Chapter X: Part 10

As you know, the telegraph buildings were built on the rocky end of the peninsula and surrounded by a strong, loopholed wall. He explained to me that there was no probability of an attack either from the sides or from the end, because the Baluchis and Afghans hated the sea, and nothing would induce them to get into a boat.

If they came, they must attack along the neck of the peninsula, and up the open, sloping space below the wall. Across this, as you already know, there was a small breastwork of earth, with a still smaller trench behind it, looking much more like an elongated vegetable-marrow bed than a defence work and, fifty yards lower down, two rows of barbed-wire railings stretching across from sea to sea.

Five hundred yards away, on the narrowest portion of the peninsula, and commanding the landing place to the east--on our right as we looked inland--was the ruined sheikh's fort, or Old Fort, which I had explored on my first visit. It was half-hidden in a fold of the ground and by some date-palm trees. A thousand yards away on the western side--our left-hand side--commanding the beach and landing place there, was the new sheikh's fort, or New Fort, where the custom-house officers had been hanged by the Baluchis on their way back from destroying Bungi and Sudab. Between these were perhaps a score of native "matting" huts. The whole of the sloping neck of the peninsula afforded no cover whatever; but on the right side of the slope, just between the line of barbed-wire and the baby entrenchment was a line of more substantial huts belonging to the coolies and other servants of the telegraph staff.

I don't pretend to be a soldier; but it struck me immediately that this line of huts must be destroyed. It interfered with the fire space from the loopholed wall. Also I told Mr. Fisher that the half-ruined sheikh's house--the Old Fort--must be pulled down, as it would give grand cover for an attacking force.

He shook his head. "I daren't do that; it belongs to the Mir of Jask."

"If you don't pull it down, blow it up," I said, smiling. "You can tell him it was an accident."

All sorts of plans ran through my head. I suggested this and that--twenty different schemes--and rather swept Mr. Fisher off his feet with suggestions. "The first thing to do?" he asked, passing his hand nervously across his forehead, as if he only wanted to be told one thing at a time.

"Blow up the Old Fort!" I told him, and he promised to start right away, as soon as he could get hold of his people. He took me up on the roof of the signal station, where the big telescope stood on its tripod, and I had a grand view of the surroundings of Old Jask, eight miles away, and the wriggling track which led to it round swampy inlets of the sea; of the dreary wastes of sand stretching east and west as far as the eye could see till they lost themselves in the mountains; of the interminable telegraph-poles dwindling away in the distance along the shore line to the east'ard and to the west'ard (to our left as we looked down), of the little _Bunder Abbas_ under her now trim awnings, and of a cluster of dhows moored close to the new sheikh's fort and the village of New Jask.

From force of habit Mr. Fisher slued round the telescope and diligently searched the plains at the foot of the mountains, in whose ravines and valleys the wild tribesmen were concealed.

"Can't see a single band of them this morning," he said with much relief. "The _Bunder Abbas_ is the cause of that."

Afterwards I returned aboard her and sent Hartley, the signal-man, to the telegraph-station, so that I could communicate with Mr. Fisher and he with me at any time. I also sent Jaffa to Old Jask to try to obtain news in the bazaar there.

That done, I had a yarn with Mr. Scarlett. A great change had come over him since he had got rid of his snake bracelet. I am sure he was fatter; the lines in his face were certainly not so deep, nor his eyes so sunken. He had lost that furtive look in them and that vulture appearance. He received the news that I was going to stay here, and that there would probably be some fighting, with positive pleasure.

"Anything we can do to help the poor little lass sir! Now, a Maxim, that's what's wanted up there (pointing to a prominent corner on the flat roof of the main building); from there it could sweep the whole approach. We might lend 'em one of ours if it came to the pinch. Eh, sir?"

"Right oh!" I told him. "Directly we get permission to stay, you can mount one there."

Permission did come, Hartley semaphoring the telegram that very afternoon, and Mr. Scarlett waking me to give the good news. I could swear that he was as pleased as I was.

For the next few days I spent most of my time on shore, landing at sunrise and supervising, in a sort of way, the destruction of the ruined sheikh's house, and the strengthening of the breastwork and the wire entanglements. I say "in a sort of way", because neither Mr. Fisher nor I knew which of us should take entire charge of the defence preparations, with the result that there was a lot of unnecessary work done and some muddling. At any rate the one or two charges exploded in the walls of the Old Fort did not do much damage, and I did not care to interfere.

Meanwhile Mr. Scarlett busied himself preparing the corner of the roof of the telegraph buildings and placing big balks of timber behind the parapet to receive the mounting of a Maxim, if the occasion arose. In spite of the desertion of most of the servants, labour was plentiful, natives of all nationalities and shades of colour clamouring for a job. Many of them were Afghans and Baluchis, and probably were spies; but the only information they could give was that we were expecting an attack and preparing for it, which it was good for them to know. We set these people to work strengthening the barbed-wire fence and the "vegetable-marrow" trench.

