“You pair of selfish, thoughtless chatterboxes! I should have thought you had more sense, Flora. Just be off, both of you. You can have my rooms for the rest of the night; I shall stay here. Even if all our poor fellows are killed, is that any reason for killing Mrs North too?”
“Oh, please don’t, Mrs Hardy! I never thought—Mrs North is always so kind, and I am so miserable,” sobbed Flora.
“You shouldn’t be miserable unless you’re quite certain it’s necessary. You wouldn’t believe a native who told you he was dead, as they are always doing; so why should you when he says other people are dead?” demanded Mrs Hardy, with a brilliancy of logic which somehow failed to satisfy. “I haven’t a doubt that the bhisti took to his heels in a panic at the sound of the first shot, and if he hadn’t fortunately been in the rear, the panic might have spread to all the rest. There, go away, do, and don’t cry so. We’ll hope all will go well.”
“Why have you left your post, doctor?” asked Mr Burgrave, meeting Dr Tighe crossing the courtyard.
“The hospital will have to look after itself a good deal to-night, but I have left the Padri and my Babu in charge there. Mrs North is taken ill.”
“Good heavens! It only needed this to make the horror of the situation complete.”
“From our point of view, it may be the best thing that could happen. It will make the men fight like demons. Here, you girl, where are you going?” He had caught the shoulder of a veiled woman who ran up and tried to slip past him into the passage, but she let her chadar fall aside, and disclosed herself as Rahah.
“I have been telling the men of the regiment, sahib, and they have all sworn great oaths that so long as one of them has a spark of life left Sinjāj Kīlin’s daughter shall not be without a protector in her need, and that the corpses of foes without and friends within shall be piled as high as the ramparts before the enemy shall gain a footing on the wall. I told also those in the hospital”—there was a hint of malice in Rahah’s voice—“and every wounded man who can sit up in bed is crying out for a gun. They will serve as hospital guard, they say, and set Ismail Bakhsh and his men free to fight on the walls.”
“Good idea, that!” said Dr Tighe, turning to the Commissioner. “You see how the men take it. Well, I shall keep Mrs North in her own quarters if I can, but there is a passage through to the hospital courtyard, and we must carry her over if it’s necessary. But I don’t think it will be, now.”
Mr Burgrave nodded, and returned to his station on the west curtain. Why the enemy did not advance to the attack was a mystery. In the opinion of Ghulam Rasul and his most experienced subordinates, they had moved out from their position in the town, and were occupying the irrigated land on both sides of the canal in large numbers, sheltered against any volley from the walls by the rows of trees which marked the lines of the water-courses. They could not be seen, nor could it precisely be said that they were heard, but as the old soldiers in the garrison said, it could be felt that they were there. The situation was eerie in the extreme, and Mr Burgrave was unable to find comfort in a phenomenon which made his men cheerful in a moment. It was the Ressaldar who called his attention to it as they stood straining their ears in the attempt to distinguish some definite sound in the murmuring silence, and at once he himself heard clearly the faint tramp of a galloping horse far away to the north-east.