, drawn in the main from the navvies who had been employed on the
new road, armed with knives and a few rifles, and encouraged by certain
wild, dancing figures which had the look of priests, was surging around
the gate. The fighting stuff was Afridi or Chitrali, but there was
abundance of yelling from this rabble of fakirs and beggars who
accompanied them. Order there was none, and it was clear to Thwaite
that this rising had been arranged for but not organized. His men had
small difficulty in forcing a way to the office, where they served to
complete the cordon of defence and the garrison of the bridge-end. Two
men had been killed and some half-dozen of the rioters. He pushed into
the building, and found a terrified Kashmir clerk sternly watched by his
servant and the Sikh orderly. The man, with tears streaming down his
face, was attempting to read the messages which the wires brought.

Thwaite picked up and read the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering
characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit,
saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and
that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the
trouble in time he would try and hold the Mazeno Pass, and meanwhile he
had done his best to wake the Punjab. As the wires would be probably
cut within the next hour there would be no more communications, but he
besought Thwaite to keep the invader in the passes, as the whole south
country was a magazine waiting for a spark to explode. The message ran
in short violent words, and Thwaite had a vision of Ladcock, short,
ruddy, and utterly out of temper, stirred up from his easy life to hold
a frontier.

There was no word from Yasin, as indeed he had expected, for the tribes
on the highlands about Hunza and Punial were the most disaffected on the
Border, and doubtless the first to be tampered with. Probably his own
message had never gone, and he could only pray that the men there might
by the grace of God have eyes in their heads to read the signs of the
times. There was a brief word from Jackson at Boonji. There attacks
had been made on the terminus and the engine-sheds since sunset, which
his men had luckily had time to repulse. A large amount of
rolling-stock was lying there, as five freight trains had brought up
material for the new bridge the day before. Of this the enemy had
probably had word. Anyhow, he hoped to quiet all local disturbances,
and he would und