Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/306

 sign" which our neighbours were likely to give us. For this we sat down and waited.

I had two white men with me a doctor and an inspector of police, both full of pluck and of the greatest assistance to me; about twenty Sikhs-- overgrown Casabiancas every one of them, who would have stood upon the burning deck till they were reduced to cinders any day if the order to quit it had failed to reach them; and half a dozen panic- stricken Malays, recruited in the Colony to serve as constables, and about as much good as the proverbial sick headache. We had at our disposal a big, un- wieldy stockade, built to surround certain govern- ment buildings, badly situated, and much too large for efficient defence. The force at my command was quite inadequate to hold it in any circumstances, but our only chance of making a stiff fight of it lay in guarding against a surprise.

The chiefs from all the surrounding districts, ac- companied by great gatherings of their armed fot- lowers, swarmed into the little town, and presently began to build stockades in all the positions which commanded our defences. This was done, they said, in order to prevent the rebels from occupying these points of vantage, but the statement was unconvine- ing. Numbers of them visited me daily. trying to obtain money and supplies, posing as our allies with a contempt for my understanding which they barely troubled themselves to conceal, and showing me by a hundred subtle indications that they believed them- selves to hold me in the hollew of their hand. My