Complete Works of Talbot Mundy, page 1103
With purely Eastern logic, the leaders of the rebels had decided that the sight of the bodies of the four, writhing in their last agony on the sun-scorched outer wall, would mightily discourage the British when they came. So no efforts were being spared and no stones left unturned to find them. The hooks on the wall were sharp and ready, so that they might be impaled without loss of time in full view of their would-be rescuers.
Almost every secret passage of the thousand odd had been explored. In the hurry to run through them and explore the next one, doors had been left open here and there that had been kept closed in some instances for centuries.
One door in particular, placed cornerwise in a buttress of the outer wall, was spotted by Juggut Khan as he circled round the city on his charger at dusk on the day following their arrival. He brought his charger back to where the others lay concealed, and then went on an exploring-expedition on foot — to discover that the outer city wall was like a sponge, a nest of honey-combed cells and passages wandering interminably in the fifty-foot-thick brick and rubble rampart.
And while he searched amid the mazy windings of the wall, Bill Brown sat in the forked top of a tree and studied out the ground-plan of the city. He was imprinting landmarks in his memory for future reference, and trying — with a brain that ached from the apparent hopelessness of the task — to figure out a plan.
He knew by now that the four he had come to rescue were hidden underneath the powder-magazine, and he could see the magazine itself. But he could think of no way of rescuing them, for the city absolutely boiled with frantic, mixed-up castes and creeds picked at random, and thrown in at random from the whole of India. A mouse could not have passed through the streets undetected! And yet, from a soldier’s point of view, there were certain fascinating details to be noticed about that powder-magazine. In the first place, it had been constructed for a granary by an emperor who never heard of Joseph, but who had the same ideal plan for cornering the people’s food-supply. And since labor had been unlimited, and cheap, he had gone about building the thing on the most thoroughly unpractical and most pretentious plan that he and his architects could figure out. It was big enough to hold about ten times as much grain as the province could grow in any one year of plenty. And, since that was the least practical and most ungranary-like shape, he had caused it to be built like an enormous beehive, with a tiny platform at the top.
Winding round and round the huge stone dome, and on the outside, was a six-foot-wide trail, which was the elevator. Up this, each with a sack or a basket on his head, the population was to have been induced to run in single file, dumping its hard-won corn into the granary through an opening at the top until the granary was full.
The emperor died — by poison — before he could see his cherished project put into execution, but he had been a very thorough calculator, and a builder who believed in permanency. He had foreseen that when the granary was full, and the screw-jacks were turned beneath the cost of living, there would probably be efforts made by unwashed, untutored, unenlightened mobs to rape his storehouse. So he had made the little platform at the top a veritable fortress of a place, such as a handful of men could hold against a hundred thousand.
There was no known entrance to the granary above ground, except on the ground level, where a huge stone gateway frowned above a teak-and-iron door. Above that door there were galleries, and fortalices and cunningly invented battlements in miniature, from behind whose shelter a resolute defending-party could pour out a hundred different kinds of death on a hungry crowd. The place was naturally fire-proof and naturally cool — as far as any building can be cool in Central India. It was a first-class, ideal powder-magazine, if useless as a granary; and the last new conquerors of India had hastened to adopt it as a means of storing up the explosive medicine with which they kept their foothold.
Naturally, none but White soldiers, and a very few of the more trusted natives, had ever been allowed to go inside the powder-magazine. The secret passages beneath it had never been intended for public convenience or information. They had been designed as a means of rushing defenders secretly into the granary, and they connected with a tunnel underneath the palace that had just been burned. They also connected with the outer wall in such a way that defenders from the ramparts might be rushed there too, if wanted in a hurry. But, since there never had been corn kept in the granary, and nobody had ever had the slightest need to force an entrance, the knowledge even of the existence of the passages had become barely a memory, and there was not a man living in Jailpore who knew exactly where they began or where they ended. There was a man outside who knew, but none inside.
