“My turn!” said Haycraft blandly, laying an authoritative hand on Fitz’s shoulder. “Sit and squirm, my boy, while I sing your praises. He swam the canal, ladies, in the dark and icy cold, and took over with him the end of a rope made of the men’s turbans. Winlock and the rest waited to guard the crossing, while this fellow climbed the hill, and by the best of good luck, found us at the top. We had taken the guard round the guns absolutely by surprise—they were all asleep, in fact, without a single sentry—and settled things almost in silence. Not a shot was fired, and everything was so quiet that Woodworth started the bright idea of bringing the guns home with us instead of destroying them. It really seemed quite possible, for the drag-ropes were there ready, and it would have made all the difference in the world to us to have a couple of cannon. But when Anstruther turned up, like a very dripping ghost, and informed us that the way was blocked, and we couldn’t even get home ourselves, much less take back the guns in triumph, things began to look a little blue. We might stay where we were, or we might try to cut our way through, but the prospect wasn’t very cheerful either way.”
“No food or water on the hill, and the enemy holding all the plain below,” summarised Fitz tersely.
“And therefore,” went on Haycraft, “the Colonel lent a willing ear to the aspiring civilian before you, who offered to lead him right round through the hills and bring him in at the main gate of the fort, the very last place where the enemy would think of expecting him. So the drag-ropes came in useful, after all, for we pulled the guns to a nice steep place overlooking the water. We had to be awfully quiet, of course, though the hill was between us and the enemy, but we spiked the guns and rolled them over into the canal. Then we marched down, and got across by the help of the drag-ropes, which Winlock and his men hauled over with their string of turbans. We got pretty wet about the legs, but nothing to Anstruther. He led us right round, as he had promised, and at the end we actually marched right through the town without meeting a soul. The men were told to break step, lest the tramp should be heard; but the enemy were all ever so far off, watching affectionately for our reappearance on the other side of the canal. They hadn’t the slightest suspicion of our real whereabouts. Of course, if we had known which way we were coming back, we might have done a lot of things—taken some dynamite and blown up General Keeling’s house, perhaps—but it’s no use repining about that now.”
“Repining? I should think not!” cried Flora. “You’ve had a whole night of marching and counter-marching, and strategic movements and capturing guns, and you come home to find a nice little fight waiting for you before you can lie down to sleep, and yet, when you are in the very act of playing Othello to two Desdemonas, you pretend you aren’t satisfied!”
“Oh, we haven’t made enough of them,” said Mabel briskly. “They think we ought to have met them at the gate, and cast the flowers out of our best hats before them as they marched in. I’m sure this morbid thirst for appreciation oughtn’t to be gratified, for their own sakes. Now I am going to take the boy back to his mother. His brains will certainly be addled if Ismail Bakhsh rocks him up and down much longer.”
“What’s happened to the Commissioner?” asked Haycraft, as Mabel disappeared with the baby. “We rather thought we should find him here.”
“I don’t know,” said Flora. “He hasn’t been in this morning. Oh no,” as Haycraft lifted his eyebrows, “they haven’t quarrelled. They were quite friendly last night. I daresay he’s busy.”
“It is because of the Baba Sahib that the Kumpsioner Sahib has not come,” remarked Ismail Bakhsh calmly, pausing at the corner of the verandah, and addressing no one in particular.
“Our friend understands English too well,” muttered Haycraft to Fitz. “But what can he mean—that Burgrave dislikes babies, or that he is jealous because Miss North is so much taken up with it?”
“The Kumpsioner Sahib will not come here in the daytime,” was the dark reply. “That is why this unworthy one will keep guard here at night, sahib.”