"The work is with us; the event is with Allah."
—Kipling.

"Shade, water, grass . . . Not half a bad place for a picnic, eh, Major? And I hope that plausible-looking scoundrel, talking to Norton, has provided a decent breakfast for us. Five hours of marching in this air puts an edge on a fellow's appetite."

Richardson's remark was addressed to Desmond,—now a Major of six months' standing,—whose practised eye was critically surveying the camping-ground assigned by the local magnate, Nussar Ali Khan, to the seven British officers and their handful of native troops.

The site chosen was the topmost of two wide terraces descending to a stream, from whose farther bank a great hill rose abruptly, dark with pine and ilex, and cleft into a formidable nullah. On the right, flat house-tops of a walled native village overlooked the terrace, with its inviting group of trees, beneath which breakfast was in preparation. On the left another elevation, crowned with huts; behind them an open field, sloping to a ten-foot wall; and above the wall the ubiquitous watch-tower of the Border glowered like a frown upon the face of peace. The impedimenta of the little force,—transport, field-hospital, and camp-followers,—still trailed along a narrow lane leading from the kotal[1] over which they had come, to the terrace itself. Already grey films of wood-smoke soared, plume-like, into the blue; and the air at ten of the morning was still keen with the sharpness of a small frost at high altitudes.

"Not half a bad place for a picnic," Desmond admitted mentally; though for several reasons, this man,—who was a Frontier soldier by instinct and heritage,—would scarcely have chosen it himself.

But stringent military precautions were no part of the programme: Norton's escort of half a squadron, two guns, and five hundred Sikhs and Punjabis, being little more than a necessary appendage to a peaceful visitation. Such commonplaces of Frontier government as the enforcing of a fine, and the choosing of a site for an outpost manned by friendly tribesmen, was unlikely to cause friction or stir up strife; and Norton, standing apart from the group of officers in khaki, was listening politely to Nussar Ali Khan and his friends,—some half a dozen Maliks from the fortified villages scattered among the hills. Spare, muscular men, all of them, in peaked caps and turbans, sheep-skin coats, and voluminous trousers, girded by the formidable Pathan belt, with its pouches, dagger, and straight-handled sword; their bearded faces lighted up, as they talked, by flashes of white teeth; most of them towering half a head above the squarely-built Englishman, with the jaw of a bull-dog and the eyes of a hawk, who understood their language, their strange mingling of courage and cruelty, of simplicity and cunning, as a man only understands that to which he has devoted a lifetime of labour and thought.

Lower down, under the lee of the village wall, a local jirgah[2] sat watching the influx of troops with non-committal indifference, waiting to come forward and protest their devotion to the White Queen and the Burra Sahib; their entire readiness to be bound over by the Maliks' proposals, and, in effect, to behave themselves till next time! The utmost guarantee of good conduct that will ever be wrung out of the lawless sons of the North-western hills.

"It is enough, Khan Sahib," Norton said at length, cutting short a string of compliments that he knew by heart. "Let the jirgah come to me and make their statement while breakfast is preparing."

But the Khan, indicating with a sweep of his arm the limitless time at their disposal, declared that a matter so trifling could very well wait till the Presence and the officer Sahibs had refreshed themselves.

"It is well known among our people, HazÚr," he concluded, "that your Honour regardeth not food or rest when work remaineth to be done. But the matter hath already been peacefully settled with these men. Moreover, there be the officer Sahibs also, desiring breakfast; and my son hath commanded everything of the best for your Honour's reception: even wood and grass in abundance, that labour might be spared."

Having struck camp before six that morning, Norton needed no further pressing: and ten minutes later the eight Englishmen were breakfasting heartily on provisions that atoned in quantity for lack of quality.

Besides Desmond and the Gunners, the Deputy Commissioner, who knew how to pick his men, had secured Unwin and Montague with the Sikhs, a smart subaltern with the Punjab Infantry, and Courtenay as medical officer. Behind them, sepoys and sowars, keeping their arms by Colonel Montague's orders, smoked or slept at their ease. Sentries had been told off; pickets posted in front and rear; the screw guns unlimbered, and stationed with their infantry escort on rising ground at the far end of the field. Scattered groups of villagers, appearing on walls and house-tops and on the hill to the left, squatted on their heels, watching the mild tamasha with evident interest, and exchanging broad sallies of wit with the sepoys by way of adding flavour to the entertainment.

