The Golden Silence Part 57

Both men laughed. "We'd rather be here, thank you," said Stephen. "If you're not frightened, that's all we want. We're as safe as in a fort, and shall enjoy the adventure, if we have any."

"It's like you to say that," Victoria answered. "But there's no use pretending, is there? Ca.s.sim will bring a good many men, and Si Maeddine will be with them, I think. They couldn't afford to try, and fail. If they come, they'll have to--make thorough work."

"Yet, on the other hand, they wouldn't want to take too many into their secret," Stephen tried to rea.s.sure her.

"Well, we may soon know," she said. "But what I came out to say, is this. My sister has two carrier pigeons with her. One has hurt its wing and is no use. But the other is well, and--he comes from Oued Tolga. Not the Zaoua, but the city. We've been thinking, she and I, since the Arab servant didn't answer, that it would be a good thing to send a letter to--to Captain Sabine, telling him we expected an attack."

"It would be rather a sell if he got the message, and acted on it--and then nothing happened after all," suggested Nevill.

"I think we'll send the message," said Stephen. "It would be different if we were all men here, but----"

Victoria turned, and ran back to the open door.

"The pigeon shall go in five minutes," she called over her shoulder.

Stephen and Nevill went to the dining-room.

The landlord was there, drunk, talking to himself. He had broken a dish, and was kicking the fragments under the table. He laughed at first when the two Englishmen tried to impress upon him the gravity of the situation; at last, however, they made him understand that this was no joke, but deadly earnest. They helped him close and bar the heavy iron gates; and as they looked about for material with which to build up a barrier if necessary, they saw the sisters come to the door. Saidee had a pigeon in her hands, and opening them suddenly, she let it go. It rose, fluttered, circling in the air, and flew southward. Victoria ran up the dilapidated stairway by the gate, to see it go, but already the tiny form was m.u.f.fled from sight in the blue folds of the twilight.

"In less than two hours it will be at Oued Tolga," the girl cried, coming down the steep steps.

At that instant, far away, there was the dry bark of a gun.

They looked at each other, and said nothing, but the same doubt was in the minds of all.

It might be that the message would never reach Oued Tolga.

Then another thought flashed into Stephen's brain. He asked himself whether it would be possible to climb up into the broken tower. If he could reach the top, he might be able to call for help if they should be hard-pressed; for some years before he had, more for amus.e.m.e.nt than anything else, taken a commission in a volunteer battalion and among many other things which he considered more or less useless, had learned signalling. He had not entirely forgotten the accomplishment, and it might serve him very well now, only--and he looked up critically at the jagged wall--it would be difficult to get into that upper chamber, a sh.e.l.l of which remained. In any case, he would not think of so extreme a measure, until he was sure that, if he gave an alarm, it would not be a false one.

"Let's have dinner," said Nevill. "If we have fighting to do, I vote we start with ammunition in our stomachs as well as in our pockets."

Saidee had gone part way up the steps, and was looking over the wall.

"I see something dark, that moves," she said. "It's far away, but I am sure. My eyes haven't been trained in the desert for nothing. It's a caravan--quite a big caravan, and it's coming this way. That's where the shot came from. If they killed the pigeon, or winged it, we're all lost.

It would only be childish to hope. We must look our fate in the face.

The men will be killed, and I, too. Victoria will be saved, but I think she'd rather die with the rest of us, for Maeddine will take her."

"It's never childish to hope, it seems to me," said Nevill. "This little fort of ours isn't to be conquered in an hour, or many hours, I a.s.sure you."

"And we have no intention of letting you be killed, or Miss Ray carried off, or of dying ourselves, at the hands of a few Arabs," Knight added.

"Have confidence."

"In our star," Victoria half whispered, looking at Stephen. They both remembered, and their eyes spoke, in a language they had never used before.

In England, Margot Lorenzi was wondering why Stephen Knight had not come to meet her, and angrily making up her mind that she would find out the reason.

L

Somehow, they all contrived to take a little food, three watching from the wall-towers while the others ate; and Saidee prepared strong, delicious coffee, such as had never been tasted in the bordj of Toudja.

When they had dined after a fas.h.i.+on, each making a five-minute meal, there was still time to arrange the defence, for the attacking party--if such it were--could not reach the bordj in less than an hour, marching as fast as horses and camels could travel among the dunes.

The landlord was drunk. There was no disguising that, but though he was past planning, he was not past fighting. He had a French army rifle and bayonet. Each of the five men had a revolver, and there was another in the bordj, belonging to the absent brother. This Saidee asked for, and it was given her. There were plenty of cartridges for each weapon, enough at all events to last out a hot fight of several hours. After that--but it was best not to send thoughts too far ahead.

The Frenchman had served long ago in the Cha.s.seurs d'Afrique, and had risen, he said, to the rank of sergeant; but the fumes of absinthe clouded his brain, and he could only swagger and boast of old exploits as a soldier, crying from time to time "Vive l'entente cordiale," and a.s.suring the Englishmen that they could trust him to the death. It was Stephen who, by virtue of his amateur soldiering experience, had to take the lead. He posted the Highlanders in opposite watch-towers, placing Nevill in one which commanded the two rear walls of the bordj. The next step was the building of bonfires, one at each corner of the roof, so that when the time for fighting came, the defenders might confound the enemy by lighting the surrounding desert, making a surprise impossible.

