by John Buchan
But at last the circuit was finished, and the climbers topped to rest in an eyrie well in the jaws of the ravine self. There the rock was firmer, and they were able without much difficulty to traverse till they reached the track to the Saddle, a few hundred feet above the camp. Sandy’s plan was to wait in the Saddle and lay his train of explosives, but not to fire the fuse till the signal had been given by Blenkiron that the reserves had arrived from Charcillo. This was to be two rifle shots in rapid succession, followed of a third at an interval of thirty seconds. The rockfall which he would engineer in the Saddle would bar escape in that direction. Blenkiron would hold the road down the Vulpas, and Lossberg’s van would be summoned to surrender at the first light. He had also arranged that detachments of Indians should climb the rocks on both sides of the amphitheatre, so as to give point to Blenkiron’s arguments. Now that he had made the traverse and had got between the enemy and the Saddle, the success of the enterprise seemed assured. There must be no mistake about the length of the time fuses. He and his men must be out of the couloir and round the angle of the mountain before the explosion started, for the couloir would be like the bore of a gun for the ammunition of the falling rocks. His cheerfulness was a little clouded by anxiety. He wished Blenkiron rather than himself had the job, for he was not an expert in explosives, but it would have been impossible to get Blenkiron’s massive body across that treacherous hillside.
The couloir was very dark. The walls rose precipitately to frame a narrow ribbon of moonlit sky. Far in front this ribbon descended to a V-shaped gap, which was the Saddle.
All six moved with the utmost deliberation and care up the shaly track. There was no need to preach caution to the Indians. It was not the enemy beneath that made themes step as lightly as dancers; there was in their blood the fear of the hair-trigger, unstable rocks. Besides, there was no hurry. It would be two hours — perhaps three — before Blenkiron could give the signal. Already the day’s heat had gone from the air, and the chill of night was spreading from the far snowfields. It would be very cold waiting in the Saddle.
They were within two hundred yards of the top, when Sandy found his arm gripped. The Indian behind him had halted, poised like a runner, and had raised his head to listen.
“There are men in the pass,” he whispered.
Sandy strained his ears but could catch nothing. He shook his head, but the Indian nodded violently. “Men,” he repeated. “White men!”
The thing seemed to Sandy incredible. Lossberg was cautious, no doubt, but he would not picket the Saddle, as well as send an advance guard beyond the pass, when he had the bulk of his forces still at the Tennis Court. Could the whole army be advancing by night? Impossible. In another hour the moon would be down, and this was no road for a night march, with horses and batteries.
His reflections may have made him careless, for he stumbled, and in his fall clutched at a boulder. It gave, rolled out of its gravel bed, and plunged down the track.
The others stepped aside to avoid it, and for a second there was a general slipping and clattering to break the stillness.
Suddenly the place was flooded with a blinding glare, which lit up every pebble and crinkle of rock. And then, almost in the same moment it seemed, there came a blast of machine-gun bullets fired a little too low. Sandy saw the white shale in front of him leap into living dust-devils.
He signalled his men to the cover of the right-hand rock, here there was a slight overhang. Again came a burst of machine-gun fire, and the searchlight maintained its unlinking stare.
Sandy thought hard and fast. There was a machine-gun post on the Saddle — a bold step considering its precarious environs. That post could not be large, probably not more than his own number. Before he could do his business and close the bolt-hole, that post must be destroyed. They must wait till the alarm had passed and then creep forward, trusting to the chance of surprise. Had they been seen? He hardly thought so, for at the first blink of the searchlight they had been on their faces. Probably it was only the nervousness of men perched by night in an eerie post.
But the nervousness did not seem to abate. There was no more shooting, but the glare continued for nearly an hour, while the six lay flat under the overhang, very cramped and cold. Sandy waited till the darkness had lasted another twenty minutes. They were not more than two hundred yards from the Saddle, and the intervening distance could surely be traversed so silently that it would be possible to rush the garrison.