At first I had most of my meals with Mr. Fisher and his wife--Miss Borsen never joined us. In fact, I never saw more of her than a flick of a skirt as she fled round a corner one day when I had appeared unexpectedly. She was so obviously avoiding me that it became most unpleasant, and later on I never went to the house unless I was obliged to do so.

This worried me a good deal--the fact of her refusing to forgive me, I mean---and took away a great deal of my enjoyment.

In spite of this the days went past very quickly. Hartley occasionally saw bands of mounted people wandering about the plains and the coast, but the telegraph-wire was untouched. Jaffa could report nothing more definite than a general feeling of uneasiness; trading dhows came and went, and, day after day, trains of camels and donkeys shuffled backwards and forwards through the eight miles of sand to Old Jask, loading or unloading them.

Indeed, the only exciting incident was the sudden bursting of a strong "shamel", which scattered the dhows and compelled me to raise steam and take shelter from it round the other side of the peninsula.

A fortnight passed, and the mail-steamer had called and left again without either of the two ladies. This time it was Mrs. Fisher who would not leave her husband, and Miss Borsen who would not leave Mrs. Fisher; so they both stayed--out of a mistaken and foolish sense of duty--much to Mr. Fisher's secret grief.

Then the blow fell, the morning after the steamer sailed.

Of course I always slept on board, and just as daylight was dawning I was awakened by hearing a tremendous fusillade. Mr. Scarlett and I jumped up, peering ashore in the direction from which the noise came, and saw a great number (a multitude they looked in the indistinct light) of people on camels streaming right along the peninsula, firing rifles as they rode, whilst a furious burst of firing farther away, in the direction of the new village and the New Fort, told us that another band must be attacking that.

The crew of the _Bunder Abbas_ were tumbling to their guns, and Mr. Scarlett jumped down on deck to see that everything was ready.

Fascinated, I watched that mad rush of shrieking, firing natives. Leaping off their camels, two or three hundred of them began advancing up the slope towards the telegraph building, stopping to fire, moving on, and stopping again.

"For God's sake get those guns going!" I yelled down.

"In a minute, sir, in a minute!" Mr. Scarlett's voice, calm and collected, came back.

I clutched the railings and gasped as I thought of those two women up there and wondered whether the door through the loopholed wall was closed or not--it was not light enough for me to see. If it was open--God help them!

By this time the leading Baluchis--or whatever they were--were almost up to the line of the barbed-wire; but then I was intensely relieved to hear a few shots popping off from the telegraph buildings, so knew that some of the people had had time to seize their rifles.

"What the devil has gone wrong? Why don't you open fire?" I bawled, as the first of the attacking party reached the barbed-wire. It stopped them for a moment, but then they began throwing their loose cloaks across it and scrambling over.

Now was our chance, and, mad with fury, I dashed down below, yelling to the six-pounder and Maxims' crews to open fire. Mr. Scarlett was not there, nor Moore. Someone told me they were below, aft, and I heard a smashing of woodwork, jumped down, and found them smashing open the door of the magazine. I seized a box of Maxim cartridge-belts and simply heaved it up through the hatchway. In a mad rush of Mr. Scarlett, myself, Moore, and two or three others we were on deck again with a box of six-pounder ammunition between us. As we dragged it forward the marines and Ellis, with his seamen, were pulling the Maxim belts through the breech-blocks; and as we wrenched off the cover of the six-pounder cartridge-box I saw that the crowd of Baluchis were already swarming over the line of breastworks. The long cartridge was thrown into the empty breech of the six-pounder, and as I darted up the ladder to the upper deck it fired. A moment later both Maxims opened too.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*The Siege of Jask*

Fortunately the _Bunder Abbas_ was lying broadside on to the shore, so that all three of her guns were able to bear on the ground leading up to the telegraph-station--about fourteen hundred yards away. I reached the upper deck and looked ashore just in time to see the first six-pounder shell bursting on the open slope, close to a group of fifty or sixty of the enemy, who had already reached the breastwork. Some had jumped down into the little trench, others were still clambering over the earthwork. Most of them were firing their rifles, though (as far as I could see through my glasses) without taking the trouble to aim--in fact they were practically firing in the air. As the shell burst among them they swerved aside, just as minnows do when you drop a stone among them, but still went on. Another shell made them swerve again and scatter a little more widely, but did not stop them. A Maxim was wanted--not shells.

Although both Maxims were firing very rapidly, Ellis and Webster did not seem able to find the range. This may have been due to excitement or the uncertain light. At any rate, from where I was I could see, quite plainly, the bullets tearing up the ground near the end of the barbed-wire fence, some two hundred yards this side of where the Baluchis were crossing it.

I yelled down that they were going short, and actually watched the furrows advancing until in another moment those streams of bullets had reached the poor wretches and simply ploughed lanes through them. These people made such a fine target that Ellis and Webster instinctively kept firing at them, and more time was lost before I could make one of them slue his gun round to support Moore's shells. When he did so, the rushing, yelling crowd, who were scrambling across and beyond the trench, seemed to melt away, and only a few were left alive--some to fall back into the trench, where they lay comparatively safely, and others to take refuge among the mat shed huts belonging to the telegraph employees--the huts I had so often implored Mr. Fisher to burn. Ellis--I think it was Ellis--was still "playing" the Maxim on the barbed fence, and was not able to see, or too excited to realize, that he was only firing on dead men lying heaped in masses, or sprawling singly over the fence. I shouted down to tell him not to waste more ammunition.

