THE AIR PATROL by HERBERT STRANG.

PREFACE

It needs no gift of prophecy to foretell that in the not distant future the fate of empires will be decided neither on land nor on the sea, but in the air. We have already reached a stage in the evolution of the aeroplane and airship at which a slight superiority in aircraft may turn the scale in battle. Our imperial destinies may hinge upon the early or later recognition of the importance of a large, well-equipped, and well-manned aerial fleet.

In _The Air Scout_ I endeavoured to ill.u.s.trate the part which an air-service may play in a combined naval and military campaign. The scene of the present story is laid among the vast mountain ranges of Northern India, where the issue of a great war may depend upon the aerial equipment of the opposing armies.

Some two thousand years ago a handful of devoted Greeks held the narrow pa.s.s of Thermopylae against the myriad host of Xerxes, in the n.o.ble effort to save their country from the Persian yoke. The following pages tell the story of a new--and a more fortunate--Thermopylae, an episode in a great struggle for the mastery of India. I am among those who believe that the spirit which animated the Spartan heroes of old burns in our British youth to-day. Only opportunity and a great occasion are needed to evoke it to glorious use.

HERBERT STRANG.

INTRODUCTORY

A summer afternoon was dwindling to night over a wild solitude among the borderlands of Northern India. The sun had already left the deep s.p.a.cious valley, wherein, as the light waned, the greens changed to browns, the browns deepened to black, and the broad silver band that denoted a stream flowing along the bottom was dulled to the hue of lead.

On the west, the harsh and rugged features of the mountains, towering to incalculable heights, were softened by the increasing shade; while the snowy summits, flushed by the declining rays, were scarcely distinguishable from the roseate clouds. Away to the east, where the sunlight still lingered, the huge mountain barrier showed every gradation of tone, from the greenish-black of the pine forest at the foot, through varieties of purple and grey, to the mingled pink and gold of the topmost crests. Every k.n.o.b and fissure on the scarred face was defined and accentuated, until, as the curtain of shadow stole gradually higher, outlines were blurred, and the warm tints faded into drabs and greys.

Along the front of the mountains on the west there was a road--a track, rather, which might have seemed to the fancy to be desperately clinging to the rugged surface, lest it were hurled into the precipitous valley beneath. It followed every jut and indentation of the rock, here broadening, narrowing there until it was no more than a shelf; with twists and bends so abrupt and frequent that it would have been hard to find a stretch of fifty yards that could have been called straight.

Three hors.e.m.e.n were riding slowly northward along this mountain road, picking their way heedfully over its inequalities, edging nearer to the wall of rock on their left hand as they came to spots where a false step would have carried them into the abyss. To a distant observer it would have appeared as though they were moving without support on the very face of the mountain. They wore European garments, and the briefest inspection of their features would have sufficed to tell that they were Englishmen. Behind them, at some little distance, rode eight or ten bearded men of swarthy hue, whose turbans, tunics, and long boots proclaimed them as sowars of a regiment of Border cavalry. Still farther behind, in a long straggling line, came a caravan of laden mules, each in charge of a half-naked Astori. The tail of this singular procession, perhaps a mile behind the head, consisted of two native troopers like those who preceded them.

It was now nearly dark. Presently the three Englishmen halted, and the eldest of them, turning in his saddle, addressed a few words in Urdu to the dafadar of the sowars behind. The riders, English and native alike, dismounted, and led their horses up a slight ascent to the left, halting again when they reached a stretch of level ground which the leader had marked as a suitable camping place. A thin rill trickled musically down at the edge of this convenient plateau, forming a small quagmire in its pa.s.sage across the track, and plunging over the brink to merge in the broader stream, now obliterated by the night, hundreds of feet below.

The three Englishmen tethered their horses to some young pines that bounded the level s.p.a.ce, then sat themselves upon a neighbouring rock, lit their pipes, and looked on in silence as the dusky troopers removed their saddle-bags and stood in patient expectancy.

By and by the head of the mule train appeared along the winding track.

They came up one by one, and now the evening stillness was broken as the muleteers stripped their loads from the weary beasts, and with shrill and voluble chatter spread about the impedimenta of the camp. Quickly a tent was pitched, cooking pots were set up; and the Englishmen felt that comfortable glow which envelops travellers at the near prospect of supper after a long and toilsome march. The meal was almost ready when the end of the caravan arrived, and the two rearmost sowars rejoined their comrades, with no other sound than a guttural grunt of satisfaction.