But the last part of the couloir was the hardest, for it ceased to be a moraine of sand and boulders and came out on the loose and naked ribs of the hills. Keeping as far as possible in the shelter of the embracing walls, moving one at a time in line and flat on their faces like a stalker approaching a stag, they found it impossible to avoid making a noise, which to their ears echoed alarmingly in that funnel. Sandy was the chief offender. His belt seemed to catch on every jag, and his boots gritted harshly whenever they touched stone.
Again the searchlight leapt out...There could be no question this time. They were seen. As they wriggled for the tiniest cover, a blast of machine-gun bullets swept by, this time over their heads.
“We’ll have to rush ‘em,” Sandy whispered hoarsely. He saw all his plans frustrated, and nothing left but a desperate venture...
And then to his amazement, he found himself dragged the his feet by two of the Indians and whirled into a violent rush. But it was not towards the enemy. “The mountains fall,” he heard in the throaty Indian speech, and the next instant he was leaping down the couloir.
Of what happened next he had only a dim recollection. A roar like the Day of Judgment was in his ears. “Those damned machine guns,” he remembered repeating to himself. “They’ve brought the rocks down...”
Then from behind came a blast of wind which swept them off their feet.
He seemed to drop for yards, and as he dropped he felt half the world rush past him. An eddy of wind seemed to plaster him against the rock wall...He found himself on soft earth clutching an Indian by the hair...A hand dragged him into a coign of rock and pressed him flat, while salvos of great shells seemed to be bursting all about him...He must have lost part of his senses, for he was conscious of shouting the name of his platoon sergeant at Loos, and also babbling childishly “Those damned machine guns.”...There seemed to be a perpetual rain of avalanches and in one of them he was half buried. He remembered the feeling of suffocation, and then of free air, which he could scarcely breathe because of spasms of nausea...And then darkness came down on him, and he knew nothing till he woke on a shelf of rock far to the left of the couloir, with the early dawn bright around him.
He was a mass of bruises, and had a cut on his brow from which the blood trickled into his eyes, but he could find no broken bones. There were three Indians beside him, one with a smashed wrist and all intricately scarred and battered. When he asked about the other two, a hand was pointed downwards to where at the foot of the couloir a vast drift of rock and earth curled upwards like a sea-wave. It spread far into the little amphitheatre, and hid the springs of Vulpas. There was no sign of human life in the place.
Sandy’s head was still too dazed to permit of thought. All he knew was that he was alive and very weary. He dropped back, and one of the Indians made a rest for him with the crook of his arm.
But presently his supporter moved. Sandy, hovering between sleep and waking, heard dimly a shouting which his companion answered. Then he felt himself being coaxed to rise. There were men below who were urging him to come down. He had never had vertigo in his life, but at the thought of descent his whole being revolted. A horror of space had come over him, and he knew that if he moved a step he would fall.
In the end he descended like a piece of baggage in the arms of Corbett and a squad of Indians. He looked up at the couloir, which at the top beetled in a new cliff. It would take a brigade laden with explosives a month to blast their way through that curtain of rock. At the sight his nausea returned. “Take me out of t
his hellish place,” he groaned.
They carried him down the track, past the spot where the night before he had begun his escalade of the cliffs. The next thing he knew was that he was in a more open glen among grass, and that Blenkiron had him in his arms.
There was a fire burning and Blenkiron, when he had laid him down, put a cup to his lips. “Black coffee and brandy,” he said. “That’s the dope for you. I’ve been singing hallelujahs ever since I got word you were safe. I oughtn’t to have trusted you with that much lentonite. You must have been mighty rash in touching it off.”
“I never used it.” Sandy struggled against his weakness; and his voice came with a croak. “There was a post on the Saddle with machine guns. They spotted us and loosed off...We crawled nearer and were going to rush them when they loosed off again...That last burst did the trick and brought down the mountain.”
