Told in the East by Talbot Mundy (best fiction books to read TXT) 📖

“If we can't get that trapdoor open now, with these to help us,” he remarked, panting and wiping the dotted blood off his sword on a Hindu prisoner's trousers, “it'll be a heavier proposition than I think!”

“There's a trick to it,” said Juggut Khan, panting too, for the battle had been fierce and furious while it lasted. “The fakir knows the trick. It is heavy, in any case. But, if we make him tell us, we can manage it.”

There followed delay while the fakir was induced to forego the pleasure of a sulking fit. He seemed like a child, anxious to emphasize their dependence on his knowledge, and needing to be recompelled to each new thing they needed of him. He was perfectly content, though, to surrender when he felt the weight of a cleaning-rod on his anatomy, or something in the way of fire—a match or cigarette for instance—placed where he would get the most sensation from it.

Then followed more delay, while they rigged a lever of sorts, and a rope through an iron ring in the trap, and while Juggut Khan hunted for the secret catch that the fakir swore was hidden underneath a smaller stone that hinged in the middle of the floor. He found it at last, moved it and came across to lend a hand with the lever and the rope.

The fakir sat still and smiled at them. His eyes gleamed more horridly than ever, and his withered arm seemed more than ever to be calling down dire vengeance on them.

“I believe that monster is up to tricks of some kind!” swore Brown.

“He can't do anything,” said Juggut Khan. “If we were all to put our weight against this, all together, we and the prisoners, sahib, we could get it open in a second.”

“All together, then!” said Brown. “Come on, there! Lend a hand!”

The prisoners and Brown's men and Juggut Khan and the Beluchi bent their backs above the lever, or hauled taut on the rope, and the fakir wriggled with some secret joke.

“At the word three!” said Brown. “Then all together!”

“One!”

“Two!”

The fakir writhed delightedly. He seemed more than ever like a wickedly malicious child.

“Three!”

They strained their utmost, and the huge stone trap gave way with a sudden jerk.

“For the love of—”

They all jumped, but they were strained in the wrong position for a quick recovery, and the ten-ton rock rolled back on unseen hinges to crush them all, and rolled back and yet farther back—and then stayed! Brown had snatched a rifle, and had placed it between the rolling rock and the wall!

He stood wiping the sweat from his forehead, while the rest recovered their lost balance and walked out from behind unscathed. The rifle creaked and bent and split. Then the stone leaned farther back, reached the wall and stayed there!

“A near thing that!” said Brown. “That fakir's a bright beauty, isn't he!”

“Shall I kick him, sir?” asked one of Brown's men.

“Kick him? No! What good'd that do? What next, Juggut Khan?”

But Juggut Khan was bending down, and listening at the hole laid bare by the huge hinged trap.

“Silence!” commanded Brown.

The men held their breath, even, but not a sound came up from the darkness down below.

“Are they dead, d'you suppose?” asked Brown.

And, even as he asked it, some one in the darkness snuffled, and he heard a woman's voice that moaned.

“Snff-snff-snff! I wonder if I'm dead yet! I wouldn't be, I know, if Bill were here! He'd ha' got us out!”

“There is one of them alive!” said Juggut Khan.

“So I notice!” answered Brown, with a strange dry quaver in his voice. “Go down and bring her up, please! Take three or four men with you. It won't do to bring women and a child up here and let 'em see this awful fakir and these corpses. Take your time about bringing 'em up, while I make the prisoners carry their dead up on to the roof. I'll take the fakir up there too where he's out of mischief!”

Just as a six-foot-wide pathway ran round and round the outside of the dome, another one, scarcely more than a yard wide, ran round the inside, and formed a roadway to the top in place of a stair. It took the prisoners and Brown's men fifteen minutes of continuous effort to carry up the dead and the fakir, and lay them on the roof.

“Pitch the dead over!” ordered Brown, and the mutineers obeyed.

“I've a mind to pitch you over too!” he growled at the fakir, and the strange creature seemed to understand him, for his eyes changed from their baleful hatred to a look of fear.

The bodies slid and rolled down the rounded roof, and fell with a thud against the battlements, or else went rolling down the circular causeway that led to the street below.

Brown seemed to be garnering ideas from watching them. He gazed down at the noisy tumult of the city, watching for a while the efforts of an ill-directed crowd to put out a fire that blazed in a distant quarter of the bazaar.

There seemed to him something strangely preconcerted about much of the hurrying to and fro below him. It struck him as being far too orderly to be the mere boiling of a loot-crazed mob.

His prisoners gave the secret to him. They were leaning against the parapet on the other side—the side closest to the city-wall, and farthest from the top of the causeway—and they were chattering together excitedly in undertones. Brown walked round to where they stood, and stared where they stared. Just as they had done, he recognized what lay below him.

It was faintly outlined in the blackness, picked out here and there by lanterns, and still too far away for most civilians to name it until the sun rose and showed its detail. But Brown, the soldier, knew on the instant, and so did his men.

Suddenly and unexpectedly and sweetly, like a voice in the night that spoke of hope and strength and the rebirth of order out of chaos, a bugle gave tongue from where the lanterns swung in straight-kept lines.

“Oh, Juggut Khan! Oh, Juggut Khan!”

Bill Brown's voice boomed through the opening in the dome, and spread down the walls of the powder-magazine as though in the inside of a speaking-trumpet.

“Brown sahib?”

“The army has got here from the north! It has come down here from Harumpore! It's outside the walls now, lying on its arms, and evidently waiting to attack at daylight!”