He was the only man to smile; for the others, parched by days and sweltered by nights of battle, questioned each other with hollow eyes and sleepy voices. One at a time, in patches of hot shade, they lay tumbled for a moment of oblivion, their backs studded thickly with obstinate flies like the driven heads of nails. As thickly, in the dust, empty Mauser cartridges lay glistening.
"And I bought food," mourned the captain, chafing the untidy stubble on his cheeks, and staring gloomily down at the worthless brass. "I bought chow, when all Saigong was full o' cartridges!"
The sight of the spent ammunition at their feet gave them more trouble than the swarming flies, or the heat, or the noises tearing and splitting the heat. Even Heywood went about with a hang-dog air, speaking few words, and those more and more surly. Once he laughed, when at broad noonday a line of queer heads popped up from the earthwork on the knoll, and stuck there, tilted at odd angles, as though peering quizzically. Both his laugh, however, and his one stare of scrutiny were filled with a savage contempt,--contempt not only for the stratagem, but for himself, the situation, all things.
"Dummies--lay figures, to draw our fire. What a childish trick! Maskee!" he added, wearily "we couldn't waste a shot at 'em now even if they were real."
His grimy hearers nodded mechanically. They knew, without being told, that they should fire no more until at close quarters in some final rush.
"Only a few more rounds apiece," he continued. "Our friends outside must have run nearly as short, according to the coolie we took prisoner in the tunnel. But they'll get more supplies, he says, in a day or two. What's worse, his Generalissimo Fang expects big reinforcement, any day, from up country. He told me that a moment ago."
"Perhaps he's lying," said Captain Kneebone, drowsily.
"Wish he were," snapped Heywood. "No such luck. Too stupid."
"That case," grumbled the captain, "we'd better signal your Hakka boat, and clear out."
Again their hollow eyes questioned each other in discouragement. It was plain that he had spoken their general thought; but they were all too hot and sleepy to debate even a point of safety. Thus, in stupor or doubt, they watched another afternoon burn low by invisible degrees, like a great fire dying. Another breathless evening settled over all--at first with a dusty, copper light, widespread, as though sky and land were seen through smoked glass; another dusk, of deep, sad blue; and when this had given place to night, another mysterious lull.