The point about the powder-magazine which most appealed to Brown — next after his knowledge of its contents, mineral and human — was the fact that the little platform at its summit overlooked the city-wall, and that the side of the granary actually touched the wall on the side of the city farthest from where he sat and spied it out. Ten men on that protected platform, he thought, might suffer from the sun, but they could hold the building and command a good-sized section of the city ramparts against all comers.
He noticed too, though that seemed immaterial at the time, that one well-aimed shot from heavy ordnance might crash through the upper dome and set off the powder underneath. There was no artillery that could be brought against the place, either with the British force or with the mutineers, but the thought set him to wondering how much powder there might be stored on the huge round floor below, and what would happen should it become ignited. It was a sanguinary, interesting, subtle kind of thought, that suited the condition of his brain exactly! He climbed down from the tree, feeling almost good-natured.
At the bottom he met Juggut Khan, waiting for him patiently.
“What have you seen, sahib?” he asked him. “Have you formed a plan?”
“I’ve been wishing I was Joshua!” said Brown. “I’d like to make my men march round the city and blow trumpets, and then see the walls fall down. I can think of several things to do, if we could only get inside. But I can’t think how to get there.”
“I have found a way in!” said Juggut Khan. “I have cross-questioned that fakir of ours as well, with a little assistance from a cleaning-rod wielded by one of your men. He knows the way too. He says he is the only man who knows it — in which he lies, since I too have discovered it. But his knowledge may help as well.”
“What’s that about a cleaning-rod?” asked Brown.
“It was used on him to help him forget his vow of silence.”
“When?”
“When you were up that tree, sahib!”
“Have you been giving my man orders?”
“Nay, sahib!”
“How did he come to beat the fakir, then?”
“We both arrived at the same conclusion at the same moment, and the fakir received the benefit!”
“Who held him, you?”
“Nay, sahib! God forbid! I am a clean man. I listened to his conversation. The Beluchi held him.”
“Oh! Well, I like you well enough, Juggut Khan, but there are things about you that I don’t like. You’re too fond of doing things on your own responsibility, and you’re much too fond of using oaths. Y our soul is none o’ my business; you’re a heathen anyhow, and no longer in the Service. But, I’ll trouble you not to use those disgraceful oaths of yours in the presence of the men! Do you understand me?”
“I understand you, sahib. If my respect for all your other qualities were not so profound, I would laugh at you! As it is, if your honor should see fit to turn the bullocks loose, and tie the fakir fast between two men and follow me, it seems to me dark enough by now, and I know the way. Might I furthermore suggest that the ammunition-box would make a reasonable load for another two men?”
“Hadn’t we better bring our rifles too?” asked Brown sarcastically. “Upon my honor, Juggut Khan! You’re getting childish! Are your nerves upset, or what? Lead on, man! Lead on!”
“Listen. There are two ways, sahib. One way leads from the burned-out barracks to the cellar where the women lie hidden. That way is closed by debris. The other way leads from the outer wall by a very winding route to the cellar where the women are. The fakir knows that way, and I do not, though I know of it. There is a third way, though, that leads from the outer wall, where I have been exploring, straight almost, if you disregard a wind or two, to the inside of the powder-magazine. It enters the magazine through a doorway secretly contrived in an upright pillar — or so the fakir swears. Now this is my notion, sahib. If we go in by the lower way, we must come out that way, and run the risk of being caught as we emerge. That risk will be greatly enhanced when we have frightened women with us whose eyes have been blinded by the darkness. But, if we go in by the upper way, and enter the magazine itself, I can make the fakir show us how to lift the stone trapdoor I spoke of — the one that I closed when I hid the women. Then I can ascend with him, and with say four men, while you ascend to the platform at the top with the remainder of the men, and guard our rear and our exit. From the top, you will be able to see us as we emerge, and can cover our retreat, and follow.”
