TRAPPED

But that pistol-shot, as it pierced the hot, sultry air in the vaulted archways, was caught by a sudden blast of warm wind, sweeping God knows whence, to God knows where! and was blown out riverwards, citywards. Blown by that sudden blast, like the hot breath of someone's anger, which always heralds an electrical dust-storm. One moment there is the stillness of the uttermost void brooding over the deep; the next, causelessly, God knows why! the spirit moving palpably.

And so it is always when the ever-recurring struggle for the right road to that lost Paradise, for the right method of regaining that bartered birthright, begins afresh among the sons of Adam. When the Hosts of the Lord,--fighting, as men always fight, under the banner of Right, for what they think good and true, for what seems to them to bring them nearer to the golden gates--change armed peace for war.

It was so now; and Lance Carlyon, waking to the familiar, yet unfamiliar sound of that pistol-shot, woke also to the knowledge that someone had already resorted to that last argument between man and his fellow.

Who was it? And why?

As he stood, still half dazed by sleep, listening, as one does instinctively, for another shot to follow the first, a new sound distracted his attention.

Was he still asleep and dreaming? or was that really Erda Shepherd's voice, rising towards him from the sliding, unseen river?

"I will come back to you directly," it said in Urdu. The half-heard promise of the words took him by storm, making him forget the strangeness of the language. Yet even that made his bewilderment more utter. And all around him, about him, a mist--or was it a cloud, or what was it?--had sprung into being. A wreath as of smoke drifted past the wide arches of the balcony, blotting out the pale shimmer of the young moon.

The swinging lamp above his head darkened, reddened, as the dust-atoms leapt from the earth into the air, obedient to the call of that mightiest force in nature which holds the world together, and guides it on its way among the stars.

Pidar NarÂyan had been right! The electrical storm had come!

But Erda had come with it. He could see her now, standing at the top of the river steps, dimmed by the dust-atoms that glittered faintly in the clouded ray of the lamp; could see her--tall, slim, white--with a red-gold ball in her hand.

So it was only a dream; he was asleep still!

The certainty of this, the knowledge that he would wake soon, made him yield to impulse, to emotion, as he would never have done otherwise. He held out his arms to the gracious vision, his voice rang with passion.

"Erda! Erda! You have come back to me!--the world's desire--my heart's desire!"

And then, suddenly, his heart a-tremble for the first time, he drew back from his own fervour almost apologetically; for the scared look of the face seen through those earth-atoms had brought it home to him that this was no dream. This was Erda Shepherd herself, the woman who was the "dearest atom of God's earth" to him. And she had come back, for what? Not to listen to his passion, anyhow.

"What is the matter?" he asked briefly, sternly; for it came home to him also that the cause must be grave.

She gave a little shiver; the hearing of that first greeting had upset her calm, her courage, at last. Yet they had been firm till then; and, Heaven knows! the long hours of slipping through the rapids in the wake of that heaving, plunging mass of logs had been trying enough to anyone. Then for the last half hour, since Am-ma had cut the raft adrift to follow them at its leisure through the slacker currents, and, in obedience to her order, had forged ahead with his paddle, her anxiety had risen to fever-pitch; since the night, so far as she could judge, must be waning fast, and her errand would be useless if she were not in Eshwara before the dawn. For, as she had listened to Am-ma's garrulous talk while he steered, the conviction had grown that the danger to peace and safety--if there was any--lay in the future, not in the past; that this dawn, and not yesterday's, was to be the signal for the insensate, almost incredible attempt to wreck authority. An attempt which yet--incredible, insensate though it be--might bring death to--to one she held very dear.

She admitted so much now to herself, and, pulling that self together, looked that dear one in the face. "There is a good deal the matter," she said. "You had better call Captain Dering to hear it, too; it will save time."

He nodded acquiescence, but ere he left her, the instinct in him to guard his "dearest atom" to the uttermost from others, made him set a chair for her, and, glancing round for a wrap, take the mess jacket he had laid aside for a smoking coat, and fold it round her. For the air had grown suddenly chill, as it always does in a sand-storm.

"You must be cold in that dress," he said. As he did so the daintiness of it struck him, the scent of the orange blossoms made him turn pale. Despite his hurry, his certainty that something serious was ahead, he paused to ask sharply: "That is your wedding dress, isn't it?"--

"I am not married, if you mean that!" she answered as sharply. Then she flushed up angrily, more at the comprehension shown in her own answer than the meaning in his question, and burst out: "What does it matter if I am--or if it is? Go! I tell you, and call Captain Dering!"

