Talbot Mundy

“ So I was first over, yelling I don't doubt like three men, for that enthusiasm is contagious. Only Grim was silent. Narayan Singh roared for a dozen. He and Grim were over close behind me. I stumbled over a dead Pathan and seized his tulwar. In a second we were backed against the stone wall in the shadow fighting for dear life, with fifty of Kangra Khan's contingent at our throats, and our own men scrambling over one by one to drop down and hack and thrust before their feet touched ground. ”

“ I dare say, seen through the mist-film from below, I looked encouraging to those crouching Waziris; but I don't know why I was not shot to pieces by the storm of bullets that greeted me from Kangra Khan's position. I stood there unscathed. Rage may be an armor after all. I saw Grim, and then Narayan Singh scrambling to the wall to follow my example—heard the yelling and din of King's riflemen, and next the roar of our men beginning at last to work themselves into a frenzy with the battle cry:
“Allaho Akbar! Allaho Akbar!”
Over the wall I went, brandishing the rifle ”

“ I swept her up into my arms and carried her, protesting violently, down the rickety ladder into the well-shaft, and stood her on a platform near the bottom. It was pitch-dark. You could only See a faint, square patch of dimness up above, pricked out with a pattern of abnormally bright stars. You could hardly hear the din of fighting down there, although it began to sound as if our men were coming into action. ”

“ So he had no weapon. That was something. Pathans don't strangle people if they have a knife available. Joan Angela did not speak; he had his hand over her mouth; but I could hear her heels cracking against his shins. Then she gurgled, and I knew he was choking her. Narayan Singh and I rushed in simultaneously.
The Pathan took to his heels, and we missed him in the dark, cannoning into each other. We had to stop and listen. Then we heard him dragging her body along the stones, and he had reached the corner of the wall before we overhauled him. ”

“ Naturally thy supposed we had manned the tower. A hundred bullets rattled against the masonry, and I ducked in through the door, shoving Joan Angela in front of me, as another fusillade splintered the dry wood of the platform at the stair-head.
Our men did not answer yet. They seemed cowed by the suddenness of the attack. The wind shrieked, as it can only in those infernal hills, bearing the din of the firing and imprecation down toward us, making answering yells useless; and that is a worse handicap in savage warfare than odds of two to one. It is not enough to know that Allah is on your side ”

“ A man sees himself in a woman, and the more he loves her, the worse the vision shocks him. So he goes off and acts like the madman that he naturally is—even as an ape making faces at himself in a stolen looking-glass. ”

“ The Pathan falls back on his natural weapon and tactics in a tight place, and none of us had time to load, or even to aim, for they came at us in the shadow of the wall in a series of spurts and rushes, and when a man was down that was not by any means the end of him. A Pathan with hardly life left in him would crawl in close and try to thrust his knife home before Allah beckoned him. ”

“ By that time King's Waziris were swarming over the wall, so I picked her up and carried her toward the tower, to stow her in the upper-chamber, out of harm's way. Those Waziris were allies rather by accident than design, and there was no guessing yet what their attitude might be toward a valuable prisoner. We were at their mercy absolutely. They might see fit to compensate themselves for their heavy losses in the night's engagement, and if they in their predicament should assert their own right now to hold Joan Angela to ransom, no other argument than force was likely to have much weight. ”

“ Kangra Khan's men were forced to crouch close to their stone wall, which put them almost out of action, although there was room for about twenty of them in a square, stone tower at one corner, from which they were answering the Waziris' fire. The others, under the wall, had to content themselves with yelling, and by the noise they made I judged there were several hundred of them; but numbers don't mean much—except to increase the problem—when the tide of fortune turns. ”

“ If Kangra Khan were half a leader, and his men not more than half-beaten, our position was likely to become as untenable as his had been—and that before we should have much time to make our dispositions. Daylight would see us helpless. ”

“ Curses must reach his ears to have effect. Taunts must prove to him your own contempt for danger, or the danger grows as real as he intends it shall be. Yells are as deadly as bullets, estimated by result.
I PEERED through the slits in the wall, but could see nothing except spurts of flame and hurrying white mist. But suddenly there came an answering din, whose source I could not see. Somewhere on the far side of Kangra Khan's men, King was turning a flanking fire on their position. ”