Dissimilar as they were in age and feature, sleepless nights and the unrelieved tension had given to their drawn faces almost a family likeness.  They were men tired out, but as yet unaware of their exhaustion, so bright a flame burnt within each one of them.  Somewhere amongst the snow-passes on the north-east a relieving force would surely be encamped that night, a day’s march nearer than it was yesterday.  Somewhere amongst the snow-passes in the south a second force would be surely advancing from Nowshera, probably short of rations, certainly short of baggage, that it might march the lighter.  When one of those two forces deployed across the valley and the gates of the fort were again thrown open to the air the weeks of endurance would exact their toll.  But that time was not yet come.  Meanwhile the six men held on cheerily, inspiring the garrison with their own confidence, while day after day a province in arms flung itself in vain against their blood-stained walls.  Luffe, indeed, the Political Officer, fought with disease as well as with the insurgents of Chiltistan; and though he remained the master-mind of the defence, the Doctor never passed him without an anxious glance.  For there were the signs of death upon his face.

“The fourth week!” said Lynes.  “Is it, by George?  Well, the siege won’t last much longer now.  The Sirkar don’t leave its servants in the lurch.  That’s what these hill-tribes never seem to understand.  How is Travers?” he asked of the Doctor.

Travers, a subaltern of the North Surrey Light Infantry, had been shot through the thigh in the covered waterway to the river that morning.

“He’s going on all right,” replied the Doctor.  “Travers had bad luck.  It must have been a stray bullet which slipped through that chink in the stones.  For he could not have been seen—­”

As he spoke a cry rang clearly out.  All six men looked upwards through the open roof to the clear dark sky, where the stars shone frostily bright.

“What was that?” asked one of the six.

“Hush,” said Luffe, and for a moment they all listened in silence, with expectant faces and their bodies alert to spring from their chairs.  Then the cry was heard again.  It was a wail more than a cry, and it sounded strangely solitary, strangely sad, as it floated through the still air.  There was the East in that cry trembling out of the infinite darkness above their heads.  But the six men relaxed their limbs.  They had expected the loud note of the Pathan war-cry to swell sonorously, and with intervals shorter and shorter until it became one menacing and continuous roar.

“It is someone close under the walls,” said Luffe, and as he ended a Sikh orderly appeared at the entrance of a passage into the courtyard, and, advancing to the table, saluted.

“Sahib, there is a man who claims that he comes with a message from Wafadar Nazim.”

“Tell him that we receive no messages at night, as Wafadar Nazim knows well.  Let him come in the morning and he shall be admitted.  Tell him that if he does not go back at once the sentinels will fire.”  And Luffe nodded to one of the younger officers.  “Do you see to it, Haslewood.”