Rujub, the Juggler Part 38

"I quite see that, Bathurst."

"My proposal is, Major, that we should begin at once to mine; that is, to drive a gallery from the cellar, and to carry it on steadily as far as we can. I should say that we have ten days or a fortnight before us before matters get to an extremity, and in that time we ought to be able to get, working night and day, from fifty to a hundred yards beyond the wall, aiming at a clump of bushes. There is a large one in Farquharson's compound, about a hundred yards off. Then, when things get to the worst, we can work upwards, and come out on a dark night. We might leave a long fuse burning in the magazine, so that there should be an explosion an hour or two after we had left. There is enough powder there to bring the house down, and the Sepoys might suppose that we had all been buried in the ruins."

"I think the idea is a very good one, Bathurst. What do you think, Doctor?"

"Capital," the Doctor said. "It is a light sandy soil, and we should be able to get through it at a pretty good rate. How many can work together, do you think, Bathurst?"

"I should say two of us in each shift, to drive, and, if necessary, prop the roof, with some of the natives to carry out the earth. If we have three shifts, each shift would go on twice in the twenty-four hours; that would be four hours on and eight hours off."

"Will you take charge of the operation, Bathurst?"

"With pleasure, Major."

"Very well then. You shall have with you Wilson and Richards and the three youngest of the civilians, Saunderson, Austin, and Herbert. You six will be relieved from other duty except when the enemy threaten an attack. I will put down Saunderson and Austin together. Which of the others would you like to have with you?"

"I will take Wilson, sir."

"Very well, then, Richards and Herbert will make the third party. After breakfast we can pick out the twelve strongest of the natives. I will tell them that they have to work, but that they will be each paid half a rupee a day in addition to their ordinary wages. Then you will give a general supervision to the work, Bathurst, in addition to your own share in it?"

"Certainly, Major, I will take general charge of it."

So at breakfast the Major explained the plan agreed upon. The five men chosen at once expressed their willingness to undertake the work, and the offer of half a rupee extra a day was sufficient to induce twelve of the servants to volunteer for it. The Major went down to the cellars and fixed upon the spot at which the work should begin; and Bathurst and Wilson, taking some of the intrenching tools from the storeroom, began to break through the wall without delay.

"I like this," Wilson said. "It is a thousand times better than sitting up there waiting till they choose to make an attack. How wide shall we make it?"

"As narrow as we can for one to pa.s.s along at a time," Bathurst said.

"The narrower it is, the less trouble we shall have with the roof."

"But only one will be able to work at a time in that case."

"That will be quite enough,". Bathurst said. "It will be hot work and hard. We will relieve each other every five minutes or so."

A very short time sufficed to break through the wall.

"Thank goodness, it is earth," Wilson said, thrusting a crowbar through the opening as soon as it was made.

"I had no fear of its being rock, Wilson. If it had been, they would not have taken the trouble to have walled the sides of the cellar. The soil is very deep all over here. The natives have to line their wells thirty or forty feet down."

The enemy were quiet all day, but the garrison thought it likely that, warned by the lesson of the night before, they were erecting a battery some distance farther back, masked by the trees, and that until it was ready to open fire they would know nothing about it.

"So you have turned miner, Mr. Wilson?" Isobel Hannay said to him as, after a change and a bath, he came in to get his lunch.

"I calculate I have lost half a stone in weight, Miss Hannay. If I were to go on at this for a month or two there would be nothing left of me."

"And how far did you drive the hole?"

"Gallery, Miss Hannay; please call it a gallery, it sounds so much better. We got in five yards. I should hardly have believed it possible, but Bathurst is a tremendous fellow to work. He uses a pick as if he had been a sapper all his life. We kept the men pretty hard at work, I can tell you, carrying up the earth. Richards is at work now, and I bet him five rupees that he and Herbert don't drive as far as we did."

"There is not much use in betting now, Mr. Wilson," Isobel said sadly.

"No, I suppose not, Miss Hannay; but it gives a sort of interest to one's work. I have blistered my hands horribly, but I suppose they will get hard in a day or two."

"I wish we could work at something," Isobel said. "Now that we have finished with the bags and bandages, the time seems very long; the only thing there is to do is to play with the children and try to keep them good; it is fortunate there is a bit of garden for them to play in."