At this time there were not more than perhaps twenty of the enemy to be seen, and these were doing their best to escape, crawling and creeping, dodging towards those confounded huts.

I stopped the Maxims and ordered Moore to fire a few shells among the huts, hoping to set fire to them, or at any rate turn out the Baluchis taking shelter there. Before he could do this my fellows began shouting: "More are coming, sir; look, sir!" and I saw another horde of chaps dash out from the Old Fort and the dip in the ground round it, rushing up the slope as the others had done, but keeping away to their left, to avoid the mangled heaps of their tribesmen huddled near the barbed-wire fence.

They were already within fifty yards of the huts before we could swing our guns round, only to discover that whilst they kept on the far side of the slope the curvature of the ground protected them to a certain extent, and we could not reach them easily. Only their heads could we see, their heads and their arms brandishing rifles.

We let rip at them without doing much damage, if any, for I never saw the rush waver. But then they came to the barbed fence, and climbing over it they made a better target. They must have suffered horribly, but at least a hundred passed it and disappeared among those huts to join the remnant of the first rush.

I guessed what would happen. Directly they had regained breath the whole crowd would dash for the loopholed wall.

I yelled for everybody to "stand by" and train their guns on the upper slope.

"They'll be in the open in a minute!" I shouted, and glued my glasses to my eyes. It was quite light now. Turning for a moment to the telegraph-station, I saw Hartley trying to semaphore something from the top corner. Rifles were poking out through the loopholes, and, thank goodness, that door in the wall was shut.

Shooting was still going on everywhere--one could not distinguish exactly from where.

"Drop a shell among the huts and turn 'em out," I called down. "Stand by with the Maxims to follow them when they break cover."

Moore fired twice. Then, as I expected, a regular horde of Baluchis rushed out from among the huts, yelling and firing their rifles, making a most appalling din as they swarmed up the slope.

But they were in full view and entirely exposed. The Maxims swept through them; the six-pounder scattered bits of iron and stones amongst them and tumbled many over like rabbits. But we could not stop them all, and before I realized it the wave of men--thinned, it is true, but still numerous--had swept to the foot of the white, loopholed wall itself. The desperate savages were leaping up to grab the top, climbing on each other's backs, poking their rifles through the loopholes, and hammering at the door with their rifle butts. And at this very time the Maxims stopped firing; so did the six-pounder.

I dashed below.

"Go on!" I shouted. "Go on! Why the devil ain't you firing?"

"We'll hit the telegraph people, sir!" they called.

"Don't worry about them--fire--fire--carry on the Maxims," I yelled, "or they'll be inside in a moment."

I cared not a rap whether we killed all the telegraph people, so long as we kept the Baluchis outside. Miss Borsen wouldn't be anywhere near the wall, so we should not hurt her.

The Maxims began pumping out more lead--by good fortune they worked splendidly, the belts jerking through like lightning--and in less time than it has taken me to write this the Baluchis had begun to fall back. Once they were clear of the wall Moore opened on them with shell, and though these shells do very little damage in the open they kept them on the run whilst more Maxim belts were being slipped in.

They fled back to the huts almost too quickly for the guns to follow them. From the rear of the huts they burst forth, trying to keep out of sight; but as they came to the wire-fence they had to climb over it, and one of the Maxims was waiting for them and played terrible havoc. The remnant simply flew down--their heads showing beyond the contour of the slope--till they disappeared among the date-palm trees round the Old Fort.

My fellows began to cheer--they had been too busy before--and the lascars and all the other natives danced about and cheered too--Percy wildly excited; all except of course the cook and his mate, who were busy preparing the men's cocoa, and were apparently still contemplating their usual early suicide directly the saucepans had been cleaned again.

Jaffa, left to himself, had been firing a rifle. He looked pleased and happy. As for Mr. Scarlett, he was beaming.

"Drove 'em 'Balooks' back all right, sir!" he said, rubbing his hands. "They've learnt a lesson or two, those poor wretched devils," and he jerked his thumb towards the open sloping ground, which now looked as if a fierce gust had blown the washing out of a laundry and distributed it unevenly over the ground.

I asked him what had been the matter at first, and why he had broken down the doors of the magazine. He told me that as Moore had run aft with the key he had dropped it overboard in his excitement. This was Moore all over. Just like the idiot he was!

We now had time to look towards the village and the New Fort.

Only a very occasional shot came from that direction, and through our glasses we saw that the parapets and battlements were black with figures, so knew that the Baluchis had captured it. The trading dhows were being hauled off-shore and were putting to sea, their crews working desperately to save them from falling into the hands of the Baluchis; the bay was full of their frightened cries as they hoisted their clumsy sails and tried to gain safety.

