The Keepers of the People

CHAPTER XIII

THE RUSSIANS GO

1339At noon the next day the Russians began the attack on the first Varandal position. The very latest comers through the pass had slept some hours, and fed. It was time too to be moving, since at ten o’clock the water in the aqueduct which ran across that part of the country, and supplied their camp, had ceased flowing.

1340Ruth and Althea were at breakfast when the first faint boom of guns broke on their ears; and Althea paused in the act of putting a lump of sugar into her cup of coffee, and said quietly, “They have begun at last.”

1341Ruth sprang from her seat, and was hurrying from the room; but Althea said, “Stay, and finish your breakfast. There is no hurry.”

1342“No, I cannot eat; I must see,” said Ruth; and was gone.

1343Althea finished her breakfast in all tranquillity, and followed her to the tower. She found her beside Vashti and the old Prince, staring with straining eyes towards the battle-field. There was little to be seen from eight miles away, clear though the air was; a regiment of men seemed no bigger than a beetle; only very slowly, and with a sinister sureness, the booming of the guns came louder on the ear: they drew nearer. At about two o’clock a column of white smoke rose from the village on which the Varandal centre rested, which had been fired by the Russian shells. Then it grew plainer that the Varandals were being driven back; at three o’clock they could see white smoke-puffs from the Russian guns, and hear the shells burst.

1344The watchers only moved now and again, as they grew stiff from standing in one position; they said little; sometimes they wiped their dimmed eyes clear. Althea sent for mutes, who rigged up an awning over them. Once she pointed to a gleaming speck on some rising ground four or five miles away, and said, “There is Prince Ralph. That is his helmet shining. It’s very dangerous. I wish he would wear one darker.”