“Great Mike! And you?”
“I came down with the mountain. God knows how I got off with my life. Those Indians...gallant fellows...two of them gone...I’ll tell you more later.”
But presently the hot drink seemed to put life into him, and he sat up. “What happened here? Did Ackroyd get my message?”
“Sure. We managed fine. I guess we could have done without reinforcements, for your avalanche put the fear of death into the pick of Lossberg’s Pioneers. They reckoned the Last Day was come and they ran down the gully like mad folk. We shepherded them quietly, and waited till Rogerson turned up, when they hands-upped like lambs. We’ve gotten a nice little bag — fourteen hundred and seventy-three, combatant soldiers, if you include your friend Mr Lariarty.”
“Great Scott! Is he here? I want him brought to me at once. And Rogerson too.”
The Lariarty who stood before him a quarter of an hour later was a different man from the dapper Gran Seco magnate. The sun and wind of the hills had put no colours into his pallid face, but that face was thin and peaked as if he had been through great bodily fatigue. The eyes, too, seemed less inhuman, for there was pain in their sombre depths. His clothes were little better than Sandy’s and he had not shaved for days.
“Hullo, Timmy, you look as if you had been in the wars. Had breakfast?...Well, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you’re not a prisoner. I owe you a good turn for a certain evening in the Gran Seco. You can have a horse and go wherever you like. What’s your fancy?”
The man seemed to have difficulty in finding words.
“Thank you, Arbuthnot,” he said at last. “I should like to go to Olifa city.”
“All right. But you’d better hurry, or there may be trouble in getting in. Have you plenty of money? Good Well, there’s nothing to keep you here. Colonel Rogerson will see about a horse. Bon voyage!”
Lariarty seemed to be about to say something, but changed his mind. He cast one curious look at Sandy, bowed gravely and moved away.
Rogerson lingered.
“Miss Dasent specially asked me to give you a message, sir,” he said. “It was that she would obey your order and go straight to bed.”
V
There was no communication between Castor’s headquarters and the Gran Seco. The revolt had captured early the main wireless station in Olifa, which was on the railway near Alcorta Junction; and since the installation at the Courts of the Morning had been destroyed, the only station the Gran Seco was under Lossberg’s control, and, so as he was concerned, wholly useless. The telegraph and telephone lines followed the railway, and were now in a state of chaos. While Lossberg was cut off from his superiors, so were Peters and Escrick from their chief. They had their orders to worry the flanks of the enemy, and it would appear that they fulfilled them, for after the failure to break through the passes there was no activity for a week at the only outlet left to him, the railway to Santa Ana.
For the revolt it was a week of desperate busyness. Sandy and his hostages, captured at the Vulpas source, and he made ample use of them. They were, except for Lariarty, Olifa regulars, and mainly foreigners, but among them were representatives of well-known Olifa families. The latter, after Luis had had a private word with them, were given a courteous dismissal and returned to their homes. But the rank and file were used for a different purpose.
Throughout the country there were localities where the revolt was welcomed and the people were ready for its hazards. But in other districts the balance trembled. These were the richer parts, the great fruit-growing coastal regions, Alcorta, the environs of Cardanio, the corn and vine country towards Macheiro and Nimao and Jacinta. There both men and masters were prospering, and even those who favoured Luis preferred, if possible, to gamble on a certainty. It was to these districts that the prisoners went, in charge of Luis’s young caballeros. Their internment was ostentatious, their progress a dignified parade. To the staring inhabitants this spectacle was proof that the dreaded professional army, which they respected as a costly luxury, was not invincible. Rumour spread and magnified the story of the affair in the passes, for, since the inland telegraph was in Castor’s hands, rumour had no check. Lossberg, beaten in the Gran Seco, had made a desperate effort to break out, and had been utterly defeated. These prisoners were the advance-guard of a beaten army; the rest were shut in securely behind the bars of the Gran Seco hills.
