_Now_ bugler!" said Captain Malet-Marsac, and Moussa Isa's _locum
tenens_ blew his only call--a series of long loud G's.... The gate
blazed, before long it would fall.... A hush fell upon the expectant
multitude without, the men of the more-or-less uniformed and disciplined
party raised their rifles, a big burly man bawled orders....

With a crash and leaping fountain of sparks the gate fell into the dying
fire, a mighty roar burst from the multitude, and a crashing fusillade
from the rifles of the uniformed men....

As their magazine-fire slackened, dwindled to a desultory popping, and
ceased, the mob with a howl of triumph surged forward to the gaping
gateway, trampled and scattered the glowing remnants of the fire,
swarmed yelling through, and--found themselves face to face with a
stout semicircular rampart of stone, earth and sandbags, which,
loopholed, embrasured and strongly manned, spanned the gateway in a
thirty-yard arc. From the centre of it, pointing at the entrance, looked
the maxim gun.

"_Fire_," shouted a voice, and in a minute the place was a shambles.
Before Maxim and Lee-Metford were too hot to touch, before the baffled
foe fell back, those who surged in through the gate climbed, not over a
wall of dead, but up on to a platform of dead, a plateau through which
ran a valley literally blasted out by the ceaseless maxim-fire....

And, as the less fanatical, less courageous, less bloodthirsty withdrew
and gathered without and to one side, where they were safe from that
terrible fire-belching rampart that was itself like the muzzle of some
gigantic thousand-barrelled machine-gun, they were aware, in their rear,
of a steady tramp of running feet and of the orders:--

"From the centre _extend_! At the enemy in front; fixed sights; _fire_,"
and of a withering hail of bullets.

Colonel Ross-Ellison had arrived in the nick of time. It was a "crowning
mercy" indeed, the beginning of the end, and when (a few days later),
over a repaired bridge, came a troop-train, gingerly advancing, the
battalion of British troops that it disgorged at Gungapur Road Station
found disappointingly little to do in a city of women, children, and
eminently respectable innocent, householders.

* * * * *

On the hill-top, at dawn, Colonel Ross-Ellison and Captain Malet-Marsac
found all that was left of the picket and sentry-group,--of the latter,
three mangled corpses, the headless deserter, and a j