*CHAPTER XVIII*
*A Fight in the Hills*
Playing the Game--A Sprint--Hit--Waiting--Across the Open--HardBeset--Between two Fires--The Raising of the Siege--The Spoils--TheRear-Guard--The Outlook
The onfall had been so violent and the fight so brisk and rapid thatJack had had no time to form any plans or give any but the most obviousorders demanded by the exigency of the moment. He was exceedingly gladof the breathing space afforded by the withdrawal of the enemy. If hehad checked them, it was only because he was able to forestall them inthe cleft; the real struggle was to come.
He utilized the pause to make good his position in the pass. The narrowpath was strewn with boulders. With these each bandit made his ownlittle fort, so arranging them, when they were not too heavy to bemoved, as to give the maximum of cover against the enemy's fire. Jackwondered what form the Russian attack would take. The pass was sonarrow, its course so uneven, that direct fire from the farther endwould not, he thought, be very effective. That he was right was soonproved. In about a quarter of an hour the Cossacks opened a spasmodicrifle-fire from the rough ground about three-quarters of a mile away.It made no impression on the Chunchuses, except that one man was shotdead by a ricochet.
Apparently convinced of the hopelessness of loosening the bandits' holdupon the pass, the Russians ceased firing. As the minutes passed insilence, Jack wondered what their next move was to be. Faint sounds ofshots came from the distance; Ah Lum's band was evidently still engaged;surely the commander of the men opposed to Jack must know that he waslosing precious time, and would make some real effort to join hands withthe other force. Jack could not but suspect that some movement wasbeing developed quietly and out of sight, a suspicion strengthened whenfiring again broke out, intermittent, absolutely ineffective, probablydesigned to withdraw his attention from anything beyond his immediatefront. From his position in the pass he could see nothing of thesurrounding country; but about a hundred yards nearer the Russians therewas a point from which he thought a good view might be obtained. Toreach it, however, he would have to run the gauntlet of the Russianfire; for at least thirty yards he would be fully exposed withoutpossibility of taking cover. Should he risk it?
For a time he hesitated. The weighty reasons against endangering hislife flocked one after another through his mind; uppermost of all, thethought of his father, and of his friends at home so anxiously waitingfor news of him. But he felt that having brought his men into theirpresent hot corner it was his duty, at whatever personal risk, to getthem out of it; and only by ascertaining the Russian plan of attack, ifthey had one, could he hope with his mere handful of men to hold hisown. He hesitated no longer. Not that he was disposed to forgetprudence and play the dare-devil. He would not throw away any chance.Shouting to the men nearest to him he told them what he proposed to do,and arranged that when he reached the limits of cover three of thebandits should draw the Russian fire by the old Indian trick ofdisplaying the corner of a garment above their lurking place, as if theywere exposing themselves to take aim. The trick when tried for thefirst time was almost certain to provoke a fusillade from the enemy, andJack could then seize the opportunity to make a dash across the openground. The same device could be employed again when he signalled hisdesire to return; but it was less likely to prove successful then, forthe Russians would be on the watch, and the more intelligent of themwould have seen through the ruse. Still, it would be worth the trialeven in the second case. Accordingly, having arranged for the signalwhich should announce his return, he started to worm his way to thelimit of cover.
When he arrived there he halted, turned round, and, lifting his hand toshow that he was ready, braced himself for the sprint across the open.The appearance of a hat and portion of a coat above the rocks behind wasfollowed instantly by the rattle of musketry from the Russian position.Setting his teeth, Jack sprang from cover and raced at full speed up thehill to a little knot of boulders above him. Before he had gone halfthe distance there was a second crash of volleying rifles; but theRussians had clearly taken very flurried aim; Jack heard the hissingflight of the bullets, but reached the shelter of the rock without ascratch.