Old barrels were broken up, therefore, and saturated with oil. The spiked double gates of iron, though apparently strong, Stephen judged incapable of holding out long against battering rams, but he knew heavy baulks of wood to be rare in the desert, far from the palms of the oases. What he feared most was gunpowder; and though he was ignorant of the marabout's secret ambitions and warlike preparations, he thought it not improbable that a store of gunpowder might be kept in the Zaoua.

True, the French Government forbade Arabs to have more than a small supply in their possession; but the marabout was greatly trusted, and was perhaps allowed to deal out a certain amount of the coveted treasure for "powder play" on religious fete days. To prevent the bordj falling into the hands of the Arabs if the gate were blown down, Stephen and his small force built up at the further corner of the yard, in front of the dining-room door, a barrier of mangers, barrels, wooden troughs, iron bedsteads and mattresses from the guest-rooms. Also they reinforced the gates against pressure from the outside, using the shafts of an old cart to make struts, which they secured against the side walls or frame of the gateway. These formed b.u.t.tresses of considerable strength; and the landlord, instead of grumbling at the damage which might be done to his bordj, and the danger which threatened himself, was maudlin with delight at the prospect of killing a few detested Arabs.

"I don't know what your quarrel's about, unless it's the ladies," he said, breathing vengeance and absinthe, "but whatever it is, I'll make it mine, whether you compensate me or not. Depend upon me, _mon capitaine_. Depend on an old soldier."

But Stephen dared not depend upon him to man one of the watch-towers.

Eye and hand were too unsteady to do good service in picking off escaladers. The ex-soldier was brave enough for any feat, however, and was delighted when the Englishman suggested, rather than gave orders, that his should be the duty of lighting the bonfires. That done, he was to take his stand in the courtyard, and shoot any man who escaped the rifles in the wall-towers.

It was agreed among all five men that the gate was to be held as long as possible; that if it fell, a second stand should be made behind the crescent-shaped barricade outside the dining-room door; that, should this defence fall also, all must retreat into the dining-room, where the two sisters must remain throughout the attack; and this would be the last stand.

Everything being settled, and the watch-towers well supplied with food for the rifles, Stephen went to call Saidee and Victoria, who were in their almost dismantled room. The bedstead, washstand, chairs and table had ceased to be furniture, and had become part of the barricade.

"Let me carry your things into the dining-room now," he said. "And your bed covering. We can make up a sort of couch there, for you may as well be comfortable if you can. And you know, it's on the cards that all our fuss is in vain. Nothing whatever may happen."

They obeyed, without objection; but Saidee's look as she laid a pair of Arab blankets over Stephen's arm, told how little rest she expected. She gathered up a few things of her own, however, to take from the bedroom to the dining-room, and as she walked ahead, Stephen asked Victoria if, in the handbag she had brought from the Zaoua there was a mirror.

"Yes," she answered. "There's quite a good-sized one, which I used to have on my dressing-table in the theatre. How far away that time seems now!"

"Will you lend the mirror to me--or do you value it too much to risk having it smashed?"

"Of course I'll lend it. But----" she looked up at him anxiously, in the blue star-dusk. "What are you going to do?"

"Nothing particular, unless we've reason to believe that an attack will be made; that is, if a lot of Arabs come near the bordj. In that case, I want to try and get up into the tower, and do some signalling--for fear the shot we heard hit your sister's messenger. I used to be rather a nailer at that sort of thing, when I played at soldiering a few years ago."

"But no one could climb the tower now!" the girl exclaimed.

"I don't know. I almost flatter myself that I could. I've done the Dent Blanche twice, and a Welsh mountain or two. To be sure, I must be my own guide now, but I think I can bring it off all right. I've been searching about for a mirror and reflector, in case I try the experiment; for the heliographing apparatus was spoilt in the general wreckage of things by the storm. I've got a reflector off a lamp in the kitchen, but couldn't find a looking-gla.s.s anywhere, and I saw there was only a broken bit in your room. My one hope was in you."

As he said this, he felt that the words meant a great deal more than he wished her to understand.

"I hate being afraid of things," said Victoria. "But I am afraid to have you go up in the tower. It's only a sh.e.l.l, that looks as if it might blow down in another storm. It could fall with you, even if you got up safely to the signalling place. And besides, if Ca.s.sim's men were near, they might see you and shoot. Oh, I don't think I could bear to have you go!"

"You care--a little--what becomes of me?" Stephen had stammered before he had time to forbid himself the question.

"I care a great deal--what becomes of you."

"Thank you for telling me that," he said, warmly. "I--" but he knew he must not go on. "I shan't be in danger," he finished. "I'll be up and back before any one gets near enough to see what I'm at, and pot at me."

As he spoke, the sound of a strange, wild singing came to them, with the desert wind that blew from the south.