me, now."

As he spoke he tottered, and would have fallen; had not the others
supported him, and gently laid him down on a heap of skins, which
served as an Afghan bed. Then--leaving his servant to attend to
him, for a minute--the others ran upstairs, to see what was going
on, without.

"Be careful!" Will exclaimed. "Don't show a head above the roof, or
at a loophole, or you will get a bullet in your brain, to a
certainty. Stand well back, so that they can't see you."

Already a pattering fire of musketry had broken out, round the
house; but not an Afghan was to be seen, every man having taken his
position in shelter.

"There is nothing to do, at present," Will said. "When the other
parties arrive, they may make an attack; but I don't think they
will do so, till night.

"Hammond, you had better go down to Fortescue, at present. One of
the Syces can take Yossouf's place on guard over the women, and he
can help you. The lad is a good nurse, but I fear there is nothing
to be done for the poor fellow."

A few minutes later a wild outburst of shouts and yells, and a
great firing of guns, announced that the other parties had arrived;
and the cracking fire of the matchlocks around the fort became
incessant. The defenders did not attempt to return it. It would
only have been throwing away lives, uselessly, to approach any of
the loopholes. In a quarter of an hour, Hammond rejoined his
companions.

"He is gone, poor fellow!" he said. "He never spoke again. The
bullet went close to the heart. I think he has bled to death,
internally.

"I have handed his revolver to one of the Syces, and his gun to the
other. Your man, Yossouf, has a revolver."

"What on earth are we to do now, Gale?" Plater asked. "You have
been right thus far and, if it hadn't been for you putting us up to
make a rush here, we should have been done for, long ago. But we
are not much better off; for here we are, cooped up, and the
betting is a hundred to one against our being rescued, in time. No
one will know where to look for us and, though we may beat them off
two or three times, in the end it is likely to go hard with us."

"Couldn't we send a messenger, with the news of the fix we are in?"
Lowther asked; "though I don't see how any one is to get through."

"That's what I have been thinking about, ever since I first planned
coming here," Will said; "but I am sure no one could get through.
The Afghans know the importance of it and, when it get