The second attack had been driven back.
Miss Borsen gave a great gulp and sprang to a shutter, opened it, and looked out. In a moment she had recoiled, covering her eyes with her hands.
"They're flying down the slope; those awful white heaps are growing near the fence. Oh God, it is awful!" she cried, and she burst into tears and ran away.
Ellis's Maxim ceased firing, and gradually all became quiet.
In perhaps half an hour Mr. Fisher ran in to see me—flushed and excited. He stopped for a moment when he saw the blood-stain on my pillow, but then burst out with: "We've beaten them off! we've beaten them off! Thank God! Now they'll go! I'm sure they'll go! The Maxim from the Bunder Abbas got them whilst they were crowded under the wall and crumpled them up—crumpled them up—swept them down!"
Ellis came in too, grinning as he reported: "That little lot 'as gone 'ome—what was left of them, sir—'oping as 'ow you're going on all right; but we ain't more'n 'arf a beltful of cartridges left, sir, that we ain't. If it 'adn't been for them blooming 'uts they'd never 'ave got near 'arfway."
Mr. Fisher jerked out: "It's no good burning the huts now. They'll go back to the mountains to-night! I'm certain they will! It's no use burning them now!"
He had been very enthusiastic about the slaughter and the terrible punishment the Afghans had received, but when he came to count the dead there were only thirty-two on the slope; and although that meant thirty-two fewer Afghans, it was more than counter-balanced by a very grave signal from Mr. Scarlett saying that he had fired forty-eight rounds of six-pounder ammunition and eight hundred rounds from the Maxim, leaving only thirty-five more six-pounder and three thousand rifle and Maxim rounds on board. This meant, as I knew only too well, that to repulse one more attack would leave the "B.A." practically helpless to assist again.
I kept this knowledge to myself, and sent a signal to Mr. Scarlett to come and see me and bring ashore with him another thousand rounds of ammunition for Ellis's Maxim.
A good deal of firing began again, as if to contradict Mr. Fisher's optimism, and I heard isolated shots, from a considerable distance, with occasionally the smack of a bullet on the outer wall of the house, though, as no one was with me, I did not know what was actually happening.