“That sounds like a roundabout sort of plan to me!” said Brown. “Why not go straight in by the lower route, and gather up the women, and carry ’em out, and make a bolt for it?”
“Because, sahib, we will be at the fakir’s mercy.”
“Nonsense! He’s at our mercy.”
“Think, sahib! There, he will be in his own bat’s nest, so to speak. These fakirs are the only men who know the windings of all the secret passages. They are the rats of religion and intrigue. At any step he might lead us into an ambush, and we might be overwhelmed before we knew that we were attacked. If we go the other way, though, I can lead the way myself, and we need only take the fakir to show us how to open the door.”
“Very well,” said Brown. “Let’s get a move on, though! I’m beginning to think that you’re a better talker than a fighter, Juggut Khan!”
“Yes, sahib? I trust there will be no fighting!” But the Rajput smiled as he said it, and thought of a certain lance-shaft which had been broken in the streets of Jailpore.
“Lead on! Fall in behind me, men! Walk quietly, now, and remember. Hold your tongues! Each man keep his eye on me, and a finger on the trigger!”
The Beluchi and the fakir and Juggut Khan moved in the van, with two men to hold the fakir. Next marched, or rather tiptoed, Sergeant Brown, followed by the other men in single file. In that order they hastened after Juggut Khan, through the darkness, across a dried-out moat and round the corner of a huge stone buttress. There they disappeared inside the wall, and a stone swung round and closed the gap behind the last of them. There was no alarm given, and not a sign or a sound of any kind to betoken that any one had seen them. Inside the walls the city roared like a flood-fed maelstrom, and outside all was darkness and the silence of the dead.
XIII.
There was some smart work done inside the powder-magazine. To be able to appreciate it properly one would be obliged to do what they did — wander through a maze of tunnels in a city-wall, blinded by darkness, oppressed by the stored-up stuffiness and heat of ages and deafened by the stillness — then emerge unexpectedly in the lamp-lit magazine, among mutineers who sprawled, and laughed; and chewed betel-nut at their ease upon the powder-kegs.
Both sides were taken by surprise, but the mutineers had the nominal advantage, for their eyes were accustomed to the light. They had the advantage in numbers, too, by almost two to one. But they dared not fire, for fear of setting off the magazine, whereas Brown and his little force dared anything. They fully expected to die, and might as well die that way as any other. And a quick death for the women down below would be better than anything the rebels had in store for them. Brown yelled an order, and the rest was too quick, nearly, for the eye to follow.
Three rebels died with bullets in them, and the rest stampeded for the teak-and-metal door, to find it locked on them, and Brown and the Rajput standing in front of it on guard. The mutineers attacked fiercely. They flung themselves all together on the two. But they had yet to learn that they were tackling, or endeavoring to tackle, the two finest swordsmen in that part of India. And when they turned, to find more room to fight in, or to draw their breath, they had to face nine bayonets that hemmed them in, and drove them closer and even closer to the swords again. They shouted, but no sound could pierce the walls or escape through that tremendous door. Even the sound of firing merely echoed upward until it reached the dome, and then filtered out and upward through the opening above. They might as well have shouted to their friends in Bholat!
For ten minutes, perhaps, the battle surged and swayed on the stone floor first one side rushing, then the other. But man after man of the mutineers went down — appalled by the amazing swordsmanship, disheartened by the grim determination of their adversaries, bewildered to feebleness by the suddenness of the attack.
Soon there were but eight of them facing the blood-wet steel, and then Brown shouted for a fresh formation, swung his contingent into line and led them with a rush across the floor that swept the remaining mutineers off their feet.
Three more went down with steel through them, and then the rest surrendered, throwing down their arms, and begging mercy. Brown made a bundle of their arms, stowed it in a corner and made the prisoners stand together in a bunch, while he searched them thoroughly.
“If we can’t get that trapdoor open now, with these to help us,” he remarked, panting and wiping the dotted blood off his sword on a Hindu prisoner’s trousers, “it’ll be a heavier proposition than I think!”
