Terrington

“ Terrington, completely at fault, made no attempt to console her. He knew when to leave a man unhindered and to give a horse its head, and the instinct helped him with a woman's tears. He stood watching her sobbing shoulders, and the shadows on her golden hair, but his thoughts, the instant they were freed from her, flew forward to the forcing of the Sorágh Gul, the double-headed defile on the road to Rashát, where he knew Mir Khan could intercept him and compel him to face an attack from three sides at once. ”

“ A sharp turn of the road brought them suddenly into the Dogra's camp. Though no fires were burning the men were round their cooking-pots finishing a meal; food and sleep in Terrington's conception going half way always towards winning a fight.
He lifted Rose out of the saddle, asked her if she were equal to a climb, and together they clambered up the ridge of shale on the north of the valley at the head of which Hussain Shah had his post of observation. ”

“ As she passed the doorway Hussain Shah appeared on the landing beyond it, the folds of the turban above his temple stiff with blood. She paused an instant to hear Terrington's greeting, but the greeting was in Pukhtu, which she did not understand. Had she understood, her opinion of Terrington's hardness would have been confirmed, for no reference was made to the wounded man's condition until he had received his orders.
"Are you fit for duty?" said Terrington simply. ”

“ Though Terrington had urged Rose Chantry to rest while she could, the morning light was peering between the curtains of the doolie before sleep closed her eyes. She listened all night to the silent march: the grunts and whinny of the mules, the jangle of harness, the low-spoken orders of unseen men. And under it all the beat of feet in the dust, the quick clatter of driven hoofs, the dull even tramp of armed men. ”

“ The flag fell, the click of the mirror took up the speech of its shaken folds, and dazzling lances of sunlight flung from ten miles away began tilting with the lashes of Rose Chantry's eyes. She was so absorbed by the strangeness of their silent language, that she was startled to find that Terrington had dropped alone and unnoticed from the rocks above her, and was scribbling a message which he handed as he finished it to the havildar. ”

“ Rose seemed only to have just ceased to watch the changing colour of the flame on Terrington's face when a hand was laid on her shoulder and his voice spoke in her ear. She jumped up, dreaming of battles, so stiff that she would have fallen but for the arm which he put under hers. The doolie suddenly appeared out of the darkness, he helped her in, bade her good-bye with a clasp of the hand, dropped a sharp order to the sentry who strode beside her, and was gone. The bearers moved off at a quick amble, and when they halted she knew she was amongst men. ”

“ With a faith in reinforcements and a strong front, Terrington signalled Afzul Singh, who had, despite his forty-five years, outpaced on foot the youngest of his men, to keep his right shoulder up, thus ignoring the enemy's left and bringing the Guides through the broken Bakót men on the main road. Then, as the panting line came up to him, Terrington put himself in front of it and charged straight at Mir Khan's centre. ”

“ Terrington had stepped towards the doorway as he realized the significance of what she had seen. She put herself sharply in front of him, her head flung fiercely back.
"What are you going to do?" she demanded. "You let them go like that, you made them go like that! That's what's done it all! You wouldn't let them take the men! Aren't you going to try to save them? They mayn't be dead! ”

“ Near the centre was a body of horsemen tailing out along the road, which made a gay tendril of colour even at that leaden hour, it was the Khan's bodyguard in purple and fawn and gold.
As Rose Chantry moved the glasses from end to end of the enemy's column, her certainty of a safe return to India collapsed utterly.
She looked round at Terrington, expecting to see the same despair on his face that had seized upon her heart, but he was watching Mir Khan's advance with an unaltered countenance.
"Oh, Captain Terrington!" she cried hopelessly, "there are thousands of them: they'll eat us up." ”

“ The expression of Terrington's opinion on his preference was a good deal tempered by Mrs. Chantry's presence; but even so was caustic enough to burn itself into Walcot's memory.
As he left the hall without a word, Rose Chantry lifted an Afghan poshteen from the heap beside her.
"Did you send me this?" she asked.
It was lined with astrachan, and exquisitely embroidered, and was the most valuable of Terrington's few possessions.
"Yes," he said, "it was the only warm thing I could get for you. You will want everything you can wear, and you can put that on over a good deal. ”

