrived level with his camp. It lay some little distance from the river, but he had sent horses to be ready for them, and as Colonel Bayard and his party rode on ahead of the troops, an approaching cloud of dust showed that he was welcoming them in person. In his usual breakneck style he dashed up with his staff, and shook hands all round with his left hand, for his right arm was in a sling.
“Ah, Mrs Ambrose! anywhere else I should have been proud to see you. Glad you’re safe, Bayard. You have made a fine defence, sir—I shall have much pleasure in reporting it in the proper quarter. A little bit out of conceit with the Khans now—eh? Three times in one day you wrote to me they hadn’t an armed man in Qadirabad save their own servants, and two days later they were besieging you with seven or eight thousand troops!”
“You are better informed than I, General.” Colonel Bayard spoke somewhat stiffly. “How you have arrived at that exact figure——”
“Spies, man, spies! Not being glued to steamers, they came on while you were all snoozing sweetly in the night, though they had to skirt round to flank the shikargahs, which you must have passed in happy innocence that a whole army was concealed there. I was taking their lowest estimate. What do you make the numbers, then—eh?”
“Anything up to eighteen thousand men, General, from what we saw when they tried to harass us from the bank.”
“H’m. My information suggests more than that. By the seven thousand I meant those only who beset the Residency. And in a nasty resolute temper—eh? You believe that now?”
“For the moment, nothing more. Believe me, their heart ain’t in it. If you could have met their Highnesses face to face——”
“Heavens, man! if I had taken your advice, the army would still be three days’ march away at least, and my reinforcement could never have reached you in time.”
“A reinforcement without ammunition, General!”