h's back. He seized it, hauled taut, and planting
his feet against the wall, went up like a fish, to land gasping on a row
of sand-bags.

"Ho, you wandering German!" His invisible friend clapped him on the
shoulder. "By Jove, I'm glad. No time to burble now, though. Off with
you. Compradore has a gun for you, in the court. Collect a drink as you
go by. Report to Kneebone at the northeast corner. Danger point there:
we need a good man, so hurry. Devilish glad. Cut along."

Rudolph, scrambling down from the pony-shed, ran across the compound
with his head in a whirl. Yet through all the scudding darkness and
confusion, one fact had pierced as bright as a star. On this night of
alarms, he had turned the great corner in his life. Like the pale
stranger with his crown of fire, he could finish the course.

He caught his rifle from the compradore's hand, but needed no draught
from any earthly cup. Brushing through the orange trees, he made for the
northeast angle, free of all longing perplexities, purged of all vile
admiration, and fit to join his friends in clean and wholesome danger.

CHAPTER XVIII

SIEGE

He never believed that they could hold the northeast corner for a
minute, so loud and unceasing was the uproar. Bullets spattered sharply
along the wall and sang overhead, mixed now and then with an
indescribable whistling and jingling. The angle was like the prow of a
ship cutting forward into a gale. Yet Rudolph climbed, rejoicing, up the
short bamboo ladder, to the platform which his coolies had built in such
haste, so long ago, that afternoon.

His high spirits went before a fall. As he stood up, in the full glow
from the burning go-down, somebody tackled him about the knees and threw
him head first on the sand-bags.

"How many times must I give me orders?" barked the little sea-captain.
"Under cover, under cover, and stay under cover, or I'll send ye below,
ye gallivanting--Oh! it's you, is it? Well, there's your port-hole." A
stubby finger pointed in the obscurity. "There! and don't ye fire till
I say so!"

Thus made welcome, Rudolph crawled toward a chink among the bags, ran
the muzzle of his gun into place, and lay ready for whatever might come
out of the quaking lights and darknesses beyond.

Nothing came, however, except a swollen continuity of sound, a rolling
cloud of noises, thick and sullen as the smell of burnt gunpowder. It
was strange, thought Rudolph, how nothing happened from moment to