Rujub, the Juggler

“Let them wait while I go down and get a bit of phosphorus,” the Doctor said. “I have some in the surgery. They will only throw away their fire in the dark without it.”

He soon returned, and when all the fore and back sights had been rubbed by the phosphorus the firing recommenced, and the Doctor sent Wilson down with the phosphorus to the men on the platforms facing the threatened point.

Bathurst was returning, after having given the message to Captain Doolan, when Mrs. Hunter met him in the passage. She put her hand kindly on his shoulder.

“Now, Mr. Bathurst, if you will take my advice you will remain quietly here. The Doctor tells me they are going to open fire, and it is not the least use your going there exposing yourself to be shot when you know that you will be of no use. You showed us yesterday that you could be of use in other ways, and I have no doubt you will have opportunities of doing so again. I can assure you none of us will think any the worse of you for not being able to struggle against a nervous affliction that gives you infinite pain. If they were attacking it would be different; I know you would be wanting to take your share then.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hunter,” he said, “but I must go up. I grant that I shall be of no use, but at least I will take any chance that the others run of being shot. A man does not flinch from a painful operation, and, whatever the pain, it has to be faced. I may get used to it in time; but whether I do or not I must go through it, though I do not say it doesn’t hurt.”

At this moment the rattle of musketry broke out above. Bathurst gave a violent start, and a low cry as of pain; then he rushed past Mrs. Hunter and up the staircase to the terrace, when he staggered rather than walked forward to the parapet, and threw himself down beside two figures who were in the act of firing.

“Is that you, Bathurst?” the Major’s voice asked. “Mind, man, don’t lift your head above the sandbags in that way. There, you had best lie quiet; the natives have no idea of attacking, and it is of no use throwing away valuable ammunition by firing unless your hand is steady.”

But Bathurst did not hear, and remained with his head above the line of sandbags until the Major put his hand on his shoulder and forced him down. He might have put his hands over his ears to deaden the sound—for in the darkness no one would have seen the action—but he would not do so, but with clenched teeth and quivering nerves lay there until the Major said, “I fancy we have stopped them working. Now, Doctor, do you, Hunter, Bathurst, and Farquharson go and lie down for four hours, when I will send for you to take our places. Before you lie down will you tell Doolan to send half his party in? Of course you will lie down in your clothes, ready to fall in at your posts at a moment’s notice.”

“Let me send another rocket up first, Major, to see what they are doing. We can sleep tomorrow in the daytime; they won’t dare to work under our fire then. Now, get ready, gentlemen, and don’t throw away a shot, if they are still working there.”

The light of the rocket showed that there were now no natives at the spot where they had been seen at work.

“I thought it would be too hot for them, Major, at such close quarters as these. We must have played the mischief with them.”

“All the better, Doctor; we will send a few shots there occasionally to show them we have not forgotten them. But the principal thing will be to keep our ears open to see that they don’t bring up ladders and try a rush.”

“I think there is no fear of that tonight, Major. They would not have set to work at the battery if they had any idea of trying to scale the wall with ladders. That will come later on; but I don’t think you will be troubled any more tonight, except by these fellows firing away from the bushes, and I should think they would get tired of wasting their ammunition soon. It is fortunate we brought all the spare ammunition in here.”

“Yes, they only had ten rounds of ball cartridge, and that must be nearly used up by this time. They will have to make up their cartridges in future, and cast their bullets, unless they can get a supply from some of the other mutineers.”

“Well, you will send for us in four hours, Major?”

“You need not be afraid of my forgetting.”

Dawn was just breaking when the relief were called up; the firing had died away, and all was quiet.

“You will take command here, Rintoul,” the Major said. “I should keep Farquharson up here, if I were you, and leave the Doctor and Bathurst to look after things in general. I think, Doctor, it would be as well if we appointed Bathurst in charge of the general arrangements of the house. We have a good amount of stores, but the servants will waste them if they are not looked after. I should put them on rations, Bathurst; and there might be regular rations of things served out for us too; then it would fall in your province to see that the syces water and feed the horses. You will examine the well regularly, and note whether there is any change in the look of the water. I think you will find plenty to do.”

“Thank you, Major,” Bathurst said. “I appreciate your kindness, and for the present, at any rate, will gladly undertake the work of looking after the stores and servants; but there is one thing I have been thinking of, and which I should like to speak to you about at once, if you could spare a minute or two before you turn in.”

“What is that, Bathurst?”

“I think that we are agreed, Major, that though we may hold this place for a time, sooner or later we must either surrender or the place be carried by storm.”

Major Hannay nodded.

“That is what it must come to, Bathurst. If they will at last grant us terms, well and good; if not, we must either try to escape or die fighting.”

“It is about the escape I have been thinking, Major; as our position grows more and more desperate they will close round us, and although we might have possibly got through last night, our chances of doing so when they have once broken into the inclosure and begin to attack the house itself are very slight. A few of us who can speak the language well might possibly in disguise get away, but it would be impossible for the bulk of us to do so.”

“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 pass 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.”