! You have done it all beautiful, sir," said Mrs Smithers,
smiling, as she passed a cool, wet sponge across the wounded man's
brows.

"There, off with you, Archie, my lad. Keep out of danger."

"Of course, sir," was the reply.

"I mean it, for you have had more than your share of my attention
lately. But I say, my lad; feel very boyish now?"

"If you tease me again about that, Doctor," said Archie, "I'll never
consult you again."

"Till next time," said the Doctor, with a chuckle.--"Great heavens!
what's that?"

_That_ was a tremendous puff of wind that knocked the Japanese screen
over against the wall, and sent Archie staggering so that he nearly fell
over one of the wounded men. Then almost instantaneously came a
terrific roar as if a sudden burst of a tropical storm had followed the
flash of light which blazed through the lightly built place, the walls
of which had rocked, and seemed to be tottering to their fall.

"Anybody hurt?" panted the Doctor, his first thought being that he must
render aid.

"I--I don't know, sir," stammered Archie.

"Glad of it," said the Doctor. "The worst storm I ever saw."

"Storm, sir?" said Archie. "It's the magazine gone!"

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

THE FLIGHT OF A LIM-BING.

It was no rash assertion. The small erection that it had been the
Major's pride to erect by means of the men a short distance back and
just inside the jungle, and to which he had brought to bear all the
ingenuity he possessed, so as to ensure safety--sinking it deep in the
earth, protecting it by a _chevaux de frise_, and then thickly planting
the outside with a dense belt of the closest and most rapid-growing of
the jungle shrubs--had been levelled with the earth, and its framework
was now blazing furiously.

The first few moments after the explosion, it had seemed to the besieged
that defence now would be madness, and that nothing was left for them
but to throw themselves on the mercy of the Malays. But that natural
desire of the Briton to make the best of things exemplified in the Latin
proverb _Nil desperandum_ soon began to assert itself. A sergeant
suddenly shouted, "Look out there, my lads! Want to see the place burnt
down?" And first one and then another made a rush towards the different
buildings to pick or knock off fragments of burning wood and bright
embers, cast by the tremendous force and scattered by the powder, that
were beginning to threaten destruction on the roofs whe