Voices in the Night Part 58

So, stealthily, they were on the bridge in the rear of the tower.

'Like a thief in the night, sir,' whispered Jan-Ali-shan approvingly.

'Of that day an' hour, as it say in 'Oly Writ--that's the ticket. An'

you lay a holt on somethin' 'andy, sir; even a broken brick's better nor trustin' to Providence--there's a biggish bit on the track, sir.

An'--an' don't waste time killin'; it's the bridge we want, not the butchers. Now for it!'

Were there four or five of them, or fifty, in the almost pitch darkness of the little inner room? Chris never knew. It was a confused struggle, short, sharp, silent; till, suddenly, John Ellison's voice called--

'That'll do, sir! I've bagged three on 'em, and can't find no more. Now to business!'

He was out as he spoke in the dim light to lay his ear to the rails.

And as he listened, he smiled to see a couple of figures scudding for bare life along the single rails as only coolies can do, in hope of shelter from the coming train in the safety, half-way across the bridge.

''Ave to be nippy, my sons,' he remarked affably as he rose, more leisurely, and, from habit, dusted the knees of his trousers as he turned to look stationwards.

But what he saw there made him stop the dusting and swear under his breath.

A little crowd had gathered on the farther side of the gap; a hostile crowd armed with sticks and stones. And with more!

For a bullet whizzed past between him and Chris, who had followed him out, and the sharp report of a rifle roused the echoes of the city wall; and roused, also, a sudden sense of strain, of anxiety, in thousands within the wall; thousands till then ignorant that disturbance was in the air, or at least that it _could_ come so soon!

Even on the turret, amid the schemers and plotters ready--perhaps inevitably--to fall in with any quarrel, this was so; for something else had been in the air, absorbing the attention. Some of those there had remarked, it is true, on the raising of the drawbridge, but others had been ready to tell of the day, not long ago, when it had been so raised and lowered many times without cause, and without result.

So the attention of all had reverted to the two kites which now remained overhead among the faint stars. They were Jehan's and--since little Sa'adut had resigned his claim--that of the next Heir to All Things or Nothingness; a coincidence which, by its hint of fatefulness, had kept interest keener than usual. Even Lateefa, beside his balloonlike bundle of the vanquished, was beginning to wonder if Aunt Khojee had been true prophet, and Jehan's Creator meant to give him back his honour?

But at that rifle-shot, all else was forgotten and all crowded to the parapet.

'Back, sir! back!' shouted Jan-Ali-shan, roused beyond silence, as he grasped a fresh danger; and the crowd, recognising the new turn of affairs, broke silence also in a deep-toned murmur, on which a shriller sound rose sharply--the distant whistle of an engine. And Chris, as he dashed back to shelter, felt a faint quiver in the linked ribbon of steel beneath his feet.

'She's on the bridge, sir!' said Jan-Ali-shan--there was breathless hurry in his voice, but absolute certainty, as he felt hurriedly in his pocket for a match--'but we must wait a bit: if we looses off till the last minute, them Kusseyes'll swarm over. Oh! jes' wait till I gets a holt of them--sneakin' cold chisels won't be in this job!' He had the match lit, his watch out. ''Arf a minute gone, say, an' it takes a cool four minute on the bridge slowin' her off, an' _she_'--he laid his hand on the lever crank of the hydraulic lift--'kin do it in fifty seconds; two and a 'arf left, say, for it won't do to miss the train this journey--but you look 'ere, sir--you give the time-creep round to the back and keep your h'eye on the distance-signal-when she falls sing out, and I'll'--he clasped the crank tighter-'do Sandow! And,' he added to himself as Chris disappeared, 'you can talk your _ikbally_ rot all you know, to-night, you can, you fools! for it won't come up to sample--no! it won't.'

Then, as if the reminiscence had brought another with it, he began softly on the song which he had sung that day on the bridge. The song of surplice-choir days. He had learned it with an organ accompaniment; and a sound was to be heard now, growing louder and louder, that like a deep organ note seemed to set the whole world a-quivering, even the very ground beneath his feet--a rumble and a roar, with a rhythmic pulse in it.

'They are trying to get a rope over,' shouted Chris. 'In two places--from the bastion as well.'

Jan-Ali-shan's hand left the crank for a second. He was out at the door looking, not citywards, but bridgewards. And then he laughed, laughed in the very face of a monstrous form with red eyes and a flaming mane coming steadily at him.

'They'll 'ave to be nippier than they is general,' he called back, his hand once more waiting for its task, as he continued his song--

'Trees where you sit---- Shall crowd into a sha----a----a----'

The dainty little runs, mellow, perfect, paused when the wire connecting the distance-signal with the station thrilled like a fiddle-string as the signal fell, and Chris Davenant's 'Now!' followed sharply, but they went on again in the darkness, backed by that growing rumble and roar.

