The springing of their countermine, he found, was no deliverance.  It had two plain results, and no more:  the crest of the high field, without, had changed its contour next morning as though a monster had bitten it; and when the day had burnt itself out in sullen darkness, there burst on all sides an attack of prolonged and furious exasperation.  The fusillade now came not only from the landward sides, but from a long flotilla of boats in the river; and although these vanished at dawn, the fire never slackened, either from above the field, or from a distant wall, newly spotted with loopholes, beyond the ashes of the go-down.  On the night following, the boats crept closer, and suddenly both gates resounded with the blows of battering-rams.  These and later assaults were beaten off.  By daylight, the nunnery walls were pitted as with small-pox; yet the little company remained untouched, except for Teppich, whose shaven head was trimmed still closer and redder by a bullet, and for Gilbert Forrester, who showed—­with the grave smile of a man when fates are playful—­two shots through his loose jacket.

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.”