Just then bullets began to fall round us, and soon we were under a brisk, long-range fire--apparently from the fugitives round the Old Fort. It was so badly aimed that it was hardly enough to disturb us but a badly-aimed bullet is just as dangerous as a well-aimed one--if it happens to find a billet. So whilst the Maxim crews were getting up more ammunition and reloading belts, I made Moore throw a few shells close to the Old Fort. The first few they stood but at the seventh we had the gratification of seeing them bolt back into a fold of the ground close to the landing-place on the other side of the peninsula. They drove their frightened camels into this shelter and were safe from any tokens of "esteem" we could send them.

Just then someone called my attention to the telegraph buildings. I looked and saw the door in the loopholed wall thrown open, and men began filing out and racing down the slope--a man in pyjamas leading them. It was Mr. Fisher. Why they were coming out goodness only knows; but down they ran, apparently with the idea of manning the trench and breastwork. They had almost reached it before I remembered that some of the enemy might possibly be there still; and, sure enough, as the leading ones leapt into the trench on one side, I saw thirty or forty Baluchis, who had been hidden from us on the other side, spring up, fire point-blank, and leap over, dropping their rifles and slashing with swords as they jumped down among them. We could not possibly give assistance; we could not fire into the melee, and stood stock-still, holding our breath, watching the hand-to-hand struggle. It probably did not last fifty seconds, though it seemed more like fifty minutes, and at last the telegraph staff began to retreat uphill. Luckily very few--not half a dozen--followed them; the rest contenting themselves with lying down and firing.

Mr. Scarlett, without orders, took the risk and fired a shell among this lot, and made them scramble over the breastwork again out of sight. The others stopped as well and came back.

Mr. Fisher, in his pyjamas, tried to lead his people to charge down once more; but they would not follow him. Instead, they fell back inside the loopholed wall--the white figure being the last to enter--and I breathed again when the door was once more closed.

We now had all we could do to prevent the _Bunder Abbas_ being damaged by the fleeing dhows. Their crews had quite lost their heads. One fouled us amidships and tore a stanchion out before she drifted clear; another, having cut her "grass" hawser cable, drifted helplessly right across our bows, with our little cable tautening under her bottom. Every single soul of us was trying to shove her free, and I had to veer cable before she eventually scraped past, hanging up for a moment as her projecting stern caught in the stem-post and carried away another stanchion, which let the whole fore part of the awning fall over the six-pounder gun--and over us too. If only the Baluchis had taken advantage of this moment we could have done nothing. Luckily the poor wretches were disheartened, or perhaps they never even saw their chance.

Away inshore, by the New Fort, there was much yelling and screaming. The whole village was humming like a hive of bees disturbed--the inhabitants fleeing along the beach and staggering under their valuables, until some shots, apparently from the New Fort, fell among them, when they dropped their burdens and fled all the faster. The enemy in that fort commanded the track to Old Jask, and these poor wretches had to make a great circuit before they could hope to reach safety.

Honestly, I had not imagined that an attack would have been delivered with so little warning. As Mr. Scarlett said: "It was not at all like their usual way of doing things." They ought to have come along in the daylight, settled themselves across the base of the peninsula, and then sent in a messenger to ask for a ransom, failing which they would storm the place. That had always been the custom in this part of the world, so both Jaffa and Mr. Scarlett assured me.

It was not very flattering to our own military instincts and preparation for defence to realize that if they had not begun firing their rifles almost before they had reached the neck of the peninsula, and long before they ever commenced to dismount from their camels to charge up the slope, they must have taken the telegraph-station by surprise. We should have heard or seen nothing until too late; and I really went cold "all over", to think what would have happened inside those walls with the _Bunder Abbas_ absolutely powerless to interfere. I knew now, though I did not know it before, that none of these people can control themselves; they must let off their rifles to work up their courage to the charging-point, and must continue wasting ammunition to keep it there.

The extraordinary thing was that Jaffa had ridden nearly twenty miles inland only yesterday, and had actually visited several villages at the foot of the mountains, without obtaining any warning whatever.

Hartley began signalling again from the top of the roof.

"Two men killed and two missing," I read. "Mr. Fisher wishes to know if you can clear the trench. There are fifty or sixty of the enemy still there?"

I'd forgotten them.

I called out to Mr. Scarlett and asked him whether he thought we could turn them out with shell and Maxims. We both agreed that we could not do so without expending more ammunition than we could afford.

"Right oh! We shall have to land and drive 'em out!" I said.

He was very anxious to come with me.

"Don't leave me this time, sir," he pleaded, and I could not help but wonder at the change which had come over him.

He saw my look of surprise and burst out with: "I am a different man now, sir; I feel a different being altogether since I got rid of that," and he touched his left arm. I shook my head and told him that he would have all he could do to keep the main body back if they had the heart to come along again.

I semaphored to Hartley to tell Mr. Fisher to keep up a fire on the trench, so as to occupy the minds of those chaps still there, and in half an hour landed in the dinghy, just below some rocks at the end of the barbed-wire fences, with Webster, Jones, and Gamble. Sending the dinghy back for Ellis, Andrews, and Griffiths, we dashed to the top of the beach and lay down between the end of the fence and the breastwork. Until they came it was a very ticklish position to be in; for if those fifty or so "Balooks" had spotted us, and had the "heart of a worm", they might have "done for" all three of us.

