In the meantime, while the occupants of the fort set about preparing for the expected siege, the few stars that were beginning to peep out of the clouded sky looked down upon a strange scene in a little orchard nearly two miles away from the fort. There, under the trees, a wounded officer was being bandaged by the skilful hands of another who bent over him, a dozen sepoys and four stretcher-bearers standing patiently by. The operation finished, the sufferer was lifted tenderly into a dhoolie. Then two bearers raised it from the ground, the escort ranged itself alongside, and the little party started out for the road leading to the fort. “Feel any easier now, old chap?” asked the surgeon, who was striding by the dhoolie. “Yes, thanks, Whitchurch; much easier,” replied Captain Baird, suppressing a groan as one of the bearers stumbled over a stone. Contrary to the general opinion expressed at the fort, neither of the two missing men had been killed or captured by the enemy. When Baird had fallen with a bullet in his side, his men had carried him quickly to the shelter of an orchard close at hand, and here they had escaped notice. All around them, however, lurked the Chitralis, on the look-out to cut off any stragglers from the retreating force. In a few minutes Whitchurch’s party had filed down the hillside and reached the road, but a cry of warning from the native officer in front pulled them up short. “We’re cut off, sahib,” he exclaimed, as the surgeon hastened to his side. “The enemy have got in front of us!” It was, alas! too true. Although he could see nothing through the gloom, the shouts and occasional shots that reached his ears told Whitchurch plainly that the Chitralis were on the road ahead. What was to be done? A sudden thought occurred to him. “Isn’t there a way round to the fort by the river, Bidrina Singh?” he asked of the officer. The other nodded affirmatively. There was a track along the river bank, he said, but it would take them a mile out of their way and across some very difficult ground. “Never mind,” said the surgeon briskly. “We’ve got to get to the fort to-night. So pull your men together, Bidrina Singh, and make for the river at once.” From his dhoolie Captain Baird called Whitchurch over to him, and begged that he would consider his own safety first. “I’m badly hit, old chap,” he said; “I know I’m done for----” But Whitchurch shut him up quickly. While there was breath in his body he meant to stick to his comrade; there was to be no talk of running away. So, picking up the wounded man again, the native bearers took their place in the middle of the escort, the latter closed up, and on they moved across the polo ground towards the river on their left.