Shell after shell burst upon the ancient tower with reverberating thuds which seemed to shake the very ground beneath them. The starlight showed a great crack which had appeared in one side of the fort, and large lumps of stone slipped and tumbled to the ground after each explosion. The strong point in their defence which Gregory had counted impregnable, was being pounded to a heap of ruins.
Suddenly the firing ceased. They waited in the doorway with strained, breathless anxiety two minutes, three four five then a long finger of bright light flashed up to the clouds, circled slowly and, descending, was brought to bear upon the village. Hovering for a second here and there, the searchlight picked out every detail of the foreshore and, as it moved on, the little group at the entrance of the inn were momentarily blinded by its powerful glare.
'Hell!' exclaimed Gregory pushing the others into the hallway. 'With that damn thing they'll be able to pick us off like rabbits this is even worse than I bargained for.'
The beam swept slowly back and forth, strong depths of shadows playing about its edges but revealing all within its circle with the vivid brightness of full day; then, as it passed on, its late discoveries sank again into the unnatural blackness of an even deeper night.
There was a sharp whine, a rending crash, and then the rumble of falling masonry.
'Next door but one,' cried Kenyon.
'Come on out you go,' Gregory pushed Veronica before him and they stumbled through the back entrance of the inn. Shouts and cries came from the neighbourhood of the demolished house and further off the sound of people running. Andrews's maids were already on the lawn, one of them was screaming in a fit of hysterics.
'Stop it d’you hear?' Gregory seized and shook her roughly.
'Can't we can't we help them,' hazarded Veronica.
'No, if they're not dead they soon will be. Come on, all of you.' Still gripping the girl by the arm he hurried them round the corner of the stockade, but Andrews stopped and turned.
'What is it?' muttered Kenyon.
'My money. I'm not going to leave my cash for others.'
'Don't be a fool,' snapped Gregory. 'What earthly good is it to you?'
'You never know.' At a quick trot the little man started back towards the Anchor.
'Hurry then,' Gregory called after him. 'There'll be another in a minute,' but his warning came too late. There was a blinding flash, the small hotel seemed to stagger for a second and then, as though some giant invisible hand had crushed it flat, it disappeared into a shapeless heap of debris, leaving a black empty gap between its neighbours.
Andrews had been halfway across the garden. They saw him stagger for a few steps like a drunken man and then slip down into a pathetic little heap.
Kenyon dashed back to him and raised his head, but a lump of flying brick had caught him on the forehead and killed him instantly.
'Oh, Gregory, I'm hating this.' Veronica's grip tightened on his arm.
'Of course you are.' His voice thrilled her by its tenderness. 'But you'll stick it, won't you? I've got to run this beastly show and it will be hell for me if you break down.'
She nodded quickly. 'I'll be all right don't worry about me, sweet just do your job.'
'Thanks.' He smiled in the darkness as they stumbled on. 'This last month may have been hell for some people but I've enjoyed it more than any time in my life. We've had a lot of fun, Veronica.'
'Yes, darling, we've had a lot of fun.'
Kenyon, his wounds throbbing afresh from the exertion, caught them up. 'Are you going to evacuate the village?' he panted.
'Not except as a last measure. I must protect the Shingleites as well as I can, and how could I do that once they're outside the fortifications think of all these women and kids straggling about in the darkness.'
'Yes, the farmers would set on us again for certain; there were a good two hundred of them, and that one burst of machine gun fire couldn't have laid out more than twenty or thirty.'
Gregory led them swiftly towards the Redoubt, where Rudd, who had run on ahead, was already assembling the villagers. Silas came out to meet them. 'All quiet, General,' he reported laconically.
Kenyon gave a brief, strained laugh.
'This end I mean,' the American amended. 'They seem to be making the village a pretty lively little hell.' As he spoke another shell came over crumpling up two fishermen's cottages.
'Yes. The inn's gone,' Gregory informed him.
'Any casualties?'
'Sergeant Thompson and poor old Andrews, and half a dozen more I expect by now.'
'That's bad I wouldn't give a dime for our chances here either if they turn their little pop guns on us.'
'Nor I,' Gregory agreed. 'A direct hit would go plump through the roof of any of these dugouts. I wish to God we'd had proper engineers' materials to make them with; still they are better than nothing.'
Silas made Veronica comfortable in what he called his 'parlour' while the other women and children were packed into the larger dugouts, and the fishermen, scattered through the trenches, miserably watched the destruction of their homes.
The single line of houses was now burning fiercely at one end, shell after shell crashed into the remaining buildings, and still the malevolent eye of the searchlight picked out fresh targets for the merciless gun.
'Wonder why they keep it up like this,' Silas muttered. 'They know we can't reply to them it seems stupidly vindictive to create such senseless havoc'
'Drunk, I expect,' Gregory replied tersely. 'Once some madman started in on us when the farmers attacked, the rest began to glory in the fun. That gun's like a new toy to them now they are able to blaze off as much stuff as they like at real targets.'
'Well, there won't be much left of the place when they come ashore to drive the cattle off in the morning.'
'Unless they come tonight. They can't have seen much red meat themselves in the last fortnight, so they may if someone thinks of chops for supper.'
'What'll you do if they turn that darn gun on to us here?'
'Evacuate only thing to do but I dread it with all these civilians to look after.' Gregory flung a glance over his shoulder. 'Where's Fane? Oh, there you are. Look here, the three of us had better arrange the order of our going if we are forced to quit.'
While the three of them went into conference, Veronica, her nerves strung to the highest pitch, sat fiddling with the papers on the table in Silas' dugout. Suddenly the drawing of a woman caught her eye. She moved the candle nearer and saw at once that it was a portrait of herself a beautiful thing, showing her lying on the beach, her hands spread out behind her, her legs stretched to their fullest extent and crossed. The toe of one of her shoes was turned up and in the drawing she was smiling at it pensively. A characteristic attitude of her, but how clever of Silas, she thought, to have caught it. She rummaged among the papers and found others, nearly two dozen of them and all of her in different positions. She realised then with a little catch in her throat that every waking moment he had spent there must have been devoted to making these charming studies of herself.
Gregory was just a lovely madness of course; the old tag came into her mind 'Man cannot live by caviare alone,' and Gregory was caviare. Quite marvellous if you liked that sort of thing, and Veronica did: 'We are a couple of rips, my dear,' she had told him once, 'and we wouldn't be otherwise for a million pounds,' she remembered how he had chuckled mightily but Silas
'Like 'em?' said a voice behind her and she looked up to see him in the doorway.
'I'm a brute to look but I think they are divine.'
He adjusted the blanket carefully over the entrance and took the drawings from her. 'Just a little hobby of mine,' he said quietly. 'I felt they'd be good to have if we got separated.'
'You're a dear, Silas how's the war?'