We lay there absolutely motionless, glued to the ground, whilst the noise of casual firing from above told us that the telegraph people were doing what I'd asked them--firing at the trench farther along. Not a hundred yards from us rifles began answering them. It was a great relief when the dinghy came back and Ellis, Griffiths, and Andrews joined us.

Then we rose, fixing bayonets and rushing up and across the open to the wretched breastwork, much too excited to worry about how many chaps we should find there. I knew that the trench had no traverses--we had never thought them necessary; so once we scrambled over and into it we should be able to sweep the whole length of it with our rifles.

We just caught sight of the ghastly heaps of dead lying at the foot of the fence a little farther along, some actually leaning over as if they were alive. Then we saw some live Baluchis lying down on our side of the breastwork, too busily engaged plugging at the loopholed wall to think of danger behind them.

Directly we saw them we yelled--we could not restrain ourselves any longer--and as we rushed for them they saw our bayonets, squealed with fright, and leapt across the breastwork into the trench. We were after them in a moment, each racing to be first, jumping the breastwork with a bound, and seeing them flying helter-skelter to the far end. I jumped clean on a wounded man, who wriggled up and tried to slash at me with a sword; but I was away before the blow touched me. We simply emptied our magazines into these chaps and they never gave us a chance to close. A few fell, but our aim was too wild to account for many, and most of them scrambled out, over, and down towards the barbed-wire, like a lot of rabbits making for their "bury". We knocked over one or two as they flung themselves over the wires, and the rest simply dashed down the slope to join the main body hidden in the hollow.

A faint cheer came from the loopholed wall, and I heard a cry of disgust from my own men. Looking back I saw them bending over the corpse of what had been one of the Eurasian telegraph people. It was horribly mutilated.

A little farther on another lay dead, mutilated in the same hideous manner. It made me sick to look at them.

In fact the whole place was a shambles. There must have been nearly a hundred--perhaps more--bodies dotted about in little white heaps near the fence and the breastwork, the heaps being more scattered between the breastwork and the wall where the Maxim had caught them in their final rush. Along the foot of the wall corpses lay singly. What grand-looking men they were, too, with fierce high-bred faces. It was a horrid business.

The edge of civilization! Yes! I was there again, and the only satisfaction this slaughter gave was the knowledge of what the fate of those two poor frightened women would have been had the attack succeeded.

I don't want, in this yarn, to worry anyone with the thoughts which flashed through my head on this or that occasion, but I should like to write just this and have done with it. To stand quietly, as I was doing then, on that slope where not many minutes previously four or five hundred raging men in the prime of life had rushed up with the one idea in their souls to "kill or die", "kill or die", and to see now the huddled, white-cloaked figures lying all round, so calm and still and dignified by death, made me feel wearily sad.

It was my duty to kill them--I was sent there, on the edge of civilization, to do so--and it had fallen to my lot to do it. "Kismet!"

It was only one more wave of fanatical, unthinking, misdirected barbarism broken again as it tried to wash back the advance of civilization, and civilization cannot and must not cease to roll back such waves, in the eternal progress of the world. I remembered the day I had walked so jauntily out of the Admiralty with every contempt for the roar and bustle of traffic and trade, and every nerve tingling with delight at soon leaving it for the edge of civilization; and now that I was there, and had done a man's work with the tools and engines of war which civilization had put in my hand, I was neither pleased nor proud.

It was all too cruel, too brutal, all so meaningless and useless a waste of life. These men had died because we prevented them, by every means in our power, from obtaining more rifles. They only wanted them to carry on their family and tribal blood feuds, to raid other tribes, and to shoot our own soldiers across the Indian frontier. But to these poor wretches this was their whole duty in life, and they knew that the telegraph-cable was one of their chief enemies--it could give warning of attempts to land arms; it could summon ships from below the horizon to prevent them being landed: so they had laid down their lives in the endeavour to destroy it, and had left their waiting wives to teach their fatherless children black hatred of the white man, and to bring them up with the one idea, later on, when they were big enough to hold a rifle, of trying to revenge their fathers' deaths and beat back--in their turn--advancing civilization.

Standing among all these heaped-up corpses I could not help thinking what a wailing there would be when these grand men did not return to their village fastnesses in those grim mountains standing up like a huge wall against the horizon.

A rifle suddenly went off close to me. Turning, I saw Webster open his breech and jerk out a cartridge.

"A wounded chap tried to stab me, sir," he said in explanation.

That was the worst part of it. The wounded never expected anything but death, and wanted revenge before they died. It was not the slightest use trying to attend to their wounds, in fact it was dangerous to go anywhere near a man, even though he looked as dead as a stone--he might only be pretending to be dead and waiting his opportunity for you to get close. I ought to have given orders for my men to go round and shoot every one with any sign of life in him, but this I absolutely refused to do. The poor, ignorant wretches should have the chance of crawling down among their own people--if they could.

I called my men away, and, carefully avoiding every patch of tumbled, distorted bodies, went up to speak to Mr. Fisher, whom I saw coming towards me--still in his pyjamas--a revolver in his hand.