Pipes, cigars, and a pleasant sense of wellbeing followed the meal.

"I congratulate you, Norton," Montague remarked between pulls at a stumpy briar that was consoling him for muscular fowl and curried leather. "Your Wolves of the Khanigoram are behaving like Sunday-school children at a prize giving! We can fix the site for the post when we've rested a bit longer, and start back this afternoon, eh?"

"Yes, by all means. I have only to settle matters with the jirgah."

"Thank goodness, I'm booked for first leave," the other continued conversationally. He was a plump, well-cared-for little man, hampered by half a dozen boys and girls clamouring for education at home, and was beginning to lose his taste for scratch picnics across the Border. "This sort of thing sets one hankering for the hills. I suppose you won't be doing wonders up Tibet way this year, Lenox? Metal more attractive, and all that sort of thing, eh?"

"Yes, I shall stick to the Battery for the present," Lenox answered, ignoring the playful allusion: and Richardson, detecting annoyance in the tone, put in his own oar deftly enough.

"Unwin's the lucky beggar. When do you sail, old chap?"

"To-day fortnight, praise the powers! No more dancing attendance on Waziris for eighteen good months to come." He stretched his cramped legs contentedly. "Those Johnnies on the wall seem to be getting bored with our show. We ought to have brought a couple of banjos along to amuse their majesties!"

It was true. Gradually, by twos and threes, the villagers were melting away: and Desmond, who was leaning against a tree trunk close to Norton, helmet tilted over his nose, apparently half asleep, touched the civilian's arm.

"I say, Norton," he said under his breath. "Take your oath it's all square?"

Norton looked round sharply.

"My dear man, we've eaten their food. Ever know a Pathan commit a breach of hospitality?"

"No. But it looks queer."

For by now their audience had practically disappeared. The village wall was empty, save for one crouching figure, that sprang suddenly and silently to its full height, and brandished a bared sword: the blade flashing like a helio in the strong light.

"What's the mutlub[3] of that theatrical interlude?" Richardson demanded with a laugh; and was answered by a signal shot from the watch-tower behind.

In a flash all eight of them were on their feet: Montague and Lenox shouting to their men to 'fall in.'

The order was obeyed with incredible promptness. But the Waziris had the advantage of playing a prepared game; and before the officers had time to disperse a murderous fire was poured upon them from all sides at once: from the village, the watch-tower, and the huts on the left. Swift as magic the walls bristled with picked marksmen, armed with matchlocks, Winchesters, and Martini Henry's stolen from Border sentries: and it was clear that the enemy held the nullah in great strength.

"Massacre, by God!" Desmond muttered between his teeth as he dodged a whizzing bullet, while a second glanced off his brass buckle, and buried itself in the tree behind him.

Colonel Montague, advancing to meet his men, who came forward at the double, fell, mortally wounded, with two bullets through his body. He staggered to his feet; only to fall again, face downward, as Desmond and Courtenay hurried up to him, and—covered by the fire of his Sikhs—carried him into comparative safety behind a stack of bhusa,[4] within reach of the ambulance; his bugler following close at their heels.

"I'm done for," he panted, as they laid him down. "Make the best job you can of me; and prop me . . against the stack. I'll direct operations . . while I can . . hold out."

There was clearly nothing else to be done; and while Courtenay obeyed the dying man's injunctions, Desmond made haste to join his own sowars, who were already doing smart work with their rifles, under Ressaldar Rajinder Singh.

By now the din was terrific. It was as if a special department of hell had been suddenly opened up. Firing had become general from all the surrounding hills; for an attack of this kind, once started, speedily degenerates into a matter of ghazÁ.[5] Every moment brought fresh reinforcements to the Waziris; every moment their fire grew hotter; and every moment, through the rattle of musketry and the yells of the tribesmen, came the deep-throated duet of the sturdy little screw-guns under the wall, as they pitched shell after shell into the nullah, from whose depths a hidden foe responded with pitiless accuracy and vigour.

