Told in the East, Talbot Mundy [crime books to read .txt] 📗

“I, too, have news, Brown sahib! All four are living! All four lie here on the floor of the magazine, and they recover rapidly. They are all but strong enough to stand.”

“Good! Then come up here, Juggut Khan!”

That winding pathway up the inside of the dome took longer to negotiate than an ordinary stairway would have done, but presently the Rajput leaned against the parapet and panted beside Brown.

“D'you see them? There they are! Now, look on this side! D'you see the preparations going on? D'you realize what the next thing's going to be? They'll come for powder for the guns, so's to have it all ready for the gun-crews when the fun begins at dawn! Listen! Here they are already!”

A thundering had started on the great teak door below—a thundering that echoed through the dome like the reverberations of an earthquake. It was punctuated by the screams of women. The prisoners changed their attitude, and eyed Brown and the Rajput with an air of truculence again.

“They'll be up this causeway in a minute, sahib! Listen. There! They've seen the dead bodies that you tossed over. Better it had been to keep them up here for a while.”

“Never mind! We can hold this causeway until morning! Men! Take close order. Line up at the causeway-entrance. Kneel. Prepare for volley-firing. Now, let 'em come!”

“I am for making an immediate escape, sahib!”

“Go ahead!” said Brown, almost dreamily.

He seemed to be thinking hard on some other subject as he spoke.

“Sahib, one of the women there—she who is maid to the other two—asked me where Bill Brown might be! She swore to me that she had recognized his voice when the trapdoor opened up above her. Are you not Bill Brown?”

“Yes, I'm William Brown!”

“Her name, she says, is Emmett!”

“You don't surprise me, Juggut Khan! I thought I had recognized her voice. It seemed strangely familiar. Well—here come the rebels up the causeway. See? They're at the bottom now with lanterns! Ready, men!”

There came the answering click of breech-bolts, and a little rustling as each man eased his position, and laid his elbow on his knee.

“Can you find your way out through the way we came, Juggut Khan?”

“Of course I can!”

“Are all the women on the floor?”

“Three women and the child.”

“Can you close the trap-door again?”

“Surely! It is only opening it that is difficult.”

“Then close it before you go. I've got a reason! Send one of my men up here with a lantern—one of those that are burning in the magazine. I want to signal.”

“Very well, sahib!”

“Then take the women, with four of my men to help them walk, and get out as quickly as you can by the way we all came in. Wait for the rest of my men when you reach the opening in the outer wall, and when they reach you allot two men to carry each woman, and run—the whole lot of you—for the army over yonder. One of the women will object. She will want to see me first. Use force, if necessary!”

“Are you, then, not coming, sahib?”

“I have another plan. Here they come! Hurry now, be off with the women! Volley-firing—ready—present!”

Pattering footsteps sounded on the causeway, and a little crowd of nearly doubled figures came up it at a run.

“Fire!”

The volley took the rebels absolutely by surprise, and no man could miss his mark at that short range. Five of the rebels fell back headlong, and the rest, who followed up the causeway, turned on their heels and ran.

“'Bout turn!” Brown shouted suddenly. “Use the steel, men! Use the steel!”

His own sword was flashing, and lunging as he spoke, and he had already checked a sudden rush by the prisoners.

They had thought the moment favorable for joining in the scrimmage from the rear.

“All right! That'll do them! I'll attend to 'em now!”

A man came running up with the lantern Brown had asked for, and Brown took it and began waving it above his head.

“They must have heard that volley!” he muttered to himself. “Ah! There's the answer!”

A red light began to dance over in the British camp, moving up and down and sidewise in sudden little jerks. Brown read the jerks, as he could never have read writing, and a moment later he answered them.

“Now, down below, the lot of you! Give me your rifle, you. I'll need it.”

“Not coming, sir.”

“Not yet. There's something else yet, and I can do it best. Besides, some one has got to guard the causeway still. There might be a rush again at any minute. Listen now. Obey Juggut Khan implicitly as soon as you get down. His orders are my orders. Understand? Very well, then. And you without a weapon, your job is to shut the door that you leave the magazine by tight from the outside—d'you understand me? Call up when you're all through the door, and then shut it tight!”

“But, how'll you get out, sir?”

“That's my business. One minute, though. Here they come again. Get ready to fire another volley!”

The mutineers made another and a more determined rush up the causeway, coming up it more than twenty strong, and at the double. Brown let one volley loose in the midst of them, then led his men at the charge down on them and drove them over the edge of the causeway by dint of sheer impact and cold steel. Not one of them reached the ground alive, and in the darkness it must have been impossible for the mutineers below to divine how many were the granary's defenders.

“That'll keep 'em quiet for a while, I'll wager! Now, quick, you men! Get down below, and follow Juggut Khan, and don't forget to shut the door tight on you. These prisoners here are going to follow you—they may as well go down with you for that matter. No! that won't do. They could open the door below, couldn't they? They'll have to stay up here. Got any rope? Then bind them, somebody. Bind their hands and feet. Now, off with you!”

Brown spent the next few minutes signaling with the lantern, and reading answering flashes that zig-zagged in the velvet blackness of the British lines. Then, as a voice boomed up through the granary, “All's well, sir! I'm just about to shut the door!” he fixed his eyes on the fakir, and laughed at him.

“You and I are going