Adventure, December 1914 — page 91: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Lancing of the Whale but they were scattered here and there about vast provinces, and she dared not call them in. For all Persia was simmering already with stories of Dick Anthony, and the with- drawal of a dozen men from one far- pushed outpost would have been construed immediately as a sign of weakness. Persia would have been in arms, roaring at Dick’s back, given the half of a lame excuse. She had to manage with the few she had— the few who had hidden from Dick Anthony when he burst into the city—the few who had marched back from defeat without their weapons, and the other few whom she herself had led into the city after a disheartening rout. She had enough men there to hold the place now against any new attempt Dick was likely to make, but not enough men by a long way to let her dare assume the offensive until the guns should come. She sent telegram after telegram to Rus- sia along the mended wire, urging that the army-corps be started on its way. She pointed out over and over again, until they wired back to her not to waste time on senseless repetition, that now—now—now was the golden opportunity; now, as many troops as Russia wished might be sent with- out risk of international objections, and such a chance would never occur again. While she fretted for the coming of the guns, she sent out messengers and made the fisher-folk bring in their fleet; she had the bay and the neighboring shores all ran- sacked for craft that would do to ply be tween the land and anchored transports; she even set men building a long pile-pier that would help overcome the ever-increasing dif- ficulty caused by the Caspian’s evaporation and the shrinking of the Volga’s flow. And while she worked with feverish haste, thinking of a thousand and one things an in- competent would probably have over- looked, she made a mistake that was as unexplainable as it was likely to prove disas- trous. More and more—as from time to time she gazed at the row of upturned wag- ons—she began to despise Dick Anthony. She despised him for having ever left a city he had taken; she hated him for having saved her from the mob and then turned his back on her; and she despised him again with all her imaginative mind for failing to strike swiftly, instead of waiting for more 89 men and for an inkling of her plans, as she felt sure he must be doing. In proof of how carefully the Russian plans had all been laid for invasion of Persia when occasion offered, gunboats with troops on board began to arrive and drop anchor in the bay the day after her telegram was sent. There were not more than enough men with these first five arrivals to mark out the an- chorage and make the hundred minor prepa- rations that are necessary when a fleet is to disgorge an army on an unprotected coast; but the men on board knew what to do and they were enough, too, to satisfy the Princess and one other person that the game was now going to begin in earnest. The other happened to be Dick Anthony, _ watching through binoculars from behind an upturned wagon on the morning after his return from dealing with the guns. He chuckled, and she chuckled, both for the same apparent reason; and then presently she took to cursing, using words that made any one who heard her shudder, because the guns were so long in coming. She was seized with a yearning to have it out with Dick—to capture him, and torture him, and kill him with her own fingers—before the army-corps could come to rob her of revenge. The sight of his dead body would not be enough for her. She, ske—must kill him with her fingers! Then she saw dust and a column on the sky-line. She sent gallopers to tell the guns to hurry. Gazing from a tower through strong glasses, she knew nearly as soon as the gallopers that the gunners had left their guns behind and were trudging as another regiment had done, weaponless, ashamed! Now she knew that Dick had fooled her; that he wasn’t behind that row of wagons after all! Now she knew that he must be attacking the two regiments who were some- where farther off than the guns had been! Now she knew that it was she who had been dallying, not Dick, and unless she moved swiftly to their aid the two regi- ments would share the fate of the rest! And peering from behind the wagons, Dick laughed, in that strange unmusical in- fectious note of his, in about three keys and without a word of explanation. He hated to explain things; but he wished that Usbeg Ali Khan could have been there, to be mysti- fied by what he felt sure was going to happen next. He enjoyed the exultation that goes with the certainty of a plan’s success. He DOOK C©