For, simultaneously with Montague's advance, Lenox and Richardson had doubled to their guns through a hailstorm of humming, leaping bullets. One, passing through Lenox's coat-sleeve, grazed his upper arm; while a second struck Richardson's breast-pocket, and was only prevented from wounding him mortally by a pad of first-aid bandages which Courtenay had served out to him, in joke, two days earlier. Reaching the guns unscathed, they found the gunners at their posts, the infantry escort blazing merrily and effectively at the marksmen on the wall: and at once opened fire on the nullah with case-shot and shell.

But their height and exposed position rendered them too conspicuous to be missed for long by an enemy whose skill in picking off British officers makes the little wars of the Frontier such cruelly costly affairs. In less than two minutes, a burning pain near his shoulder-blade told Lenox he was hit. But not being disabled, he paid small heed to so trivial an incident at the time. The incessant firing took up all his attention.

Before ten minutes were out, shells, case-shot, and shrapnel had all been exhausted. The Mahsuds were firing more steadily than ever; and on the terrace itself, the infantry and sowars were in no enviable case. Unwin had fallen, shot through the head. Montague had momentarily succumbed to pain and exhaustion; and Desmond, with little Martin of the Punjab Infantry and a Sikh Subadar, was in command of affairs.

Sudden faintness, and a damp discomfort down his back, warned Lenox that his wound must be bleeding more freely than he knew. He gripped the shoulder of a gunner standing near him; and for an instant all things swam together before his eyes.

"Look, Captain Sahib, look! There be fresh men on the hill."

The voice of the Havildar Major in his ear steadied his senses: and he saw the new danger that threatened. Down the steep hillside at their right rear, a compact body of men leapt cautiously from cover to cover; an occasional glint of sunlight on a sword-blade revealing their probable intent.

"I say, Dick, those devils'll rush the guns if we give 'em half a chance," he said, turning to his subaltern; and without waiting for an answer, ordered his escort to cover the hill, and prepare for a volley.

But almost before the command could be obeyed,—with a final leap and a dull roar, rising to a yell of triumph,—the Waziris were upon them at close quarters; the front ranks brandishing long knives, the rest armed with matchlocks and rifles.

The Sikhs stood their ground sturdily: as Sikhs may be trusted to do in any straits; while the guns, firing over their heads, sent many of the frenzied fanatics rolling over and over, with yells of a very different nature.

Then, suddenly . . Lenox never quite knew how it happened . . he felt the earth heave under him; some one gripped him from behind: Dick's tall figure, revolver in hand, interposed between him and the swarming hillside; and the next instant reeled against him with such violence that both fell heavily to the ground. At once their men closed round them, covering them with their rifles; a Havildar and two gunners eagerly proffering lengths of turban for bandages, since it was plain that Richardson's wound in the thigh was no light matter.

Startled and stunned as he was, Lenox righted himself speedily; and kneeling on one knee, supported his subaltern's shoulders against the other, while a Havildar roughly bandaged the wounded leg, and bullets whinged and whirred on all sides of them.

"Dick, you'd no business to be there. What the devil did you do?" Lenox asked, a queer vibration in his voice: for it seemed that not till this moment had he understood the strength of the link that bound him to the simple-hearted man who was his friend.

"For God's sake don't plague a chap with questions when he's hard hit. The thing's done; and . ." Richardson's voice trailed off inaudible,—"it's better this way . . for her." Then he roused himself with an effort. "We've crushed the brutes, haven't we?"

"Yes. For the present. The men behaved splendidly. Jove! here comes
Norton through the thick of it all. Orders to clear out, most likely.
If it's that, I wish to hell it had come five minutes sooner." And
Richardson murmured inarticulate assent.

Norton carried his message in his face.

"The Colonel has rallied a little," he said, after expressing sympathy and concern for the plight of both officers. "And he agrees with me that it is wanton sacrifice of men to hold out any longer. Only Courtenay and Martin untouched out of the seven of you; for Desmond's just had his wrist smashed, poor fellow. We must get back, as best we can, by the lane and over the kotal. Desmond has despatched a party of his sowars to Brownlow, of your corps, for reinforcements of men and ammunition. His post is only nine miles off, and we can push along in that direction. Now I must get back to the Colonel. I'll let Courtenay know he's wanted: and send a stretcher along."