He was quite cool. "Thank you very much!" he said simply.

"How is Miss Borsen," I asked eagerly, "and your wife?" but he did not know. He had not seen them since the first alarm.

"What will these Baluchi chaps do now?" I asked.

"Baluchis!" he said. "Most of them are Afghans, the real fighting Afghan; there are only a sprinkling of Baluchis. I don't know what they will do, but they've had such a lesson that they'll probably be off again to the hills to-night. I've sent off a wire to Duckworth to tell him that we've been attacked and that you beat them off by fire from your launch."

He seemed undecided what to do. He still hesitated about burning those confounded huts which had already caused so much trouble. He did not want to irritate the employees who lived there, and kept on saying: "We'll wait till the morning; there probably won't be a sign of them then."

But he gladly accepted my offer to mount one of my Maxims on top of the station, and I went back to the _Bunder Abbas_ with my people to send it ashore as quickly as possible.

Already some at least of the Afghans were recovering their fright, for as we marched down to the beach we came in for a sharp "sniping", and Jones the marine was shot through the arm. He dropped his rifle and swore at Gamble, thinking he had struck him; then he looked at the place, shook his fist towards the Old Fort, picked up his rifle with the other hand, and came on.

It was the same arm which had been hit during the engagement with the Afghans at Bungi whilst we were trying to get old Popple Opstein out of his trap.

Once aboard the _Bunder Abbas_ I took charge and sent Mr. Scarlett ashore with the Maxim.

He was delighted to go, unshipped it and lowered it, with two thousand rounds of ammunition, into the dinghy, and set off ashore with Jackson and Ellis to help him.

Some of the telegraph coolies were waiting to carry it up the slope, and as I ate some breakfast which Percy had ready for me, and afterwards smoked my pipe, I watched the three of them busy mounting it at the corner of the parapet.

Before leaving the _Bunder Abbas_ I had ordered steam to be raised, and directly the lascar first-driver reported the engines ready I signalled to Mr. Fisher that I intended to steam round to the other side of the peninsula and try to teach the enemy another lesson.

This I did, and, as I expected, found them totally unprepared for my approach. They must have seen the _Bunder Abbas_ getting under way and steaming out, but possibly imagined that she was going to sea. At any rate, as I suddenly appeared round the head of the peninsula and the rocks there, I found them crowded together, almost on the shore, among their camels.

They appeared to be asleep, but woke with a fright when Moore let rip a shell among them.

As they rose to their feet I turned the _Bunder Abbas_ round and gave them a taste of the Maxim as well.

They had had one lesson at daybreak; they now, at midday, had a still harder one. It was pure, undiluted slaughter; but, though sickening, was absolutely necessary. They fled helter-skelter inland, leaving their camels to fend for themselves, rushing behind the ruins of the Old Fort, and, when a couple of shells drove them out of that, flying panic-stricken in a long straggling line--the devil take the hindmost--through the sand-dunes towards the mainland, many of them making a long detour in the direction of the New Fort. What I did hate to see was the poor, wretched, wounded camels hobbling about, falling down, and struggling to their feet again.

Having cleared this side of the peninsula I went back and anchored at my old billet. From there I could see the remnant of the enemy huddled round the walls of the New Fort. I might have stirred them with a few more shells, but did not. Mr. Scarlett signalled presently that the Maxim was mounted and ready, so I ordered him to bring Jackson back to the ship; Ellis and Hartley between them would be able to work it, and I was too short-handed already to spare anyone else. Mr. Scarlett was very pleased with himself and with the splendid fire zone which the Maxim he had just mounted could sweep. He had seen the ladies, and said that though they were very white they seemed fairly cheerful.

I asked if they'd sent any message to me.

"Mrs. Fisher did, sir, but I'm hanged if I remember what it was exactly."

"Did Miss Borsen?" I asked, trying to hide my nervous anxiety to know whether perhaps what had occurred might have made her show signs of forgiving me.

I felt miserable when he shook his head. "Not as I remember, sir."

There were two things that troubled him: those confounded huts, which rather interfered with his beloved Maxim, and that breastwork. He pointed out that there were not nearly enough men to defend the breastwork, and that it formed admirable cover for an attacking force.

"We ought to level it in, that we ought," he said, shaking his head.

Of course he was right. Hadn't we seen what had happened that very morning?

"Mr. Fisher expects them to clear away back to the hills to-night," I told him. "What do you think?"

He shook his head again. "They don't seem to be carrying out their usual routine; not a bit of it. They ought to retire--that is, if experience is anything to go by. I don't like the look of them occupying the fort; it looks as if they meant to stay."

When I asked him whether he thought the Mir of Old Jask would attack them, and endeavour to recapture his fort, he only made a grimace.

All that afternoon there was absolute quiet except for an occasional shot from the New Fort and also a few shots fired on the slope itself, where the telegraph coolies were busy dragging the dead into heaps and burning them. These last shots told me that some of the wounded Afghans had had to be dispatched.