The Englishmen were eating their food, too hungry and fatigued to talk, when one of them, looking southward along the track, suddenly pointed to a figure approaching on foot, scarcely discernible in the fast-gathering darkness. On this lonely road, which they had ridden the whole day long without meeting a single human being, the appearance of the stranger had for them something of the curious interest which one pa.s.sing ship has for another in the ocean solitudes. They watched the figure as it grew more distinct--a tall gaunt man, naked save for a strip of cloth about his loins, long hair flowing wild over his shoulders, no staff in his hand, neither pack nor wallet upon his back. There was something weird and fascinating about this solitary figure, as it stalked on rapidly with long even stride, the head turning neither to left nor right. The newly-pitched camp was fully in his view, but the pedestrian gave it no heed. He came below it on the track, but neither altered his pace nor looked up when one of the muleteers shouted a salutation. Even when the eldest of the Englishmen, in the tone of one accustomed to be obeyed, challenged him sharply in the native tongue, and demanded whither he was going, the man did not turn his head or slacken speed, but merely lifted his lean right arm and pointed ahead, where the path disappeared in the gloom.

"What is your business?" asked the Englishman again.

And the reply came faintly back from the man, who had already pa.s.sed by, and spoke without checking his step.

"I AM A SHARPENER OF SWORDS!"

And he vanished into the night.

CHAPTER THE FIRST

THE RUINED REST-HOUSE

The travellers proceeded with their meal almost in silence.

The two younger men had felt subdued and chastened ever since they had left Rawal Pindi, some days before. Major Endicott was too good a fellow to insist on the disapproval with which he regarded their company, but they were conscious of being on sufferance, which was the more irksome because of the whole-hearted admiration they were ready to lavish upon him. His mission was a delicate one,--one which, to any but a political officer of the frontier, would have appeared not a little hazardous; and he felt that it was gratuitously complicated by the journey of two young civilians through so wild a region at this particular time. A tribe in one of the valleys west of the mountain road, some three days' march from the spot on which the travellers were now encamped, had been giving trouble of late. It had always been troublesome. Only once had it been visited by a white man, Major Endicott himself; yet, accompanied by no more than a dozen troopers, he was venturing alone among these wild hill-men, to demand the payment of a fine in expiation of a recent raid upon their neighbours, and security for their future good behaviour. The alternative was an expedition in force, and Major Endicott had preferred to take whatever personal risks a visit might involve, rather than recommend a hill campaign, with all its difficulties and its heavy cost in money and men.

But he did not relish the accidental responsibility cast upon him by the presence of these two young Englishmen, little more than lads, who had no concern in his business, and were indeed strangers to the country.

He regarded it as a very unfortunate coincidence that they arrived in Rawal Pindi at the moment of his setting out, and that the road they proposed to follow in their further journey northward would be for several days the same as his own. They were travelling at their own risk; it was no part of his duty to safeguard them; but he could do no less than suggest that they should accompany him over so much of the road as was common to their party and his. Privately he wished them at Halifax.

His att.i.tude was after all more political than personal. Great changes had recently occurred in the politics of Central Asia. The fall of the Manchu dynasty and the establishment of a Republic in China had resulted in the secession of the princes of Mongolia. They had first placed themselves under the protection of Russia, only to find that they had exchanged King Log for King Stork. Russia had sufficiently recovered from the staggering effects of the j.a.panese war to recommence her forward movement in Asia, which for long had seemed as gradual and as irresistible as the encroachment of the tide upon a sandy beach. The Mongols soon came to loggerheads with their adopted protector, and were beginning to experience the same process of a.s.similation that had in previous generations been the fate of Bokhara and Western Turkestan. A sudden conflagration in which Russia became involved in Europe, together with the rise to power of a prince of exceptional ambition and capacity, gave the Mongols an opportunity of striking for complete independence, of which they were not slow to take advantage. The advance of a Russian army of 20,000 men was checked near Urga for want of supplies from the north. With an Austro-German army threatening Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Russian government recalled the greater part of their Eastern forces, leaving the Mongolian expedition to extricate itself as best it could. It might still have proved equal to the strain but for a Mussulman rising, which, after long smouldering, now broke into flame in the conquered Khanates eastward of the Caspian. The revolt spread with the rapidity of a prairie fire from Khiva to Tashkend, paralysing any efforts that might have been made to relieve the army destined for Mongolia. A raid of many thousands of Tartars who cut the railway at Irkutsk turned the check into a retreat. The first sign of wavering brought against the Russians every man who possessed a pony and a rifle from the Great Wall of China to the Altai mountains. Under this pressure the retreat became a rout, and the rout a slaughter. Within a year Mongolia became the most powerful of the Central Asian States, and with the guns and equipment of the annihilated Russian army as a nucleus, the Mongol Napoleon set about building up a new empire extending from the shrunken frontiers of the Chinese Republic to the sh.o.r.es of the Caspian. Five years had sufficed to transform the political aspect of Central Asia. Russia, exhausted by a three years'

struggle with her western neighbours, was powerless to stem the flood of Mongol conquest. For the moment the tide had apparently spent itself on the eastern border of Asiatic Turkey, and the mountain chain dividing Persia. There had been a lull for more than a year, during which the world wondered with no little apprehension what would happen next. Some thought that the Mongol prince who had inspired this recrudescence of the Tartar spirit might now be content to consolidate his empire.

