losses had been enormous.

The morning of the 30th brought no cessation of the fighting, but the
enemy, disheartened by their losses of the previous night, did not
attack until 7 P.M. At that hour they advanced and made a fresh effort.
They were again repulsed. Perhaps the reader is tired of the long
recital of the monotonous succession of assaults and repulses. What
must the garrison have been by the reality? Until this day--when they
snatched a few hours' sleep--they had been continually fighting and
watching for ninety-six hours. Like men in a leaking ship, who toil at
the pumps ceaselessly and find their fatigues increasing and the ship
sinking hour by hour, they cast anxious, weary eyes in the direction
whence help might be expected. But none came. And there are worse deaths
than by drowning.

Men fell asleep at the loopholes and at the service of the field gun.
Even during the progress of the attacks, insulted nature asserted
itself, and the soldiers drifted away from the roar of the musketry,
and the savage figures of the enemy, to the peaceful unconsciousness
of utter exhaustion. The officers, haggard but tireless, aroused them
frequently.

At other times the brave Sepoys would despair. The fort was ringed with
the enemy. The Malakand, too, was assailed. Perhaps it was the same
elsewhere. The whole British Raj seemed passing away in a single
cataclysm. The officers encouraged them. The Government of the
Queen-Empress would never desert them. If they could hold out, they
would be relieved. If not, they would be avenged. Trust in the young
white men who led them, and perhaps some dim half-idolatrous faith in a
mysterious Sovereign across the seas, whose soldiers they were, and
who would surely protect them, restored their fainting strength. The
fighting continued.

During the whole time of the siege the difficulty of maintaining
signalling communication with the Malakand was extreme. But for the
heroism of the signallers, it would have been insuperable. One man in
particular, Sepoy Prem Singh, used every day at the risk of his life to
come out through a porthole of the tower, establish his heliograph, and,
under a terrible fire from short range, flash urgent messages to
the main force. The extreme danger, the delicacy of the operation of
obtaining connection with a helio, the time consumed, the composure
required, these things combined to make the action as brave as any which
these or other pages record. [A