t the old game with the
hillmen, but an army of white men, servants of the Tsar, come to fight
the servants of the Empress. Therefore, it is your duty to kill them
all like locusts, else they will swallow up you and your cattle and your
wives and your children, and, speaking generally, the whole bally show.
We may be killed, but if we keep them back even for a little God will
bless us. So be steady at your posts."

The garrison was soon dispersed, the guns in readiness, pointing up the
valley. It was ten o'clock by Thwaite's watch ere the last click of the
loaders told that Bardur was awaiting an enemy. The town behind was in
an uproar, men clamouring at the gates, and seeking passports to flee to
the south. Chinese and Turcoman traders from Leh and Lhassa, Yarkand
and Bokhara, with scared faces, were getting their goods together and
invoking their mysterious gods. Logan, who had returned from Gilgit
that very day, rode breathless into the yard, clamouring for Thwaite.
He received the tale in half a dozen sentences, whistled, and turned to
go, for he had his own work to do. One question he asked:

"Who sent the telegrams?"

"Haystoun and Winterham."

"Then they're alone at Nazri?"

"Except for the Khautmi men."

"Will they try to hold it?"

"I should think so. They're all sportsmen. Gad, there won't be a soul
left alive."

Logan galloped off with a long face. It would be a great ending, but
what a waste of heroic stuff! And as he remembered Lewis's frank
good-fellowship he shut his lips, as if in pain.

The telegrams were sent, and reply messages began to pour in, which kept
one man at the end of the telephone. About half-past ten a blue light
burned in the window across the river. There seemed something to do in
the native town of narrow streets and evil-smelling lanes, for the sound
of shouting and desultory firing rose above the stir of the fort. The
telegraph office abutted on the far end of the bridge, and Thwaite had
taken the precaution of bidding the native officer he had sent across
keep his men posted around the end of the passage. Now he himself took
thirty men, for the native town was the most dangerous point he had to
fear. The wires must not be cut till the last moment, and, as they
passed over the bridge and then through the English quarter, there was
small danger if the office was held. He found, as he expected, that the
place was being maintained against considerable odds. A huge mixed
crowd