Others looked for a new movement still more stupendous, for there were not wanting many in Europe who trembled at the name of Ubacha Khan as their forefathers in bygone centuries had trembled at the names of Genghis Khan and Timur.

Little wonder, then, that Major Endicott was perturbed at the thought of two young Englishmen journeying to the fringe of the vast territory in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of whose peoples were stirring aspirations after a greatness which their forefathers had enjoyed, and which was celebrated in stories handed down by long tradition, and in songs that were still sung at village festivals and country fairs.

Robert and Lawrence Appleton, aged nineteen and eighteen respectively, were the sons of the retired lieutenant-governor of an Indian presidency. The elder had just entered Sandhurst, the younger was on the point of competing for a scholarship at Oxford, when the sudden death of their father put a summary check upon their careers. He had enjoyed a good pension, but his investments having proved unfortunate, when his pension died with him they found themselves almost without means. The army for Robert, the Indian Civil Service for Lawrence, were now equally out of the question, and they saw themselves faced with no brighter prospects than clerkships or junior masterships presented, when a letter from their uncle Harry in Asia came like a ray of sunlight in the gloom.

Their uncle had been something of a rolling stone. He had left home when a mere youth, and for many years his family had wholly lost sight of him. Gossip said that he had made and lost several fortunes in remote parts of the globe before he finally "struck oil," literally as well as figuratively, in Mexico. One day he turned up unexpectedly at the headquarters of his brother, the lieutenant-governor, told him that he had "made his pile" and retired from business, and now wanted to amuse himself. Sir George did what he could for him, but Harry soon wearied of the mild excitements of Indian social life, had his fill of tiger shooting and pig-sticking, and looked about for some other means of employing his time.

Happening to learn that it was a difficult matter to get permission to cross the north-west frontier, with characteristic obstinacy he set his mind on overcoming official reluctance. It was a period of some restlessness among the frontier tribes; and the government of India, never very willing to grant permits to non-official travellers, however good their credentials, refused his application, although his brother's influence was employed in his behalf. This was enough for a man of Harry Appleton's adventurous temperament and independent spirit.

Resolving to crack the nut himself, he suddenly left India, disappeared for many months, and then emerged, to the no small embarra.s.sment of the Russians, on the border at Wakhan. He had slipped across the Persian frontier, and before the Russians were aware of his presence, was half-way to the Pamirs. Then he had disappeared for a time into Afghan territory, exploring districts in which it was believed that no other white man had ever set foot, and, much to the wonderment of his friends, coming out alive. When he was again heard of, he had entered British territory far up in the Chitral country, laden with shooting trophies in the shape of many heads of ibex and _Ovis poli_, the large long-horned sheep characteristic of the hill country. His intention was to return to civilisation by way of Gilgit and Kashmir, but he was held up for a time at Gilgit while telegrams pa.s.sed between the local officials and the government at Simla. There had always been something a little ridiculous, perhaps, in the government's barring the Gilgit road against the use to which roads are commonly and suitably put--travel and trade.

The government had only two courses open to them: to turn him back over the Pamirs under escort, or to allow him to pa.s.s. It was the latter alternative which they wisely adopted.

Pluming himself not a little on his victory over red tape, as he considered it, Harry Appleton returned to London and remained there for two or three years, interesting himself in all sorts of fantastic schemes which were alike in two respects: they cost much money, and they failed. His friends learnt by and by without surprise that he had lost the greater part of his Mexican fortune, and when they heard that he had suddenly left London again, to retrieve his fortunes by mining in the Hindu Kush, they regarded it as only one more of "poor old Harry's"

crack-brained adventures, and wondered what would be the end of it all.

It was consequently a cause of some wonder when, after his brother's death, he invited his nephews to join him in the mountain wilds, promising them a fair income to begin with, and possible wealth later on. Why on earth a man should have gone to the Hindu Kush to mine for copper, which could only be brought to market over hundreds of miles of difficult and dangerous country, was a question that puzzled even those who were prepared for almost any sign of insanity in "poor old Harry."