With his departure, began the desperate business of dismembering guns and loading mules under a sharp fire; gunners, drivers, and native officers vieing with each other in carrying off the wounded, repulsing hand-to-hand attacks, and in many individual acts of gallantry. While limbering up the guns a mule was shot, and two wheels rolled down the slope. The Havildar in charge sped after them, through pattering bullets; returning with seventy-two pounds of solid metal hanging from each arm. But even as he flung them down in triumph, he rolled over, with a bullet through his chest: while Richardson's orderly staggered past, carrying the gun itself, a matter of two hundred pounds. Such amazing feats can flesh and blood achieve under the spur of momentary exaltation.

And at last,—despite the catastrophe of a stampede among the ammunition and ambulance mules, which left them poorer by four thousand rounds and their field hospital,—the preliminaries were accomplished. Covered by the sharp rifle practice of the infantry and sowars, men, animals, and stretchers retired, without precipitation or disorder, along the narrow lane, bounded by stone walls and rugged hills swarming with a jubilant enemy. For at the first signs of evacuation the Mahsuds came out in greater numbers; harrying and pressing in upon the dogged little column on all sides, yet rarely offering a mark for riflemen; their lithe bodies and marvellous activity enabling them to find cover almost anywhere.

It was heart-breaking work: for, in the soldier's vocabulary, there is no more unwelcome word than retreat; notwithstanding the fact that a retreat which covers all ranks with honour and glory is perhaps the finest achievement possible in the great game of war. Certain it is that the progress of Norton's broken escort through that veritable death-trap, to the kotal where a second stand might prove feasible, was carried out by officers and men with the indomitable coolness and spirit that converts failure into 'an honourable form of victory.'

It is such crises which test the mettle of our native troops: adding fresh proof, if more were needed, of the magnificent fighting material that India has given into our hands. For Colonel Montague had again lost consciousness; and Martin having been shot in the calf as he entered the lane, the task of carrying out all the details of the retirement fell upon the senior Native officer, Subadar Hira Singh, under Desmond's orders. He and Norton, bearing the joint burden of responsibility, kept close together. The surface cynicism of the civilian had been burnt up in the fire of healthy savage action; and at odd moments, when ordinary speech was possible, his admiration for the conduct of all concerned vented itself in disjointed ejaculations of approval that warmed the cavalryman's heart.

"Wait till I make out my report of all this," he said on one occasion.
"Be sure you Piffers will get all the kudos you deserve."

And five minutes later, he fell—shot through the body—into Desmond's arms.

"Nothing . . nothing serious," he protested, while his face wried with pain. "Don't delay matters . . on my account. I can pull along somehow, if you'll give me an arm."

But they got him on to a stretcher, none the less; and Courtenay did all he could till a definite halt was possible.

"Bad . . is it?" the civilian asked coolly, noting the concern in the other's eyes. "Well, a man might do worse than die . . . like a soldier. But by God, I'll hang on to life somehow,—till I can draft out my report."

And hang on to life he did, in defiance of mortal pain, with a tenacity worthy of his bull-dog jaw.

At the foot of the kotal, Desmond called a halt; and the rearguard under Hira Singh closed up, to hold the enemy in check, that the guns and wounded might get over in safety before the position should be finally abandoned.

And now began the toughest bit of fighting the day had yet seen. For the Waziris closed with the Sikhs and Punjabis in overwhelming numbers; exchanging the clatter of musketry for the clash of steel, the sickening thud of blows given and received. But neither numbers nor cold steel availed to break up that narrow wall of devoted men. With each gap in their ranks, they merely closed in, and fought the more fiercely: Hira Singh, with his brother the Jemadar, and a score of unconsidered heroes, flinging away their lives with less of hesitation than they would have flung away a handful of current coin, to gain time for those whose safety hung upon their power of resistance.

At last,—when all had passed over the small hill behind them,—came the order to fall back: and not till that moment had any man among them yielded a foot of space to the persistent foe, who now pressed after them; and, with renewed jubilations and flutterings of green standards, occupied every available position on the surrounding hills.

For two interminable hours the dreary game went on; till six ridges, that climbed to a commanding plateau, had been held and abandoned through shortage of ammunition. But thanks to the steadiness of the rearguard, and to their leader's genius for the art of war, no further lives were lost; no further advantage gained by the Waziris; and at length, heart-weary and leg-weary, they reached the plateau itself, to find Brownlow,—with shot and shell, and two hundred Sikhs thirsting for battle,—already there before them, having covered the nine miles in one and a half hours.

