Hills of Han 41

Hills of Han 41

Back in his study in the residence M. Pourmont, by breakfast time, had

reports from several of his scouts and was able to sift the rumors

down to a basis of fact. Several thousand Lookers were already in the

neighborhood and others were on the way. The Shau T’ing bridge was gone,

and it was true that the local shen magistrate had been cut off from

telegraphic communication with the outside world. And Kang was at the

moment establishing headquarters five _li_ to the westward.

 

The entrenched parties up the hillside lay unseen and unheard in their

trenches, awaiting the signal to fire. The compound was still now.

Breakfast was carried about to the men on duty.

 

Toward nine o’clock considerable activity was noted up the hill, beyond

the outposts. Several squads of the red and yellow figures appeared

in the open apparently digging out a level emplacement on the steep

hillside. Then a small field gun was dragged into view from behind a

native compound wall and set in position. The distance was hardly more

than two hundred yards; they meant to fire point-blank.

 

M. Pourmont went out to the upper redoubt and studied the scene through

field-glasses. The men begged permission to fire, but the bearded French

engineer ordered them to wait.

 

The little red and yellow men were a long time at their preparations.

They moved about as if confident that no white man’s eyes could discern

them. Finally they gathered back of the gun. There was some further

delay. Then the gun was fired, and a shell whirred over the compound

and on across the valley, exploding against the opposite hillside, near a

temple, in a cloud of smoke and red dust.

 

There was still another wait. Then a shell carried away part of a

chimney of the residence. The sound of distant cheers floated down-hill

on the soft breeze. The little men clustered about the gun.

 

M. Puurmont lowered his glasses and nodded. The machine gun opened fire,

spraying its stream of bullets directly on the crowded figures.

 

To the men standing and kneeling in the redoubt the scene, despite the

rattle of the gun and the wisps of smoke curling about them and the

choking smell, was one of impersonal calm. The Australian working the

gun was quietly methodical about it. The crowded figures up the hill

seemed to sit or lie down deliberately enough. Others appeared to be

moving away slowly toward the houses, though when M. Pourmont gave them

a look through his glasses it became evident that their legs were

moving rapidly. Soon all who could get away were gone, leaving several

heaped-up mounds of red near the gun and smaller dots of red scattered

along the path of the retreat. With a few scattering shots the

Australian sat back on his heels and glanced up at M. Pourmont. “Heats

up pretty fast,” he remarked casually, indicating the machine gun.

 

5

 

A shout, sounded up the hill. All turned. Swain had mounted to the

parapet of his rifle pit and was waving his rifle. His half dozen men,

white and Chinese, followed, all shouting now. Over to the right, from

the other pit, the lean figure of Jonathan Brachey appeared, followed by

others. Then they started up the hillside. Like the retreating Lookers

they seemed to move very slowly; but the glasses made it clear that they

were running and scrambling feverishly up the slope, fourteen of them,

pausing only at intervals to fire toward the houses, where a few puffs

of white smoke appeared.

 

They reached the Chinese sun, turned it around and, five or six of them,

began running it down-hill. The others lingered, clustering together.

A shot from one of the red heaps was met by a blow of a clubbed rifle;

that was seen by the Australian through the glasses. There were more

shots from the compound walls beyond.

 

The Australian quietly returned the glasses to his chief, sighted along

his machine gun, and sprayed bullets along those walls, first to the

left of the raiding party, then, very carefully, to the right.

 

M. Pourmont descended to the compound and ordered a party of coolies

out with wheelbarrows. These began mounting the slope, obediently,

painfully. The raiders dropped behind the little heaps of dead and

waited. To the many watching eyes along the wall it seemed as if those

deliberate coolies would never end their climb; inch by inch they seemed

to move. Even the more rapidly moving gun, descending the slope, seemed

to crawl. When it did at length draw near, the eager observers noted

that the men handling it were all Chinese; the whites had stayed up

there. Swain was there, and Brachey, and the others.

 

Betty witnessed the scene from an upper window of the residence with

Mme. Pourmont and her daughters. She heard the rat-tat-tat of the

machine gun; through a pair of glasses she saw the red-clad Lookers

fall, all without clearly realizing that this was battle and death. It

seemed a calm enough picture. But when Brachey started up the hill her

heart stopped.

 

More and more slowly, as the climb told on the porters, the barrows

moved up the slope; but at last they reached their destination. Then

all worked like ants about them. Within ten minutes all were back in the

compound creaking and squealing, each on its high center wheel, under

the loads of shells.

