their stand on was on a shoulder of hill beyond the fire. It gave him honest pleasure to think that at last he had stolen a march on his friend. He should at least have his sleep in peace before the inevitable end.
He looked at his watch; it was almost half-past eleven.
'Haystoun said they'd be here at midnight,' he whispered to his companion. 'We haven't long. When do you suppose Andover will come?'
'Not for an hour and a half at the earliest. Afraid this is going to be our own private show. Where's Haystoun?'
George nodded back to the fire in the hollow, and the tent beside it.
'There, I expect, sleeping. He's dog-tired, and he always was a very cool hand in a row. He'll be wakened soon enough, poor chap.'
'You're sure he can't tell us anything?'
'Nothing. He told me all. Better let him be.' Mitchinson came up with the rearguard. Living all but alone in the wilds had made him a silent man compared to whom the taciturn St. John was garrulous. He nodded to George and sat down.
'How many are we?' George asked.
'Forty-three, counting the three of us. Not enough for a good stand.
Wonder how it'll turn out. Never had to do such a thing before.'
St. John, whose soul longed for Maxims, posted his men as best he could. There was no time to throw up earthworks, but a rough cairn of stone which stood in the middle of the hollow gave at least a central rallying- ground. Then they waited, watching the fleecy night vapours blow across the peaks and straining their ears for the first sound of men.
George grew impatient. 'It can't be more than five miles to the pass.
Shouldn't some of us try to get there? It would make all the difference.'
St. John declined sharply. 'We've taken our place and we must stick to it. We can't afford to straggle. Hullo! it's just on twelve. Thwaite has had three hours to prepare, and he's bound to have wakened the south. I fancy the business won't quite come off this time.'
Suddenly in the chilly silence there rose something like the faint and distant sound of rifles. It was no more than the sound of stone dropping on a rock ledge, for, still and clear and cold though the night was, the narrowness of the valley and the height of the cliffs dulled all distant sounds. But each man had the ear of the old hunter, and waited with head bent forward.
Again the drip-drip; then a scattering noise as when one lets peas fall on the floor.
'God! That's carbines. Who the devil are they fighting with?'
Mitchinson's eye had lost its lethargy. His scraggy neck was craned forward, and his grim mouth had relaxed into a grimmer smile.
'It's them, sure enough,' said St. John, and spoke something to his servant.
'I'm going forward,' said George. 'It may be somebody else making a stand, and we're bound to help.'
'You're bound not to be an ass,' said St. John. 'Who in the Lord's name could it be? It may be the Badas polishing off some hereditary foes, and it may be Marker getting rid of some wandering hillmen. Man, we're miles beyond the pale. Who's to make a stand but ourselves?'
Again came the patter of little sounds, and then a long calm.
'They're through now,' said St. John. 'The next thing to listen for is the sound of their feet. When that comes I pass the word along. We're all safe for heaven, so keep your minds easy.'
But the sound of feet was long in coming. Only the soft night airs, and at rare intervals an eagle's cry, or the bleat of a doe from the valley bottom. The first half-hour of waiting was a cruel strain. In such moments a man's sins rise up large before him. When his future life is narrowed down to an hour's compass, he sees with cruel distinctness the follies of his past. A thousand things he had done or left undone loomed on George's mental horizon. His slackness, his self-indulgence, his unkindness-he went over the whole innocent tale of his sins. To the happy man who lives in the open and meets the world with a square front this forced final hour of introspection has peculiar terrors.
Meantime Lewis was sleeping peacefully in the tent by the still cheerful fire. Thank God, he was spared this hideous waiting!
About two Andover turned up with fifteen men, hot and desperate. He listened to St. John's story in silence.
'Thank God, I'm in time. Who found out this? Haystoun? Good man, Lewis! I wonder who has been firing out there. They can't have been stopped? It's getting devilish late for them anyhow, and I believe there's a little hope. It would be too risky to leave this pass, but I vote we send a scout.'
A man was chosen and dispatched. Two hours later he returned to the mystified watchers at Nazri. He had been on the hill-shoulder and looked into the cleft. There was no sign of men there, but he had heard the sound of men, though where he could not tell. Far down the cleft there was a gleam of fire, but no man near it.
'That's a Bada dodge,' said Andover promptly. 'Now I wonder if Marker trusted too much to these gentry, and they have done us the excellent service of misleading him. They hate us like hell, and they'd sell their souls any day for a dozen cartridges; so it can't have been done on purpose. Seems to me there has been a slip in his plans somewhere.'
But the sound of voices! The man was questioned closely, and he was strong on its truth. He was a hillman from the west of the Khyber, and he swore that he knew the sound of human speech in the hills many miles off, though he could not distinguish the words.
'In thirty minutes it will be morning,' said George. 'Lord, such a night, and Lewis to have missed it all!' His spirits were rising, and he lit a pipe. The north was safe whatever happened, and, as the inertness of midnight passed off, he felt satisfaction in any prospect, however hazardous. He sat down beneath a boulder and smoked, while Andover talked with the others. They were the frontier soldiers, and this was their profession; he was the amateur to whom technicalities were unmeaning.
Suddenly he sprang up and touched St. John on the shoulder. A great chill seemed to have passed over the world, and on the hill-tops there was a faint light. Both men looked to the east, and there, beyond the Forza hills, was the red foreglow spreading over the grey. It was dawn, and with the dawn came safety. The fires had burned low, and the vagrant morning winds were beginning to scatter the white ashes. Now was the hour for bravado, since the time for silence had gone. St.
John gave the word, and it was passed like a roll-call to left and right, the farthest man shouting it along the ribs of mountain to the next watch-fire. The air had grown clear and thin, and far off the dim repetition was heard, which told of sentries at their place, and the line of posts which rimmed the frontier.
Mitchinson moistened his dry lips and filled his lungs with the cold, fresh air. 'That,' he said slowly, 'is the morning report of the last outpost of the Empire, and by the grace of God it's 'All's well.''
Chapter XXXII
THE BLESSING OF GAD
'Gad-a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last.'
Lewis peered into the gorge and saw only a thin darkness. The high walls made pits of shade at the foot, but above there was a misty column of light which showed the spectres of rock and bush in the nullah beyond. It was all but dark, and the stars were coming out like the lights on a sea-wall, hard and cold and gleaming. Just in the throat of the pass a huge boulder had fallen and left a passage not two yards wide. Beyond there was a sharp descent of a dozen feet to the gravelled bottom which fell away in easier stages to the other watershed. Here was a place made by nature for his plans. With immense pains he rolled the biggest stones he could move to the passage, so that they were poised above the slope. He tried the great boulder, too, with his shoulders, and it seemed to quiver. In the last resort this mass of rock might be sent crashing down the incline, and by the blessing of God it should account for its man.
He brought his rifles forward to the stones, loaded them and felt the cartridges easy in his pocket. They were for the thirty-yards range; his pistol would be kept for closer quarters. He tried one after the other, cuddling