Mr. Scarlett was so anxious for me to try to get a "move on" Mr. Fisher about burning the huts and levelling the breastworks that I went ashore later in the day and again urged him to do this.

Nothing I could say could make him realize the necessity. "I am certain they'll all have cleared away home by to-morrow morning. We'll wait till then. Besides, I dare not overwork the coolies. If I do they will desert," was all I could get out of him.

I suggested that it might be advisable to send Mrs. Fisher and Miss Borsen on board the _Bunder Abbas_ for the night; but he declined for the same reason as he declined everything else--that he expected the Afghans to disappear before morning.

"Do you know that you are responsible for much of this?" he said, as he walked backwards and forwards with me outside the loopholed wall.

"Responsible! What do you mean?"

"Why," he said, "they all know of the loss of that huge caravan over on the Muscat coast--the one you and the _Intrepid_ captured between you. It they had got those rifles and all that ammunition through to the Indian frontier there would have been another 'rising' there. They were only waiting for them before giving the signal to the tribes along a hundred miles of the frontier to pour down through the passes and lay waste the valleys and murder the tribes living there under British protection. They all know this, and to-day they have been trying to revenge themselves for their lost opportunity. I've seen among the killed several men I know: powerful sheikhs, Arabs from the other coast, leading men from Afghan villages. It is a bigger business than I thought at first.

"However, they will probably be gone by the morning, and you may pride yourself that but for your capturing that big caravan the other day, the Indian Government would have had another little war on its hands.

"Oh," he added, "I'd almost forgotten! I had a wire from Muscat. The _Intrepid_ has gone off up the coast after some more arms."

I went back to the _Bunder Abbas_ rather elated at the idea that I had helped to stop a little war, and remembered what Commander Duckworth had said: "They ought to do something for you." It was rather early to expect promotion, but it would be grand if it came.

"Can't budge him," I told Mr. Scarlett. "He still thinks they'll have gone back home by the morning. The _Intrepid_ has gone after some more arms so we shan't be disturbed till she gets back. That's one good bit of news."

Just before sunset a small dhow came drifting slowly into the bay. She was flying the Muscat red flag and did not seem to notice anything unusual, or that the anchorage was deserted of shipping, so I sent Jaffa across to warn her nakhoda of what was happening. Jaffa came back to say that he was very grateful and would put to sea again, but had several passengers for Old Jask who preferred to land and would take shelter at the telegraph-station until things were quiet. I saw them later on--three cloaked figures--land on the beach and make their way up towards the loopholed wall.

We also saw numerous little spirals of blue smoke rising into the air round the walls of the New Fort, so knew that the tribesmen were preparing food; and Hartley, just about this time, signalled that he could see a large mass of mounted people moving across the plains in our direction. This did not worry us. We, Mr. Scarlett and I, were quite happy. From what he told me it was out of the question that, even though they did not retreat that night, they would attempt an attack. Their ideas of war and sieges were to attack at dawn; it was a tradition to attack at dawn, and seldom had they been known to attack at any other time.

The sun was setting now in its usual magnificence; everything--the rocks, the telegraph-station over them, the sandy shores, the walls of the New Fort, were flooded with delicate rose tints. The mountains behind and the few wisps of clouds overhanging them were suffused with the same delicate colours, and out from behind them rose the moon--nearly full--and we knew that directly the sun's light vanished her light would take its place and enable us to defeat any attack (almost inconceivable) that the Afghans might attempt.

We only had to keep vigilant watch, and if they tried to rush the slope again we should see the white-cloaked figures as plainly as in daytime.

I kept the first watch that night, Griffiths with me. At about ten o'clock flames burst out ashore, in the direction of the New Fort, and soon it was evident that the whole of the village was on fire. It was a grand spectacle as the flames spread from hut to hut, leaping high in the air, lighting up the walls of the fort, even the white walls of the telegraph buildings, and making the water of the bay and the brasswork of the _Bunder Abbas_ glow red.

The flames and crackling were still fierce when Mr. Scarlett relieved me at midnight. In his opinion the Afghans had set the huts on fire purposely, and were probably retreating inland under cover of the heavy cloud of smoke which lay above them.

I had four hours in which to sleep, so, stretching myself on my bed, I lay down on that little upper deck outside our cabin, leaving him and Gamble to keep the "middle" watch.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*Jassim Takes his Revenge*

At four o'clock in the morning Mr. Scarlett shook me and reported all quiet and the fire on shore dying down. I scrambled to my feet to take over the "morning" watch, feeling as fresh and wakeful as though I had not been to sleep for a fortnight!

The moonlight was very brilliant, so brilliant, indeed, that the telegraph buildings on the dark rocks and the New Fort on the white sand stood out quite as boldly as in the daytime; and all that could be seen of the remains of the fire was a glowing line of red-hot ashes extending along the beach, where the village had been.

The slope leading up to the loopholed wall was so flooded with light that I could distinguish even the barbed-wire fence and the shadows of the wires and uprights.

Of the Afghans themselves nothing whatever could be made out; but this did not imply that they had gone away, because most of them might be sleeping inside the fort and the others behind it, and at the base of the peninsula the fringe of date-palms threw such extremely dark, puzzling shadows that the camels might have been concealed among these, or even been driven farther along behind the sand-hills without our having noticed any movement.

