yet
the little company remained untouched, except for Teppich, whose shaven
head was trimmed still closer and redder by a bullet, and for Gilbert
Forrester, who showed--with the grave smile of a man when fates are
playful--two shots through his loose jacket.

He was the only man to smile; for the others, parched by days and
sweltered by nights of battle, questioned each other with hollow eyes
and sleepy voices. One at a time, in patches of hot shade, they lay
tumbled for a moment of oblivion, their backs studded thickly with
obstinate flies like the driven heads of nails. As thickly, in the dust,
empty Mauser cartridges lay glistening.

"And I bought food," mourned the captain, chafing the untidy stubble on
his cheeks, and staring gloomily down at the worthless brass. "I bought
chow, when all Saigong was full o' cartridges!"

The sight of the spent ammunition at their feet gave them more trouble
than the swarming flies, or the heat, or the noises tearing and
splitting the heat. Even Heywood went about with a hang-dog air,
speaking few words, and those more and more surly. Once he laughed, when
at broad noonday a line of queer heads popped up from the earthwork on
the knoll, and stuck there, tilted at odd angles, as though peering
quizzically. Both his laugh, however, and his one stare of scrutiny were
filled with a savage contempt,--contempt not only for the stratagem, but
for himself, the situation, all things.

"Dummies--lay figures, to draw our fire. What a childish trick! Maskee!"
he added, wearily "we couldn't waste a shot at 'em now even if they
were real."

His grimy hearers nodded mechanically. They knew, without being told,
that they should fire no more until at close quarters in some
final rush.

"Only a few more rounds apiece," he continued. "Our friends outside must
have run nearly as short, according to the coolie we took prisoner in
the tunnel. But they'll get more supplies, he says, in a day or two.
What's worse, his Generalissimo Fang expects big reinforcement, any day,
from up country. He told me that a moment ago."

"Perhaps he's lying," said Captain Kneebone, drowsily.

"Wish he were," snapped Heywood. "No such luck. Too stupid."

"That case," grumbled the captain, "we'd better signal your Hakka boat,
and clear out."

Again their hollow eyes questioned each other in discouragement. It was
plain that he had spoken their general thought; but they were all too
hot and sleepy to debate even