Читать книгу A Desert Bride - Hume Nisbet - Страница 14
ОглавлениеA LEAP FOR LIFE.
There was no lack of light to show to that hungry rabble their enemy, for the flames were now swathing the building from the open windows, and but for the fierce passions which held them all in thrall, that overpowering heat would have driven back even the hardiest natives. But a madness was upon them to get at those hated masters, and they could not think how they were defeating their own purpose in their wild forcing of each other upwards upon these terrible bayonets.
It was like a horrible nightmare, with those swarming demoniac faces pressing up to their doom, and the stern defenders of the screaming women getting down so slowly towards that yellow ocean of fire, and sending body after body with sickening thuds upon the heated flagstones of the courtyard.
Already have they flung down over sixty natives, and yet they have only descended five steps out of the forty-five to be traversed; and on these forty steps are packed over two hundred natives as close as they can jam; and in the court, the thin scattering left are trampling each other to get at those stairs, in the manner an infuriated or a panic-struck crowd without a leader to control it always behaves.
Ah, they have broken the hand-rail, and are falling by dozens over the side, while the chaplain and his fellow heroes are making better progress.
Dead bodies crushing down upon maimed and living ones, those below getting roasted as well as smothered; while the shrieks which rise from that writhing mass are appalling, and drown the affrighted screams of the horrified women above.
The walls are crumbling at the inner side of the stairs, and the steps are shaking under their feet; and as they feel this, they redouble their efforts to get down.
"Hurry up behind there!" shouts the reverend leader, as he moves his arms quicker and sends more dead bodies to join that writhing sea of living ones.
This break in the rail has been a fortunate accident for them, although it takes Mrs Bangles all her energies to get the ladies to pass over that unprotected place; yet she is getting them along with the joint efforts of Ronald and Jack, who take the outside.
Thirty out of the forty-five steps are safely accomplished without the loss of a European, when with a crash the remaining fifteen steps break from the walls with their living burden, and complete the discomfiture of those below.
Without a pause the foremost rank follow after the chaplain, and, at the risk of breaking their limbs, leap from that crumbling porch upon the human mound below, then righting themselves, the chaplain shouts,—
"Quick, ladies, quick! Jump without pausing, for the walls are about to fall, and you will be swallowed amidst the flames or crushed outside."
It was a wild leap, which none of them liked afterwards to recall, although at the moment they did not realise their risk, and in most instances their guardian angels watched over them while they took it with closed eyes, and those bruised and dead bodies received them. The men who had sprang first hauled them quickly out of the way of those coming after, and then rushed them across the court and out to the garden, where, suddenly remembering their remaining foemen, they formed a square and looked about them, to see the remnant of that coward gang rushing toward the main gateway, to get reinforcements as well as to save their ugly carcases, while the tower, which they had left, was swaying backwards and forwards before it collapsed into that roaring sea of yellow fire.
"Just in time, but no more," remarked the gallant chaplain, as he wiped the perspiration from his smoking brow. "Now, Mrs Bangles, what were you going to say?"
"That some boats are lying deserted at the side of the river, between this and the fort, and if we can get to them we may reach the fort from the other side of the Dooab."
"Then let us force our way with our bayonets. Forward, ladies and gentlemen; all those who cannot walk we must carry."
And picking up those who had been hurt with that leap, the resolute band of heroes and heroines, with the monkey Falko on the shoulder of Jack, began its second perilous march that night through the by-streets of Allahabad.