As soon as he had taken breath, he set himself to make a careful surveyof the scene beneath him. There was a party of Cossacks, whose numbersit was impossible to estimate, more or less hidden in the rough groundimmediately in front of the pass. Half a mile in their rear was anotherbody, apparently in reserve, numbering, as he guessed, about 300. Butthe force he had seen an hour before, winding its way down the hillside,had consisted of more than 1000 men. Where, then, were the rest? Jack'seye travelled from the lower to the upper slopes of the hill. For a fewmoments he could distinguish nothing resembling a body of men;then--yes, about a mile and a half away was a dark object movingdiagonally across the field of view, and this soon resolved itself intoa column of horsemen. The remnant of the Cossack force, about a thirdof its strength, had presumably returned some distance along the path oftheir advance, then swept round to the right. In a few minutes theydisappeared from view; Jack could hardly doubt that they intended toturn his position by following a bridle path that would probably bringthem out upon his rear. He must go back and question the guide. Hemade the signal to his men; again they raised the garments; there was ascathing volley from the Russians, but some, not to be caught napping asecond time, held their fire, and as Jack bounded forth he heard theflying bullets whistling unpleasantly around him. One tore the feltfrom his Chinese shoe; another stung him like a whip in the forearm;but, owing, doubtless, to the fact that he was racing downhill, and thatin consequence both the range and the elevation were rapidly changing,he reached cover in safety except for these slight mishaps.
While his wound was being bound up, he questioned the man who had guidedthe bandits to the district. The Chinaman, on Jack explaining what hehad seen, agreed that there was a path through the hills in thedirection indicated. It led to a ledge of rock jutting out from ashoulder of the hill about half a mile in the rear of Jack's position.An enemy holding that narrow platform could command the southern outletof the pass, and completely cut off the Chunchuse force. For a momentJack thought of stealing a march on the Cossacks and occupying theledge, but a little reflection showed how useless this would be. Notonly would he weaken the body holding the pass, every man of whom wouldbe required when the serious attack was delivered, but the ledge itselfand the path in its neighbourhood were scarcely tenable against a forceso largely outnumbering his own.
Another move that suggested itself was to abandon the pass and fight arearguard action as he retraced his steps towards Ah Lum's position.But to do this would be, he felt, to abandon his whole object, which wasto relieve Ah Lum as long as possible of pressure from the secondRussian force. After taking anxious thought, he decided that he muststick to the pass if the chief was to have any chance of escaping thenet now closing around him. So long as there was a fighting force inthe pass the Russians would not venture to attack Ah Lum, for they couldnot spare enough men to bottle up Jack's division and at the same timestrike an effective blow at the chief so strongly placed. AccordinglyJack withdrew his men from the section of the pass likely to be coveredby the flanking force, and settled down to await developments. Soundsof firing still came across the hills in the rear, showing that Ah Lum,and possibly by this time Wang Shih also, were at grips with the firstRussian column.
Fronting the southern end of the pass was a small clump of trees thatwould give the Russians ample cover if they could reach it. But inorder to reach it they would have to cross a quarter of a mile ofcomparatively level ground, affording little cover, and exposed to thedirect fire of the defenders. For a moment Jack was tempted to occupythe clump; but that would involve the splitting of his force, and anydetachment he might send to hold the position would be completely cutoff from support except by rifle-fire. Fortunately the clump was notapproachable from the rear; the attempt would involv
e a laborious climbuphill, the climbers all the time exposed to fire from the mouth of thepass. This end being less defensible than the northern, Jack hadalready placed the greater number of his men in cover here inanticipation of the arrival of the Russian turning column.
Some twenty minutes passed, during which Jack impressed upon his men thenecessity of husbanding their ammunition. They had but a small supply,with no reserve to draw upon; it was imperative that they should notreply to the Russian fire until they could see their enemy distinctly.The near approach of the Cossacks was heralded by a sudden hail ofbullets falling upon the rocks on either side of the pass. This was thesignal for a warm fusillade from the original point of attack. Toneither was any reply made by the Chunchuses, among whom not a man wastouched. After a few minutes there was a sudden lull in the firing; ithad become evident to the Russians that unless they rushed the clump oftrees they could make no impression on an enemy so well protected.Intuitively Jack knew what was impending; he called to his men to be onthe alert; and scarcely had he spoken when forty or fifty big horsemen,in open order, dashed across the open space towards the trees. ThenJack gave the word. The Cossacks had covered but a few yards when aterrible fire was poured upon them from the pass. Here a man droppedfrom his saddle; there a horse rolled over; but with the fine couragethat had distinguished the Russian soldier throughout the war, theothers held on in their terrible race with death. As they gallopedforward man after man fell; only a gallant remnant reached the clump,and with it comparative safety. Scarcely a third of the troop gained theshelter of the trees, but tactically the movement was worth thesacrifice. There was silence for a brief space; then the men in theclump opened fire. From their new position they were able to enfilade aconsiderable section of the pass. One by one Jack's men began to fall;then there was a second rush from the Cossack main body to reinforce themen in the copse; and the defenders of the pass, enfiladed as they were,were unable to stop it. Most of the Russians got across; and with thereinforcements they had received, the men in the clump poured a stillmore damaging fire into the Chunchuses, only half-concealed now by rocksand boulders, and hampered by the necessity of sparing their ammunition.The Russians, feeling that they had the upper hand, began to exposethemselves both in the copse and on the rough ground whence their rusheshad been made; and the bandits, with the fear of their cartridgesrunning short, durst not take full advantage of their opportunities ofpicking off incautious individuals among the enemy; they had to contentthemselves with firing whenever a group of two or more presented a broadtarget, and directing occasional close volleys into the copse. Still,the distance separating the combatants was so short--barely threehundred yards--that even in the comparative shelter of the trees theRussians suffered heavily; every now and then their fire slackened, andit was necessary to reinforce them by further detachments from the maincolumn.
