as he dodged a
whizzing bullet, while a second glanced off his brass buckle, and
buried itself in the tree behind him.

Colonel Montague, advancing to meet his men, who came forward at the
double, fell, mortally wounded, with two bullets through his body. He
staggered to his feet; only to fall again, face downward, as Desmond
and Courtenay hurried up to him, and--covered by the fire of his
Sikhs--carried him into comparative safety behind a stack of
_bhusa_,[4] within reach of the ambulance; his bugler following close
at their heels.

"I'm done for," he panted, as they laid him down. "Make the best job
you can of me; and prop me . . against the stack. I'll direct
operations . . while I can . . hold out."

There was clearly nothing else to be done; and while Courtenay obeyed
the dying man's injunctions, Desmond made haste to join his own sowars,
who were already doing smart work with their rifles, under Ressaldar
Rajinder Singh.

By now the din was terrific. It was as if a special department of hell
had been suddenly opened up. Firing had become general from all the
surrounding hills; for an attack of this kind, once started, speedily
degenerates into a matter of _ghaza_.[5] Every moment brought fresh
reinforcements to the Waziris; every moment their fire grew hotter; and
every moment, through the rattle of musketry and the yells of the
tribesmen, came the deep-throated duet of the sturdy little screw-guns
under the wall, as they pitched shell after shell into the nullah, from
whose depths a hidden foe responded with pitiless accuracy and vigour.

For, simultaneously with Montague's advance, Lenox and Richardson had
doubled to their guns through a hailstorm of humming, leaping bullets.
One, passing through Lenox's coat-sleeve, grazed his upper arm; while a
second struck Richardson's breast-pocket, and was only prevented from
wounding him mortally by a pad of first-aid bandages which Courtenay
had served out to him, in joke, two days earlier. Reaching the guns
unscathed, they found the gunners at their posts, the infantry escort
blazing merrily and effectively at the marksmen on the wall: and at
once opened fire on the nullah with case-shot and shell.

But their height and exposed position rendered them too conspicuous to
be missed for long by an enemy whose skill in picking off British
officers makes the little wars of the Frontier such cruelly costly
affairs. In less than two minutes, a burning pain near