At any rate, whatever had or had not happened, I was not going to leave anything to chance, or take any risks: so the rest of the hands were called and stood to their guns; cocoa was served out; and to make sure that Ellis and Hartley were on the alert I made a flashing signal to them. As it was answered I knew that they, too, were "standing by" their Maxim.

After this there was nothing to do but strain our eyes shorewards and wait for daylight. In the half-hour when the increasing light of dawn is absorbing the light of the moon and rendering the outlines of objects uncertain and ill defined, this waiting for an attack is always most scaring. It makes no difference how often one experiences this feeling of acute tension, it always seems to occupy one so completely that not a soul moves or speaks; even breathing is a difficult matter, and breaths come in deep jerks, only when they can be held no longer.

But if the strain is great when the moon is there to help, it is ten times as great when there is no moon and the first glimmer of daylight distorts everything so strangely and forms such strange weird shapes.

How grateful we were to the moon that morning!

Daylight did come at last. The fading shadows under the fringe of date-palm trees showed us hundreds of motionless lumps which gradually outlined themselves into camels; figures began moving about among them, and out from the door of the fort streamed many more to kneel on the sand, facing the glory of the rising sun, throw their arms above their heads, and bend at their devotions.

This might only be the preliminary to an attack; so still we remained at our guns, until the sight of many little spirals of blue smoke rising in the calm morning air, and the little groups of men seated round them--evidently cooking--made it absolutely certain that they did not intend any such thing--not that morning.

"That finishes the business," Mr. Scarlett said, drawing a deep breath, and letting it out again with a jerk.

We had been so certain--Mr. Scarlett and I--that they would have done the one thing or the other, and now they had done neither; they had simply stayed where they were, in complete possession of the base of the peninsula, and entirely cutting it off from any assistance from Old Jask.

Mr. Scarlett shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. He could not understand these tactics.

"It ain't like 'em, sir; it ain't like anything I've seen or heard of before, and I don't care about it," he said, as I dismissed the men from the guns to get their breakfasts and scrub decks.

Whilst they were doing this we were startled suddenly by the sound of rifle firing, a long way off, in the direction of Old Jask, and drawing rapidly nearer. Without waiting for the order, the crew tumbled up from below to their guns, but no one could see anything happening. At first we made sure that another band of Afghans were attacking the old town; but this could not be so, because the people round the New Fort seemed even more startled than we had been. They sprang to their feet, seized their rifles, and whilst some began to "round up" the camels, driving them close to the wall, others poured into the fort itself.

Whilst we were wondering what all this meant, the battlements of the fort became alive with dark turbans; puffs of smoke darted out from them, and the reports of their rifles came across to us. At what they were firing we could neither see nor guess.

At last, after firing had been going on continuously for four or five minutes, Mr. Scarlett saw a cloud of dust, and, looking in the direction of his finger, I made out a number of mounted men--some on horses, others on camels--advancing over the plain from Old Jask. Spurts of light, showing in the cloud of sand dust over their heads, told us that it was from them we had heard the first firing.

"It's the old Mir's border police coming to recapture the fort," Mr. Scarlett sang out. "Now you'll see some pretty fighting. Just remember, sir, that they are mostly Bedouins from the other coast, and they and the Afghans hate each other like poison. Now watch what's going to happen."

I did; we all did.

The line of men came charging up to the base of the peninsula, sweeping away to the right and wheeling round the bend of the swamp lying there, until they were not more than two thousand yards from the fort. Firing from both parties was continuous. Then for a moment I lost sight of them behind some sand-hills, and expected, when next they appeared, to find that they had dismounted, left their horses and camels in rear of those sand-hills, and were attacking properly--with short rushes or something of that sort--although I was puzzled to think what they could effect against the thick walls of the fort.

Instead of this they reappeared in sight--in somewhat looser formation certainly, but still mounted--and galloped madly along the intervening sand, firing rapidly, whilst the fusillade from the parapet and towers of the fort swelled furiously, and the people who had driven the camels under cover of the walls lay down to fire as well.

The attacking party came to five hundred yards--to three hundred; none of them seemed to have been hit. Still they galloped, the men on camels bringing up the rear left far behind. Then the horsemen suddenly divided into two parties, and, yelling and firing their rifles, they circled completely round the fort, enveloping it, meeting in the rear of it, and dashing round again. A continuous splutter of musketry burst out from the walls above their heads, without, as far as we could see, doing the faintest damage. In fact, the firing was so wild that a good many bullets began falling round us, and one banged against the funnel close to where I was standing.

The circling rings of horsemen grew larger as they curveted and pranced in the clouds of dust kicked up by their own horses' hoofs, until they all swooped off like a flock of birds and gathered in a knot about half a mile from the fort; whereupon the firing died down almost completely. Every now and then a horseman darted out from among them, dashed towards the fort, gave a display of horsemanship, fired his rifle, performed some circus tricks, and then dashed back again.

I was so interested and amused that I forgot that the fort was well within range of our six-pounder.