The effect was instantaneous. The sitters dropped off the fence, and areas which had been lukewarm became the most fervent of all. Presently the sporadic fires met and mingled. Luis’s small garrisons in districts which had been apathetic became speedily the nuclei of formidable risings. For week there was no rest for the staff, for at last the concentration could begin. There were desperate problems commissariat and transport to be solved, for most of the rolling stock of the railway was lying idle inside the defensive lines of Olifa city. But every hour brought the armed levies of the south and east nearer to the city, and Castor’s poste de commandement was moved from Charcillo to Veiro, where Don Mario found the peaceful routine of his life changed to a succession of excitements which made younger by twenty years.
At the inception of the revolt Luis’s first step had been to get possession of the telegraph. The lines were not destroyed, but the points of their debouchment from the city area were held, so that Olifa could not communicate beyond her area. At first the Government had been able to reach Cardanio through the foreign cables, but with the capture of the naval base that avenue was closed. But it was possible to send news into the city, and by various devices the fullest and most startling information about the advance and concentration was at the disposal of President and his Cabinet. There were other ways. Olifa depended a good deal on country produce, and market carts passed daily through its outposts. Agents of the revolt had thus a chance for circulating rumours, and Veiro by the same means was kept informed of most things the befell in the city.
The reports varied. At the start the Government had been confident. The revolt was only a local and filibustering business, for there could be no fuel for any fire. The State was prosperous, taxation was not oppressive, for years there had been no conscription...Then came a shade of anxiety, when it was discovered that Lossberg was silent. His last reports had been excellent, but he was singularly remiss in sending more. It was impossible to stir him up, for they had no wireless at their disposal, the long-distance telephone seemed to have broken down, and their sheaves of telegrams were unanswered...Worse news followed. The Gran Seco railway had been cut by the rebels, there was trouble at Pecos, there was even a wild story that Lossberg had found an outlet in the eastern passes, but that his van had been cut to pieces and that bolt-hole stopped...Then came still wilder tales, of risings in the south, of Alcorta and Cardanio gone over to the enemy, of a great rebel force moving upon the city. The hopes of the Government were still in Lossberg. He and his expert army must soon arrive to save the State. In his last report he had told them that the Gran Seco was conquered and the guerrilleros driven to the mountains. He must be even now on tis way down the railway, brushing aside the rebel screen.
&n
bsp; What if the line were cut and the road damaged! He had his skilled engineers, and his mechanised battalions, his cavalry and his tanks, his unbeatable infantry. As they looked from the Parliament House over the wide levels to the north they hourly expected to see the dust-cloud which would herald their deliverer.
One evening there was a council of war at Veiro. It took place in Don Mario’s dining-room, where the big table had become a council-board and maps covered the ancestral Murillo. Sandy had come from the south, Blenkiron from Santa Ana, where he had left Melville in command, while Luis and Castor had returned from the concentration at Alcorta Junction, where they had received reports from 2 local leaders. Archie, who with Bobby Latimer was responsible for the air reconnaissance, had just arrived from a long flight north of Santa Ana. He had dire forebodings about the petrol supply.
“There’s a lamentable lack of juice in this land,” he complained. “We’ve tapped all the supplies and are rationing jealously, but we’re well within sight of a shortage. There was a big fire at Cardanio which wasted a lot, and of course there’s none coming in at the ports just now. The Government seem to have skinned the country to provision Lossberg. I can’t think how Peters is getting on. He must be very near his last gallon, unless he has raided some of Lossberg’s stores, and even Lossberg can’t go on for ever. It’s about time that we were bringing things to a head.”
Luis was optimistic. “We are very near the end,” he said. “The people have risen at last. His Excellency will tell you what spirit we found to-day. Even the doubters are now convinced, and have become enthusiasts. Senor Sandy, your little affair in the passes has proved the conclusive argument. Now the Oliferos have no fear of Lossberg.”