“ Once, when these were successful, Terrington only obtained relief by an attack upon the centre, threatening the safety of the men above the valley, but the effort proved so expensive that he was obliged in the future still further to extend his wings and retire by continuous echelon up and down the slope of the hills. ”

“ Terrington pushed the Dogras forward into the gap as soon as the bullets of the Sikhs had ceased to search it, and discovered at once, in spite of his advantage, the greatness of the task in front of him.
Mir Khan, realizing from the sound of battle in the defile the trick which had been played him, was throwing forward every man he could spare to shut Terrington within it till he could extricate the force which Walcot had skilfully drawn after him up the road to Rashát. ”

“ Half an hour later every available man in the force was paraded in the courtyard of the Fort. Walcot with his Lancers in front; then, behind Terrington, the Sikhs and Dogras that could be spared from the Fort, the Guides bringing up the rear. The Maxim had been hoisted on to the roof of the Eastern Tower, whence it covered for a certain distance an advance on the Palace. In the silence the blow of a pick could be heard, and the falling stones from the last loopholes in the walls.
Terrington sat his horse immovably, waiting for the signal from Afzul Singh which should open the gates. ”

“ Gholam Muhammed entered with the long lamb-lined boots at that moment and laid them with a salaam in front of her.
They had been made for Terrington and were long enough to reach to a man's knee, and Rose, whose every breath at the moment compromised with a sob, thrust out her pretty foot beside them with unconscious coquetry.
"Oh, that's all right," said Terrington, smiling; "they'll go over the others. You'll not find them a bit too big." ”

“ Terrington, with a sense of difficulty beside which the leading of men was a simple matter, sat down on the mattress beside her and put his arm supportingly about her shoulders.
"I'm going to feed you," he said.
She tried to meet his mothering with a smile, but as the flap of the tent lifted with a blast of wind, which flung a spray of snow over them, she shivered and shrank back, shaking her head.
"It doesn't matter if I eat or not," she said despairingly. "I can't live another night with the cold. I wished I could die all last night, it was such dreadful pain. ”

“ That part of the enemy's front, unaware, owing to the slope of the ground, of the Guides' arrival, only waited a snap of the trigger, as the wave of buff-clad men burst over the rise. Then it turned and ran.
Blown though his men were, Terrington carried them half a mile further before halting them. By doing so he cut in halves Mir Khan's line of battle and isolated his entire left wing, which did not need a second volley from the Guides to explain what had happened, and in an instant was leaping like a flock of goats over the shale slopes in wild retreat. ”

“ The only question left is one of escort. We want to look imposing but not belligerent. What do you think?"
"The smaller the better," said Terrington drily.
"Why?"
"You can't take enough to make it safe for you," explained the other; "but you can take enough to make it unsafe for us."
"For you?" Sir Colvin asked.
"Suppose you don't come back?" was Terrington's reply.
"Gad! but you're a cheerful counsellor," cried Chantry hotly.
"If they murder us, eh," said Aire.
"And you think they mean to, Captain Terrington?" asked Rose Chantry.
Terrington shook his head. ”

“ The Government which put him into the pickle must take him out of it. He was not going to fight his way home with three hundred men through the snows of the Palári and between the desolate precipices of Maristan, where once in ancient days an army had melted like the spring water upon its courses. So Terrington returned to his loopholes, and Sir Colvin to that merry little messroom in the shade of the chenar where all the trifling rites of home were observed with such an exacting deference, and the chances of the morrow debated with a boy's disdain. ”

“ He was a big genial man, with no sense of his own importance, and a fixed belief in bluffness. He had shewn Terrington his instructions, some six weeks earlier, on the night his escort joined him, and the two were sitting smoking after dinner outside the tent—the stillness of the evening only broken by the cry of a jackal or the scream of an owl—looking up at the black mountain wall that blotted out the northern stars, over which they were to climb on the morrow to an unknown fate. ”

