But this consoling view of things proved to be premature, for even as Mrs Hardy spoke, there came another long-drawn, moaning gust of wind, and the ground trembled slightly, then rocked.
“Couldn’t we move to a safer place?” asked Mabel, for whom the sight of the shaking buildings round the little courtyard had an awful fascination. They seemed to her to be actually leaning towards her.
“There is no safer place inside the walls,” said Fitz quickly.
“Will the wall over the canal stand this?” asked Mr Hardy, in a low voice, of Fitz, who shook his head and raised his eyebrows, just as a stentorian voice rang out from the nearest tower.
“Come down, you fools! Don’t you see that wall will go in a minute?”
“That’s Woodworth calling down the Sikhs,” explained Fitz, with a smile that did him credit. “If a volcano opened at their very feet, they would stay where they were until they received orders to retire. How will it fall?” he muttered to Mr Hardy.
“If it falls inwards, that will be the end of us,” was the calm reply of Mrs Hardy, who had caught the words.
“Heaven is as near to Khemistan as to England,” said Mr Hardy, laying his hand gently on Georgia’s shoulder. She had started up wildly.
“I don’t mind for myself; it’s the boy!” she cried. “Oh, won’t some one save him? What will Dick do when he comes back and finds no one left?”
“I would take him, Mrs North, indeed I would, if I thought there was a better chance anywhere else,” said Fitz, to whom her agonised eyes appealed; “but it would be much worse in the passages, or under any roof. We are safer here than in most places.”