“I suppose not. But how coolly they talk of wasting three days! It seems as if they thought they had a lifetime before them to spend on this siege.”
“Well, so much the better for us—on this occasion, at any rate. When is the armistice to begin?” he asked of Narayan Singh; “now, or to-morrow morning?”
“At daybreak to-morrow, sahib,” was the answer, after a moment’s consideration.
“So be it,” said Colonel Graham. “Then they have something on hand!” he added to Mr Burgrave. “If Bahram Khan were all anxiety for his wounded, as he would like us to think, of course he would want the armistice to begin at once. But he knows we shan’t fire at his men if they begin digging out the poor wretches now, and he would like three clear days for some plot of his own. What can it be?”
“Perhaps he merely hopes to catch us off our guard to-day,” suggested the Commissioner.
“But if that’s his game, no scruples of conscience would have kept him from making use of the armistice for the purpose. No, he’s up to something, and I should very much like to know what it is. I shall post a lookout at the top of the north-west tower with the best field-glass we have, to keep an eye on all that goes on in their camp.”
The Colonel’s prevision was justified early the next morning, when the lookout announced that a small body of fully armed men, all mounted, among whom he believed he could distinguish Bahram Khan himself, had left the town and were proceeding towards the north-east, apparently in the direction of Nalapur.
“I am very much afraid that bodes ill to poor old Ashraf Ali,” said the Colonel. “I only wish we could warn him.”
“After all, sir,” said Haycraft, to whom he had spoken, “Bahram Khan may only be off to see how the blockade of Rahmat-Ullah is going on. It’s evident he thinks we’re stuck pretty fast here, for really, if we had the proper number of horses, and anywhere to go to, we might take advantage of the armistice to disappear, they have left so few men in their lines.”
“I prefer the shelter of even our tumble-down walls to being surrounded in the desert,” said the Colonel shortly. “And now to work!”