 

Betty watched Brachey through the glasses. Naively she assumed that he

would return to her after passing through such danger. And when she saw

him drop casually into the little pit on the hillside it seemed to her

that she couldn’t wait out the day. Now that she had watched him leading

his men straight into mortal danger--had so nearly, in her own heart,

lost him--she began to sense the terrible power of love. All that had

gone before in this strange relationship of theirs seemed like the play

of children beside her present sense of him as her other self. Indeed

the danger seemed now to be--she thought of it, in lucid moments, as a

danger--that she should cease to care about outside opinion. Her heart

throbbed with pride in him.

 

At dusk the outposts were relieved. When Brachey entered the gate, Betty

was there, waiting, a tremulous smile hovering about her tender little

mouth and about her misty eyes.

 

He paused, in surprise and pleasure. She gave him a hand, hesitantly,

then the other; then, impulsively, her arms went around his neck.... His

men straggled wearily past, their day’s work done. Not one looked back.

She was almost sorry, for that and for the dusk. Arm in arm they entered

the compound and walked to the steps of the residence.

 

That night, three shells struck within the compound. One wrecked a

corner of Mme. Pourmont’s kitchen. Another carried away a section of

galvanized iron roof and killed a horse. The third destroyed a tent,

killing a Chinese woman and wounding a man and two girls. Thus, before

morning, Dr. Cassam and her helpers were at the grim business of patching

and restoring the piteous debris of war.

 

By daylight the red and yellow’ lines were closed about the compound.

Shells roared by at intervals all day, and bullets rattled against

the walls. The upper windows of the residence were barricaded now with

sand-bags. Five more were wounded during the day, two of them white.

Enemy trenches appeared, above and below the compound. During the

following night M. Pourmont set a considerable force of men at work

running a sap out to the rifle pits, and digging in other outposts on

the lower slope. His night runners moved with difficulty, but brought

in reports of feasts and orgies at Kang’s headquarters down the valley,

where, surrounded by his full retinue, the old Manchu was preparing to

revel in slaughter. As the days passed, the sense of danger grew deeper;

the faces one saw about the compound wore a dogged __EXPRESSION__. An armed

guard stood over the storehouses, men were killed and wounded, and women

and children. They talked, heavily where the casual was intended,

of settling down to a siege. They spoke of other, larger sieges; of

Mafeking and Ladysmith of recent memory. But no one, now, mentioned

the prospects of early relief. One night Mr. Po went out with a Chinese

soldier on a scouting trip; and neither returned. On the following

night, one of the Wei Hai Wei men was sent. At daybreak they found his

head, wrapped in a cloth, just inside the gate. The enemy had crept

close enough, despite the outposts, to toss it over the wall... After

this, for a time, no word went out or came in.

 

6

 

Elmer Boatwright slept alone in a small room; his wife, Miss Hemphill

and Dr. Cassin occupied a large room in the same building. One night,

tossing on his cot, the prey of nightmares, Boatwright started up, cold

with sweat, and sat shivering in the dark room. Outside sounded the

pop--pop, pop--of the snipers. But there was another sound that had

crashed in among the familiar noises of his dreams.

 

It came again--a light tapping at his door. He tried to get his breath;

then tried to call out, “Who is it?” But his voice came only in a

whisper.

 

It wasn’t his wife; she wouldn’t have knocked. He had not before been

disturbed at night; it would mean something serious, nothing good. It

could mean nothing good.

 

Elmer Boatwright was by no means a simple coward. He rose, shivering

with this strange sense of cold; struck a light; and candle in hand

advanced to the door. Here, for a moment he waited.

 

Again the tapping sounded.

 

He opened the door; and beheld, dimly outlined in the shadowy hall, clad

in rags, face seamed and haggard, eyes staring out of deep hollows, the

gigantic frame of Griggsby Doane, leaning on his old walking stick. He

was hatless, and his hair was matted. A stubble of beard covered the

lower half of his face. His left shoulder, under the torn coat, was

bandaged with the caked, bloodstained remnant of his shirt.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVIII--THE DARK

 

1

 

Elmer Boatwrights chin sagged a little way. For a long moment he stood

motionless, making no sound; then, without change of __EXPRESSION__ on his

gray thin face, he moved with a slow gliding motion backward, backward,

until his knees struck the bed; and stood, bent forward, his palsied

hand tipping the candle so far that the hot tallow splashed in white

drops on the matting.

 

Slowly the giant figure stirred, straightened up, came slowly into the

room; closed the door, leaned back against it.

& nbs