Perhaps only a soldier who has drunk his cup of blood and fire to the dregs, knows the strange mingling of emotions packed into that little word 'relieved': and assuredly none but a soldier could enter into the joy with which Lenox stood swaying dizzily beside his beloved guns, while he and Brownlow pitched eight-and-twenty shells into the fortified village below the last one, to their shameless satisfaction, lighting on the mosque itself, and lifting the Mullah, with his green flag of victory, twenty feet into the air.

It was a more or less damaged and dejected party of five which assembled in the small mess tent that night.

So much had been lost, so little gained by the day's disaster: an epitome of too many 'regrettable incidents' beyond the Border. The costliest item of Frontier defence is this unavoidable waste of the lives of picked soldiers. The Sikhs had lost heavily in Native officers and men. Colonel Montague had succumbed to his wounds during the retirement. Norton and Richardson, both too severely hurt to appear at mess, were officially in hospital,—that is to say, on stretchers in two field service tents: and three out of the five men at the mess table had brought away superfluous mementoes of Waziri marksmanship.

Lenox himself had suffered more from loss of blood than from the flesh wound in his shoulder, which was not a serious affair; and to Desmond's broken wrist had been added a disfiguring slash across his cheek. No doubt orders and commendation awaited them: but their elation at the prospect was hushed by the very present shadow of death. For the soldier, inured as he is, does not count death a little thing. He cannot, any more than the rest of us, 'go out of the warm sunshine easily.' And the thought of Montague's wife and children, of Unwin's 'No more dancing attendance on Waziris,' intruded unsought, breaking the thread of common speech.

No doubt, also, Desmond and Lenox were thinking, manlike, of their own wives; and thanking God for wounds that would only let loose the woman's divine reserves of tenderness, her passion for 'mothering' the man she loves. Once during the evening they exchanged a glance of comprehension,—the freemasonry of those who love,—and the same question sprang simultaneously to their minds. "How about poor Norton? Would the news bring that wife of his back to Dera Ishmael in the last week of March?" And Desmond decided that if it did not, Norton must be persuaded to put up with them, and submit to Honor's ministrations, in whose power to soothe and bless he had the faith of a little child, or of a great man; for the two are so nearly allied as to be almost identical.

As for Norton himself, he was too much engrossed in the painful task of 'hanging on to life' to trouble his head about any other matter. The news of his serious hurt spread through the neighbouring villages as news only speeds in India, without help of post or wire: and when, on the following morning, a deputation of friendly Khans waited upon the Burra Sahib, to express their sorrow and shame at so flagrant a breach of the great Border law of hospitality, and to offer help with the bringing in of dead bodies, Norton insisted on receiving them, propped up on a chair: a broken, but unconquered remnant of the man whom they had feared, and loved, and obeyed, with that mixture of independence and loyal allegiance which is perhaps England's greatest triumph in India.

But all his courage could not conceal the truth from their eyes: and with one accord, these hardened men—who had no regard for death in the abstract, and an unlimited veneration for strength in any form—bowed themselves at the Englishman's feet, and wept like children.

"Oh, Sahib, . . Father of the District, . . this is an evil thing that hath befallen," the oldest among them wailed, in deep-toned lamentation. "How will it be with us who have so long been ruled by your wisdom, when the light of your Honour's countenance is withdrawn? And whom will the Sirkar[6] send us in thy stead?"

"In less than a month the Sirkar will send fire and sword," Norton answered sternly. "Smoking villages, and blackened crops. A gift for a gift, a blow for a blow, is straight dealing. But for one life taken yesterday the Sirkar will exact ten: of that ye may rest assured."

"Nay, but let it not be forgotten, HazÚr, that we, who are present, be men of one word, true to our salt; not as those murderers, upon whom the wrath of Allah will be poured out like water, even upon the man-child at the breast, for yesterday's black work."

Which comfortable prediction Norton received with rather a bitter smile. It did not square with his own experience of the ironical tangle men call Life. But for all that, it is possible that, in his extremity, he envied these savage Sons of the Prophet their faith in the rough justice of Allah's dispensations.

[1] Hill.

[2] Tribal council.

[3] Meaning.

[4] Chopped straw.

[5] Fanatical slaughter.

[6] Government.