These were the circ.u.mstances which had made the two Appletons travelling companions of Major Endicott in this eventful summer.

So far the journey had been without incident. The caravan marched from dawn to dark every day, and the two Appletons found even the rugged majesty of the mountains pall upon them. The pleasantest hours were those spent in camp, when the heat and burden of the day were past. In social circles Major Endicott was regarded as something of a stick; ladies said he had "no conversation"; but in the silent evenings about the camp fire the lads hung upon his lips as he related, in slow sentences, punctuated by puffs from his pipe, some of the incidents of his career. They conceived an admiration not far short of hero-worship for this quiet soldier, who knew so much, and had done so much, though his own achievements were never the prime subject of his discourse.

To relieve the monotony of the journey, the two lads sometimes ventured to stray from the track, knowing that the speed of their st.u.r.dy hill ponies would enable them soon to catch up the rest of the slow-moving caravan. For these divagations the opportunities were few, unless they should turn themselves into mountaineers, and scale on foot the precipices on either side. But now and then there was a break in the hills to right or left, where a small mountain stream joined the larger river that flowed through the valley, above which the road pursued its winding course. The Major had warned them not to wander far on these occasions, and his warnings became more peremptory as they approached the quarter in which he feared that trouble might be brewing. But high-spirited youth is impatient of control, and the two lads were inclined to make light of the sober caution of their elder.

Two days after they had encamped on the mountain side, as already related, they were tempted to try what appeared to be a kind of track leading up into the hills to the east. Taking advantage of a momentary preoccupation of Major Endicott with the sowars, they turned their ponies into this track, and began to scramble up. The gradient was steep, and the path rose higher and higher above the road they had left, but for some distance did not greatly diverge from it. At times they could see it winding away northward beneath them, although it was concealed from them for long stretches by the contour of the ground, and was sometimes difficult to distinguish from the hillside itself.

The track appeared to lead nowhere, and after following it toilsomely for nearly an hour, they began to think it was time to return.

"I hate going back the same way," said Lawrence. "Can't we manage to cut straight down, Bob?"

"Rather risky, don't you think?" replied his brother. "This track goes up and up; there's no path down that I can see, and we don't want to risk our ponies' knees. We could do it on foot."

"Well, look here; we ought to be able to get a good view of the ground between us and the road from that rock yonder. Just hold the ponies, will you, while I go and take a squint?"

He slipped from the saddle, placed the bridle in Bob's hand, and scrambled up the side of a high rock jutting out from the path. As he expected, when he reached the top he found the country beneath clearly mapped out. He could follow the course of the road for some distance in each direction, except where it was hidden by crags and promontories.

At the moment the caravan was out of sight. Between him and the road the ground was much broken, showing many narrow seams, and falling away at places into sheer precipices. It was evident that any attempt to descend here on horseback was bound to end in disaster.

As he cast his eye northward, he suddenly became aware of a group of motionless figures about a mile away, between him and the road. Impelled by some instinct of caution, perhaps acquired during his training in the school cadets, he moved stealthily behind a jutting spur of the rock, and examined the group through his field-gla.s.s. He counted fourteen hill-men on horseback. There was no movement among them, and their att.i.tude, with their heads towards the road, suggested patient expectation. They were too far away for him to determine accurately the configuration of the ground, but it appeared to him that they were gathered in a slight hollow about a quarter of a mile east of the road.

And as he moved his gla.s.s over the intervening s.p.a.ce, he caught sight of a small building which had hitherto escaped his notice, so like was it in colour to the rocky ground surrounding it. In general shape it reminded him of the little wayside shelters which, called dak bungalows in India, were known beyond the borders as rest-houses. But this building was apparently fallen into disuse. It was roofless, and much of the stonework of the walls was broken away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AMBUSH AT THE REST HOUSE]

While Lawrence was still examining the ruins and the group behind, he heard the rapid clatter of a horse's hoofs on the hard rock below. At first he could not see the horseman, who, however, presently emerged into view from behind a shoulder of rock to his right, and discovered himself as a hill-man galloping northward. Having come abreast of the rest-house, he wheeled to the right, quitted the road, and made straight for the hollow in which the group of fourteen was waiting. On joining them, he appeared to give them a message; they closed about him, and after a brief consultation they all dismounted, tethered their horses to some stunted trees at the edge of the hollow, and then moved quickly towards the rest-house. All except one entered the ruins; the one went a little distance from them, and took up a position behind a rock from which presumably he could look up the road. It was as if he was waiting to signal some one's approach.