'Is it working? I can't hear the water! My G.o.d! if it isn't--what is to be done?'

The brown hand that had found a place on the crank also trembled against the white one.

'Do? We done our best, sir; an' she's a lydy, so the odds is fair--

"aa--a--a--aa--a-- Trees whe--re you--sit, shall crowd into--o--a--shade.'"

Done our best! The words, blending with the tender triumph of those final bars, were in Chris Davenant's ears but a few seconds, yet they brought a strange dreamy content with them, till Jan-Ali-shan, almost before the last note he had learned in his white-robed days ended, burst into a regular yell of relief, as the resistance on the crank lessened, ceased.

'She's down, or nigh it! Now for the fun, and the fightin', sir! Now to see them blamed Kusseyes!----'

Clear of the clamour of confined sound in the little room, his voice rose in a laugh, as, to gain a standpoint on the wider ledge beyond the archway, he dashed, followed by Chris, right in front of the thundering engine, which was already so close, that the glare of its red eyes shone full on their reckless figures, as the scream of the danger-whistle rang out shrill and sharp.

Not in warning to them only. Not even to the crowd in front; _that_ had parted, as it were, mechanically, leaving the steel-edged ribbon of rail in its midst, clear to the station. It was for the long links of carriages behind, out of which heads were already craning to catch the first glimpse of the fun and the fighting to which they had been summoned so hastily.

For there was danger ahead to every one behind. The girders of the drawbridge were still slightly aslant; they had barely closed into the sockets, and beside these a group of half-naked figures were busy.

Over what? Jan-Ali-shan guessed in a second that they were trying to prevent a further closing, they were trying to derail the train, and he was off like an arrow across the narrow bridge, hidden by the clouds of steam that rose in an instant from the curbed monster, as the brakes, the valves, were jammed home hard in the effort to stop it.

Chris could not understand the cry that came back through the steam--'Drop it, you devils! them's _my_ cold chisels'; but, as ever, he followed on the other's heels, half-scalded, half-deafened; followed blindly until in the clearer air beyond--as yet!--that snorting, sliding, resistless fate behind him, he saw that the group about the sockets had scattered at the mere sight of that reckless onslaught.

All but one figure--the figure of the biggest bully of the butchers'

gang, Jan-Ali-shan's sworn foe--that, with a yell of absolute hate, had run out as recklessly to bar the way.

Jan-Ali-shan gave a shout as he closed with it, for the man was a noted wrestler--'None o' yer b.u.t.tin's an' booin's; fight _seeda_, or it ain't----'

There was no time for more words, since this was no place for a wrestling match--this narrow platform with the river below it, and scarcely room upon it for a man with steady nerves to stand slim and let a fierce shadow with a screaming voice pa.s.s in a roar and a rattle.

And such a fierce shadow half hidden in the steam fog was sliding on, battling against the curb, thundering, shaking the track with brakes down! So close! Dear G.o.d! so close!

Chris gave a desperate cry of fear and courage--but was beside those two.

And so was the red glare of the angry eyes seen through the steam clouds; so was the scream of the whistle heard above the roar and the rattle.

'Now then, sir, heave!

"_Yo-ho--yo-ho, ho! yo-ho, ho!_"'

The engine-driver, craning from his cab, heard so much beyond that fog of steam. The officers in the first carriage heard a brief--

'Keep your head, sir, and git a holt of me.'

Only those voices; no more. Then everything was lost in an awful grating sound--a sound of iron grinding iron to powder--a jerk, a wrench, a dislocation; a shock that shook the very air and made the very water in the river ebb and flow as the piers, the retaining-wall, quivered to their foundations.

But the next instant the rocking engine recovered its smooth slide, and the carriages were sliding after it over the girders it had jammed home--sliding on to the station, to safety, to the fun and the fighting!

And yet a yell of horror rose from the watching crowd. Not because the onward sliding which left the bridge free of steam clouds left it free also of all trace of those wrestling figures. That was only to be expected, since, if they had not fallen victims to the steam-devil, the water must have claimed them.

It was because the river was claiming something else, and the bastion, cracked so long, had yielded to its importunity at last--yielded perhaps to the shock, perhaps to that reckless rush of spectators to one side, perhaps to fate! And with a silence, awful in comparison with the clamour around it, it was sliding outwards, downwards. Sliding so slowly that it was well on its way ere an answering yell of terror rose from the figures upon it. Sliding so softly--brick holding fast to brick--that the final rending was almost unheard in the sound of hissing water closing in on water.