“ I don't intend to be kept out of danger."
"There's no danger here to keep you out of," said Terrington, "except the danger of your being seen." His eyes took in her troubled face and his manner changed suddenly to a reasoning gentleness. "You see the fight's right away over there, beyond the Gul. Mir Khan's pushing Walcot back on Rashát, and we hope he thinks he's got us all. We're hiding here, in case he sends any one to look for us along the road to Sar, and the game would be up if he spotted us." ”

“ Then Walcot blurted out:
"Is this a council of war?"
"No," said Terrington; "it's an opportunity for protest. I wished to put your advice on record, but I didn't propose to take it."
Walcot thereupon declared himself emphatically in favour of remaining in Sar; Dore followed him less assertively. Clones gave a shrug of his shoulders.
"It's all one to me where I doctor you," he smiled.
Terrington turned to the two men beside him, who had sat, immovably attentive, throughout the discussion.
"We are as the print of thy footsteps," said Afzul Shah, and Hussain nodded. ”

“ May I ask why you've chosen it?"
"Have you been through the Palári or Darai?" Terrington enquired.
"No."
"Then you can hardly appreciate why I've chosen it," said Terrington quietly. "The Palári is the only one which we've a chance of reaching without being cut off; it's the only one not commanded from above at this time of year, and Freddy Gale, holding this end of it at Rashát, is absolutely done for unless we dig him out." ”

“ But though the struggle of the next few days would mean hardship for all and death to many, the worst was over with that day's ordeal, on which had hung the safety of the entire force. Had Terrington been beaten, every man with him would have been massacred, Rashát would have fallen within a month, and his name held up to the scorn of the years to come as of one who had lacked the courage to stand to his post. ”

“ Freddy Gale, though he had twice fallen from exhaustion, had directed personally the issue of rations, and used every chance to cheer his men; but he missed that sense of their condition, and they the sense of his control, which can come from sight alone.
They lay in the snow, inert, benumbed, certain victims to that frozen sleep from which there is no wakening. Only the old soldiers of the Guides had stretched their blankets, and made any likeness to a bivouac.
Terrington's voice came upon the scene like the call of a bugle. ”

“ Terrington gave a practical shape to his forebodings as soon as the Commissioner and his escort started for the Durbar.
The entire force was under arms; the Residency guard was trebled; sappers were stationed in every room to break open the loopholes; others waited with discs of guncotton to blow away the trees which masked the polo ground; and the final connexions were made with the mine which was to overthrow the courtyard wall. ”

“ Sir Colvin suggested.
"That's probably how he puts it," said Terrington blandly.
"Well that gives us a chance the more," Chantry threw in.
"A chance the less, I think," said Terrington. "Blood is always a Sari man's first thought, and he'll leave no time for a second."
The agent's dark eyes glowered with a whole-souled malediction, but Sir Colvin, tapping on the table, watched in silence for some seconds while Terrington finished his meal.
"Do you still try to dissuade me?" he asked at length.
"Not at all, sir," replied the other. "I was only thinking of the escort. ”

“ He explained the arrangement to Sir Colvin, as the Guides swung out of the brown mob of Saris, past the guard of honour into the Residency compound, and formed front with their own undauntable swagger before Rose Chantry's smiling eyes.
Aire listened attentively, with his eye on the frail figure in heliotrope on the verandah.
"Sounds all that's desirable," he said; "but I'm not the one to settle it. There's your man," he nodded, as Terrington rode up to report. ”

“ Clones suggested.
"I don't suppose it will," said Terrington; "at home they're rather fond of a siege; it makes the paper more interesting."
"And how about the intentions of the Government, Colonel," Clones continued in his reasonable way; "I suppose you were sent up here to carry them out."
"No doubt," said Terrington with his grave smile, "but without being told what its intentions were. Consequently one rather seems to be here to make intentions for the Government, and I'm very possibly making them all wrong. But that's their fault for not having sent a better man." ”