While the battle was thus waged at the south of the pass, there had beenconstant firing at the other end. Hi Lo went backwards and forwardsbetween the two divisions of Jack's band, with news of the enemy'smovements and the progress of the fight--a duty involving considerablerisk; but the boy could make use of rocks and inequalities of the groundthat would not have sheltered a grown man, and he was indeed exceedinglyproud of being selected to assist in this way.
He reported now that the enfilading fire of the Russians in the copse atthe south had driven the Chunchuses from the western face of the pass atthe north end, allowing the Cossacks to creep round the hillside on thenorth-east of the entrance, and gain a position from which they wereable to inflict serious loss on the defenders. Jack felt that the coilswere gradually being drawn around him; and when a number of men, coveredby a brisk rifle-fire, dashed from the copse towards the steep hillsideoverlooking the pass, and in spite of the loss of several of theirnumber began laboriously to climb the slope, he could not but recognizethat the game was well-nigh up. The fight had lasted three hours. Hismen were worn; the strain had been very great; and they were reduced tohalf a dozen rounds a rifle. But they were still steady and undismayed;how much their tenacity owed to Jack's training and how much to theirnative courage it would be difficult to say; but two things werecertain: their marksmanship was distinctly superior to that of theCossacks, and the temptation of undisciplined troops to blaze away atrandom had been quite heroically resisted.
The men climbing the face of the hill soon passed out of sight; but inabout ten minutes they opened fire from a ridge high up the slope. Inexcellent cover themselves, they had many of the Chunchuses in fullview; and the Chinamen could not move into shelter without exposingthemselves to the fire of the Cossacks in the copse. Nevertheless thebandits, with the characteristic doggedness of the Chinese in face ofperil, clung to their positions, flattening themselves against the rocksand boulders, which gave them less and less protection, attacked as theynow were from several sides. More than once Jack made a hazardous tripto the northern end of the pass, encouraging his men; each time henoticed with a sinking heart that the number of still and prostrateforms was greater. What caused the keenest pang, it was impossible tobring the wounded to a place of safety. As soon as a man fell, healmost inevitably lost the complete protection of his boulder; a portionof his body lay outside the zone of safety, and the poor wretch thusbecame the mark for a score of bullets. His heart torn with pity forthe men, Jack at one time thought of surrender. But then he recollectedthat they would merely exchange the bullet for the noose; and there wasalways a bare chance of relief. He himself was wounded in the shoulder;at least half his men were out of action; the Russians were graduallyclosing in towards both entrances of the pass; and a simultaneous rushat each end must finish the struggle. Jack wondered why such an assaulthad not already been made. It would entail a certain loss of life; butperhaps less in the end than would result from prolonging the struggle.Even as the thought struck him, he saw signs of the movement he so muchdreaded, and hurrying back to the southern end, where the worst of thefighting must take place, he was about to urge his men to sell theirlives dearly, when from the steep pathway beyond the rocky platformpreviously pointed out by his guide there came the discharge of half ahundred rifles. The combat in the pass ceased instantly; both sideswere startled and amazed--Jack wondering whether the first Russian forcehad disposed of Ah Lum, and was now returning to complete thedestruction of his followers; the Cossacks apparently uncertain whetherthe shots came from friend or foe. Another volley flashed from theheight; immediately afterwards a swarm of horsemen was seen to descend.By the manner of their riding it was plain they were not Cossacks. Theywere making direct for the rear of the Russian force, threatening to cutoff its retreat. The Cossacks beyond the copse waited no longer. Inone wild rush, some throwing away their rifles in their haste, they fledtowards the pathway by which they had come, hoping to reach the poniestethered beyond the zone of fire. The men in the copse, lessfortunately placed than their comrades, offered a desperate resistanceto the Chunchuses now enveloping them--Jack leading some of his men in acharge from the pass, the new-comers sweeping round at headlong speed tointercept the fugitives. A few of the Cossacks, seeing their flighthopeless, surrendered; the rest died fighting; while those on thehillside, taken in reverse, were shot down almost to a man.