Yet, when he was gone, she lay back in the chair and shivered again; all the more because of the unaccustomed touch about her throat of the gold lace on a mess jacket. How red it looked against her white dress! And what a lot of little gold buttons there were at its edge: foolish, useless, little ornamental gilt buttons, round and red-gold, like--

The comparison brought back Lance's cry of welcome, and made her realize that, quite mechanically, she still held in her hand that useless, foolish, unnecessary orange!

That, of course, was what had made him remember; had made him say those words which had come like the writing on the wall to remind her of her own guilt.

She flung the fruit from her, hastily, into the unseen river beyond the arches. Only just in time, ere Lance reËntered, with a puzzled face.

"I can't find Dering anywhere," he said vexedly. "He is not in his room. Hasn't been to bed, either; though he turned in early saying he was half asleep. I wonder what is up? Can he have heard already, do you think? Scarcely; and he would not have gone without waking me." His surprise seemed to absorb him.

"Then I must tell you, for there is no time to be lost," interrupted Erda, impatiently. Yet, even in her strenuous desire to make him understand quickly, she did not fail to explain, breathlessly, how she came to be dressed as she was. She had been trying on her wedding dress to see if it fitted, and had gone into the garden for--for--flowers, when Am-ma and his raft had come floating down the river.

And was not that all true? she asked herself passionately, as she told the tale. It was all of the truth, anyhow, that he or anyone else was ever to know.

So she had come to warn them, as she was.

A great joy at her courage filled Lance as he listened, for to most men the possibility of a woman acting as a man might act comes as a wonder.

"It was awfully plucky of you," he began; but she cut him short with a question as to what was to be done now.

"Warn Dillon, first of all," he said readily. "We have a wire laid on, you know. I only hope this infernal--I beg your pardon--dust-storm won't interfere with the connection. You had better come over with me to the office; it is just across the yard, and I don't like leaving you alone. Do you mind?"

"I'll come, of course,--but I must make sure of Am-ma waiting first," she added, with a ring in her voice; the ring of a vigorous vitality which finds itself face to face with action. "He said the raft couldn't overtake us for half an hour. But he must not go, anyhow, and he will want to. I had difficulty in getting him to leave it, as it was. But I had to make him. I had to be in time!"

"And you are--loads of time!" he called, as he ran down the river steps before her, to give the order. "It isn't two o'clock yet, and--" he paused abruptly, on seeing, to his surprise, that only Am-ma's strange craft lay sidling against the bottom step, over which little waves were curving hurriedly, to reach up the wall, as if the water-atoms were as restless as those of earth, as eager to seek a new element. For the air was growing darker, thicker every instant with the intruders. He looked round hastily, but there was no sign of the canoe anywhere. Yet he had seen it moored to its ring before dinner!

Vincent must have taken it. Whither? An answer leapt to Lance's mind, and he flushed up, even in the dark, redly. If this was so--what the deuce was to be done?

There was an added confusion, an added responsibility in his face as he ran back to where Erda stood waiting him, and, catching up a lamp from the mess table, started with her close at his heels for the office. "That is the first thing, anyhow!" he muttered, half to himself. "Dillon must be warned--"

"And perhaps Captain Dering will be back by then," she suggested cheerfully, as, with the mess jacket worn as it should be for greater convenience of action and greater protection (she had slipped her arms into it, deliberately, while waiting for Lance), she followed in the little halo of dull, red light cast by the lamp through the dust-mist.

The courtyard was still without sign of life; for there was nothing to guard here. The massive gates of the citadel once closed, and a sentry outside the wicket, there could be no fear of secret comings and goings.

"I hope to God he may," said Lance, ahead, and his tone made the girl wonder.

His face, too, surprised her, as, sitting down to the instrument, he signalled for attention. No doubt when time is an object, there must always be a sense of strain in that pause before the answering tinkle comes to tell that a human hand and brain is at the other end of the thin wire which means so much, but there was more than that in Lance Carlyon's frown.

In truth, as he waited, he was not thinking so much of what would happen if the communication was interrupted, but what was to be done if it was not. Thinking that he must, somehow, warn Vincent. Thinking how awkward it would be for him if there was a row, and he absent, as it were, without leave!

So it was Erda who recalled him to the wider issue. "What are you going to do, if Dr. Dillon doesn't hear?"

