Page:Wee Willie Winkie, and other stories (1890).djvu/94

88 like paper, and the fifty Ghazis passed on; their backers, now drunk with success, fighting as madly as they.

Then the rear-ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed into the stew—alone. For the rear-rank had heard the clamour in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the rushing of the camps over again. Let their officers go to Hell if they chose; they would get away from the knives.

"Come on!" shrieked the subalterns, and their men cursed them and drew back, each closing into his neighbour and wheeling round.

Charteris and Deecey, subalterns of the last company, faced their death alone in the belief that their men would follow.

"You've killed me, you cowards," sobbed Deecey and dropped, cut from the shoulder-strap to the centre of the chest, and a fresh detachment of his men retreating, always retreating, trampled him under foot as they made for the pass whence they had emerged.

The Gurkhas were pouring through the left gorge and over the heights at the double to the invitation of their regimental Quickstep. The black rocks were crowned with lark-green spiders as the bugles gave tongue jubilantly:—

The Gurkha rear-companies tripped and blundered loose stones. The front files halted for a moment to take stock of the valley and to settle stray boot-laces. Then a happy little sigh of contentment soughed down the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for behold there below was the enemy, and it was to m-et them that the Gurkhas had doubled so hastily. There was much enemy. There