Thus reinforced, Jack sent a detachment round towards the northern endof the pass, and led a strong body to make a frontal attack on theCossacks there. But they did not await the assault. Perceiving theirdanger, they withdrew towards their reserve; and becoming aware within afew minutes of the Chunchuses rapidly approaching on their flank, theyabandoned their position and galloped swiftly away, many of them fallingto the rifles of the bandits.
The detachment which had come so providentially to Jack's relief provedto be Wang Shih's force. By the time they returned from pursuing thefleeing Russians, Ah Lum himself arrived at the pass. Jack then learntwhat had happened. The first Russian force had been completely routed.They had lost heavily in the ambuscade, but had rallied and attempted torush
Ah Lum's position. Then, however, Wang Shih had come down upontheir flank, and, discouraged by their heavy losses at the ambuscade,they had retreated. Closely followed up by Ah Lum, they were takenbetween two fires, and their retirement, at first orderly, soon became aheadlong flight.
Ah Lum made the handsomest acknowledgments to Jack for the part he hadplayed. And his was indeed a notable achievement. Though threatened bynearly thrice their numbers, his men by their gallant fight hadprevented the junction of the two Cossack forces, and thus enabled AhLum to secure his object, and win the victory on which so much haddepended. His combined force was not strong enough to follow up theadvantage gained; for among the hills the Cossacks would easily find adefensible position, and if they once succeeded in checking the pursuit,the Chunchuses would soon be opposed by overwhelming numbers. But inthe hastily evacuated position the victors discovered a considerablesupply of food, fodder, and ammunition abandoned by the Cossacks, andthis proved a welcome addition to their depleted stores.
Ah Lum had now to consider his future movements. He had learnt from ascout, who had overtaken him as he rode towards the pass, that a strongCossack force was pushing northwards from the Korean frontier. Toescape the ring-fence in which the Russians were evidently determined toenclose him, it seemed best to strike north-east, and endeavour to gaina position that had more than once been occupied by Chunchuses in theirconflicts with Chinese troops. Arrangements were hastily made for thetransport of the wounded, on both sides unfortunately very numerous.Mindful of his engagement with Jack, Ah Lum would not allow his men todespatch the wounded Russians, as was their wont. Forming a longcolumn, he started on his march, leaving Jack with 300 men to watch theCossacks and hold them at bay, should they return, until the main bodyhad got a good start. Jack held the pass for the remainder of the day;he was glad of the rest, for it enabled him to have his injured armbathed and dressed. Fortunately the wounds were slight. No sign offurther attack being seen, he thought it safe to follow up his chief.They joined forces within twenty-four hours of Jack's leaving the pass.Ah Lum's march had been delayed by the wounded, whom, however, he leftin groups at friendly villages en route. All the wounded having beenthus disposed of, the combined Chunchuse column regained its formermobility, and, marching rapidly, in three days reached the hill fastnesswhere Ah Lum hoped to enjoy a breathing-space to rest and recruit.
In the course of the march he gathered up ample food supplies for manand beast, but was still beset by the scarcity of ammunition. A greatdeal had been expended in the recent fight, and the wastage was by nomeans made up by what had been captured from the Russians. The band,too, was constantly being recruited, mainly from men who had beenwounded and left behind in the villages after previous engagements; andin spite of its recent losses it was now again fully twelve hundredstrong. But when the stock of ammunition came to be examined, it wasfound that there scarcely remained a dozen rounds a man. Unless,therefore, a fresh supply could in some way be procured, it would benecessary to disband the force. The dilemma gave Ah Lum seriousconcern.