She had to raise her voice a little, for something--either coming wind or far-distant thunder--had brought a curious, faint reverberation to the air.

It seemed to come from all quarters, scarcely distinguishable, yet unmistakable, like the roll of a half-muffled drum, or a deep organ note quivering into silence.

The darkness all about them grew thicker and thicker. Lance, close beside her in that red lamp circle, showed as if seen through gauze. How unreal it all was! Herself, most of all, in a mess jacket, and, of course--but this thought came second--her wedding dress! And then it struck her that she, herself, was more unreal than anything else. To be there at dead of night, feeling no fear, only a sort of savage interest--

"But if he doesn't hear," she persisted, "you will have to go down the river and warn him."

He nodded. And yet his thought went first to the fact that, if he had to do this, if Roshan KhÂn had to be left in charge of the relief, it would be still more awkward for Vincent Dering.

Tring-a-tring-tring!

The answering tinkle brought a little breath of joy to them both; but Erda felt inclined to stamp her feet at the slow precision with which Lance--who had to remember each equivalent sign--spelt out his message. He could not be quicker, of course, and yet surely he might! She longed to snatch at the handles herself, though she could not signal at all.

"There, that's done!" she cried, as a continuous short rattle followed from the other end, which Lance translated into--"All right, await you." "Now! what is to be done next?"

"Roshan KhÂn--he'll get the men together," answered Lance, already on his way to the wicket in the gate. To his surprise, it was closed. He knocked, no answer came. Erda, holding the lamp, looked at him startled.

"Sentry!" he called. "Sentry! Open the door! Miracle!'"

It was the password for the night, given by Captain Dering in contemptuous memory of the day; but it produced no result. The wicket remained obstinately closed.

"They've locked us in!" whispered Erda; the lowering of her voice being due to a swift instinct that the less fuss made the better; the less chance of interruption.

Lance bent his ear to the keyhole to listen. Those dull, muffled reverberations--either distant thunder, or faint, ineffective explosions of electricity close at hand--were louder now; but he could hear no sound above them. He shook his head.

Erda had the lamp on the ground in a second, and was beside it, her red-gold hair in the dust, as she peered through a three-inch iron grating between the iron-rimmed door and the iron lintel.

When she rose up her face was like the iron also.

"They've trapped us!" she whispered. "There is a sentry outside--I saw his feet. Come away, and let us settle what to do. And say something, something angry--you know what I mean."

"Damn that brute!" said Lance, cordially, in a loud voice, "where the deuce has the sentry gone to? I'll have it out with him to-morrow, the infernal--"

Erda, ahead with the lamp, turned to look back, and put her finger on her lips reproachfully. "That's quite enough," she said; but she said it with a smile. That vigorous delight in action which some women feel was making her blood race through her veins.

"Now what's to be done?" she said swiftly, as she put the lamp down on the mess table again. "Let's think hard."

The gate was closed against interference with--with--something!

That was evident. Proof positive, therefore, that Am-ma's tale was true.

So it followed that the most urgent need for help was at the gaol.

But how to reach it, and with whom?

Lance's thoughts turned instantly to Roshan KhÂn. Was he--could he be in the plot? Surely not. Yet with or without his knowledge, the outer court was in the hands of rebels who thought their English officers were caught like rats in a trap; for, of course, they did not know Dering was absent.

And so it was. He and his pioneers--twenty or thereabouts--were in a trap. What could they do to get out of it? Their arms, scaling ladders, everything, were in the outside courtyard. What would be the use, either, of trying to force the door? Mere waste of time. The thing required was to prevent those fifteen hundred men with a criminal past being let loose on Eshwara, let loose--as men like them had been in the Mutiny--to give a lead over.

And that--how was that to be done?

He looked across to Erda, and took sudden comfort in the quick intelligence of her face.

"You had better take my place with Am-ma," she said sharply. "Go down stream to the spit, cut across by the mission house, and chance getting over to the police camp."

He had thought of this before. The extra police, with their two officers, who had come over to see the festival through peacefully, were encamped above the boat-bridge and though, of course, most of the men would be scattered on duty through the town, even some help would be better than none. Yet how to leave Erda, not alone even, but with twenty men whose loyalty would depend largely--as it always did--on action, on their having someone to fight?

"But you," he began--

"I'll stay here. They won't try to come in--yet a while. I am not afraid of being alone."