“There’s a trick to it,” said Juggut Khan, panting too, for the battle had been fierce and furious while it lasted. “The fakir knows the trick. It is heavy, in any case. But, if we make him tell us, we can manage it.”
There followed delay while the fakir was induced to forego the pleasure of a sulking fit. He seemed like a child, anxious to emphasize their dependence on his knowledge, and needing to be recompelled to each new thing they needed of him. He was perfectly content, though, to surrender when he felt the weight of a cleaning-rod on his anatomy, or something in the way of fire — a match or cigarette for instance — placed where he would get the most sensation from it.
Then followed more delay, while they rigged a lever of sorts, and a rope through an iron ring in the trap, and while Juggut Khan hunted for the secret catch that the fakir swore was hidden underneath a smaller stone that hinged in the middle of the floor. He found it at last, moved it and came across to lend a hand with the lever and the rope.
The fakir sat still and smiled at them. His eyes gleamed more horridly than ever, and his withered arm seemed more than ever to be calling down dire vengeance on them.
“I believe that monster is up to tricks of some kind!” swore Brown.
“He can’t do anything,” said Juggut Khan. “If we were all to put our weight against this, all together, we and the prisoners, sahib, we could get it open in a second.”
“All together, then!” said Brown. “Come on, there! Lend a hand!”
The prisoners and Brown’s men and Juggut Khan and the Beluchi bent their backs above the lever, or hauled taut on the rope, and the fakir wriggled with some secret joke.
“At the word three!” said Brown. “Then all together!”
“One!”
“Two!”
The fakir writhed delightedly. He seemed more than ever like a wickedly malicious child.
“Three!”
They strained their utmost, and the huge stone trap gave way with a sudden jerk.
“For the love of—”
They all jumped, but they were strained in the wrong position for a quick recovery, and the ten-ton rock rolled back on unseen hinges to crush them all, and rolled back and yet farther back — and then stayed! Brown had snatched a rifle, and had placed it between the rolling rock and the wall!
He stood wiping the sweat from his forehead, while the rest recovered their lost balance and walked out from behind unscathed. The rifle creaked and bent and split. Then the stone leaned farther back, reached the wall and stayed there!
“A near thing that!” said Brown. “That fakir’s a bright beauty, isn’t he!”
“Shall I kick him, sir?” asked one of Brown’s men.
“Kick him? No! What good’d that do? What next, Juggut Khan?”
But Juggut Khan was bending down, and listening at the hole laid bare by the huge hinged trap.
“Silence!” commanded Brown.
The men held their breath, even, but not a sound came up from the darkness down below.
“Are they dead, d’you suppose?” asked Brown.
And, even as he asked it, some one in the darkness snuffled, and he heard a woman’s voice that moaned.
“Snff-snff-snff! I wonder if I’m dead yet! I wouldn’t be, I know, if Bill were here! He’d ha’ got us out!”
“There is one of them alive!” said Juggut Khan.
“So I notice!” answered Brown, with a strange dry quaver in his voice. “Go down and bring her up, please! Take three or four men with you. It won’t do to bring women and a child up here and let ’em see this awful fakir and these corpses. Take your time about bringing ’em up, while I make the prisoners carry their dead up on to the roof. I’ll take the fakir up there too where he’s out of mischief!”
Just as a six-foot-wide pathway ran round and round the outside of the dome, another one, scarcely more than a yard wide, ran round the inside, and formed a roadway to the top in place of a stair. It took the prisoners and Brown’s men fifteen minutes of continuous effort to carry up the dead and the fakir, and lay them on the roof.
“Pitch the dead over!” ordered Brown, and the mutineers obeyed.
“I’ve a mind to pitch you over too!” he growled at the fakir, and the strange creature seemed to understand him, for his eyes changed from their baleful hatred to a look of fear.