"It is not much of a garden, Miss Hannay. We had something like a garden when I was a boy at home; the governor's is a jolly old rectory, with a splendid garden. What fun we used to have there when I was a young one!

I wonder what the dear old governor and mater would say if they knew the fix we were in here. You know, sometimes I think that Forster's plan was the best, and that it would be better to try and make a dash through them."

"We are in your way, Mr. Wilson; you wouldn't be able to do much fighting if you had one of us clinging to you."

"I don't know, Miss Hannay," Wilson said quietly, "what my fighting powers are, but I fancy if you were clinging to me I could cut my way through a good deal."

"I am sure you would do anything that anyone could do," the girl said kindly; "but whatever you might feel, having another person behind you could not but hamper you awfully. I would infinitely rather try to escape on foot, for then I should be relying on myself, while if I was riding behind anyone, and we were pursued or attacked, I should feel all the time I was destroying his chances, and that if it were not for me he would get away. That would be terrible. I don't know whether we were wise to stay here instead of trying to escape at once; but as uncle and Mr. Hunter and the others all thought it wiser to stay, I have no doubt it was; but I am quite sure that it could not have been a good plan to go off like that on horseback."

Another day pa.s.sed quietly, and then during the night the watch heard the sounds of blows with axes, and of falling trees.

"They are clearing the ground in front of their battery," the Major, who was on the watch with his party, said; "it will begin in earnest tomorrow morning. The sound came from just where we expected. It is about in the same line as where they made their first attempt, but a hundred yards or so further back."

At daylight they saw that the trees and bushes had been leveled, and a battery, with embrazures for six guns, erected at a distance of about four hundred yards from the house. More sandbags were at once brought up from below, and the parapet, on the side facing the battery, raised two feet and doubled in thickness. The garrison were not disturbed while so engaged.

"Why the deuce don't the fellows begin?" Captain Forster said impatiently, as he stood looking over the parapet when the work was finished.

"I expect they are waiting for the Rajah and some of the princ.i.p.al Zemindars to come down," replied the Major; "the guns are theirs, you see, and will most likely be worked by their own followers. No doubt they think they will knock the place to pieces in a few minutes.

"Listen! there is music; they are coming in grand state. Rintoul, will you tell the workers in the mine to come up. By the way, who are at work now?"

"Bathurst and Wilson, sir."

"Then tell Wilson to come up, and request Bathurst to go on with the gallery. Tell him I want that pushed forward as fast as possible, and that one gun will not make much difference here. Request the ladies and children to go down into the storeroom for the present. I don't think the b.a.l.l.s will go through the wall, but it is as well to be on the safe side."

Captain Rintoul delivered his message to the ladies. They had already heard that the battery had been unmasked and was ready to open fire, and lamps had been placed in the storeroom in readiness for them. There were pale faces among them, but their thoughts were of those on the roof rather than of themselves.

Mrs. Hunter took up the Bible she had been reading, and said, "Tell them, Captain Rintoul, we shall be praying for them." The ladies went into the room that served as a nursery, and with the ayahs and other female servants carried the children down into the storeroom.

"I would much rather be up there," Isobel said to Mrs. Doolan; "we could load the muskets for them, and I don't think it would be anything like so bad if we could see what was going on as being cooped up below fancying the worst all the time."

"I quite agree with you, but men never will get to understand women.

Perhaps before we are done they will recognize the fact that we are no more afraid than they are."

The music was heard approaching along the road where the bungalows had stood. Presently a number of flags were raised in the battery amid a great beating of drums. On the previous day a flagstaff had been erected on the roof, and a Union Jack was run up in answer to the enemy's demonstration.

"A cheer for the old flag, lads," the Major said; and a hearty cheer broke from the little party on the roof, where, with the exception of Bathurst, all the garrison were a.s.sembled. The cheer was answered by a yell from the natives not only in the battery, but from the gardens and inclosures round the house.

"Pay no attention to the fellows in the gardens," the Major said; "fire at their guns--they must expose themselves to load."

The men were kneeling behind the parapet, where the sandbags had been so arranged that they could see through between those on the upper line, and thus fire without raising their heads above it.

"Shall we wait for them or fire first, Major?" the Doctor asked.

"I expect the guns are loaded and laid, Doctor; but if you see a head looking along them, by all means take a shot at it. I wish we could see down into the battery itself, but it is too high for that."