"I wouldn't mind your being alone," he put in, "but my Sikhs--

"Your Sikhs," she echoed. "Are they here? Then why--?"

"They have no arms--I could find some, perhaps--"

--His words--both their words--jostled each other in sheer haste.

"Yes! then why don't you call them?"--

"How can I use them--trapped like a rat. They--they might be worse than useless, without something to do--without a lead over--don't you see?--and there is nothing--"

--"Nothing!" she echoed, almost savagely, as she clasped and unclasped her hands, dragging the fingers through each other, in sheer straining after some thought on which to clutch, in cruel whipping and spurring of her wits against that inaction.

Nothing! Nothing! The word seemed to fill the world.

Nothing in earth or air or fire or--

"Stay!" she cried, with a gasp. "The raft! The raft! Am-ma shall fetch it--it must be close by, now. There will be room. It can float down to opposite the gaol."

He stared at her as she stood in her white, and scarlet, and gold.

"By Jove!" he said softly "by Jove, you've got it!"

The next instant he was off to rouse his men, and she was on the bottom step giving Am-ma his orders, short, sharp, clear.

But when Lance came back again to look out what arms and ammunition he could lay hands on, he found her, in his room, sorting cartridges as if she had done it all her life; and her face turned to him all aglow and splendid.

"We shall manage it! Am-ma's gone. He didn't want to, but I told him I'd kill the baby if he didn't. I suppose it was wrong,"--though her woman's tongue sought speech, her woman's hands stuck to their work--"but I couldn't help it. I felt so savage."

"You are very brave," he said simply.

"Brave!" she echoed. "Why not? People talk as if women always had to try and not be afraid; but we are not all like that. Some of us want to fight. I do, always."

She looked it, as, when all was ready, she leant, straining her eyes into the darkness for a hint of Am-ma's return. "He must come," she muttered to herself, "he shall come!"

And he did. A bigger wave came sweeping up to the wall as a herald, and then a voice calling for a rope. Half a dozen were ready posted in the men's hands from various points of vantage. They flew outwards; one, from Am-ma's hands inwards to a group holding a lantern on the steps. So, with a silent haul, the pioneers had the raft stopped, and sidling slowly back to mooring against the wall.

Then Lance turned to Erda hesitating, divided between his loyalty to Vincent, and to her.

"The palace ought to be warned," he said briefly--"if I go there ahead on Am-ma's craft, I could pick you up on your way down. Could you manage?"

She gave a look round on the men, eager with the sudden excitement, with the rush, with the very novelty of it all, and laughed--positively laughed. "Manage? Yes! of course I can manage--havildar! see those cartridges are put well back out of the wet--stay! bring down that table, someone, and give it a lash--"

Yet, despite this absolute lack of fear, despite the fact that she evidently wanted and desired no more consideration than a man, Lance felt a wild dislike to leaving her there alone, as he stepped on to Am-ma's skin craft, and, edging his way along by the wall, prepared to drift down to the palace balcony. It was mirk dark now, and he had no fear of being seen by the crowd on the bathing steps and the courtyard, though he punted his way with the paddle shaft within a yard or two of the shore; for he wanted to judge how far excitement had spread, how far the crowd was aware of what was coming at dawn.

To judge by appearances, not at all. There was no more restlessness, no more movement than was inevitable in such a concourse of men, women, and children. Here and there files of shadowy forms drifted about, but the most of them, seen by the little lights set on the ground beside each group, were in heaps, like the heaps of dead on a battle-field, huddled up on each other, sleeping, resting, indistinguishable, shrouded in their shawls, waiting for the dawn to come.

And, above the soft, yet increasing murmur of the still windless storm, came a softer murmuring of prayers, a weird low chanting.

The Hosts of the Lord had not yet risen to battle. The Spirit had not moved; the Word had not been made manifest.

The palace, also, lay as yet undisturbed, unseen, in the darkness. Except for a glimmer of red light just above the river, a paler glimmer closer at hand.

The red light must be by the stairs for which he was steering.

The other?--

He did not know, but as he slipped past it another murmuring as of prayer seemed to come from within. It must come from the chapel; if so, then Pidar NarÂyan must be awake also. He felt a certain relief at the thought when he caught sight of the canoe at the bottom of the steps. Then Vincent, as he had feared, was there; but not on the errand he had feared, if Pidar NarÂyan knew of it. So, mooring his strange craft to the canoe, he ran up the stairs eagerly.