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Updated: June 10, 2025
He must be checked at Bardur, though it cost every life in the garrison. Four hours' delay would arm the north to adequate resistance. He telephoned to the telegraph office to shut and lock the doors and admit no one till word came from him. Then he summoned his Sikh orderly, his English servant, and the native officers of the garrison.
In a little the Bada-Mawidi, my people, will be in Bardur and a little later in the fat corn lands of the south, and I, Fazir Khan, will sit in King's palaces." He looked contemptuously round at his mud walls, his heart swelling with pride. "What the devil do you mean?" Lewis asked with rising suspicion. This was not the common talk of a Border cateran. "I mean what I mean," said the other.
We shall find a stir among the garrisons, and perhaps some visitors in the place. And at the very worst we might find some fool inquiring about the Nazri Pass. There was once a man in Bardur who did, but people laughed at him and he has gone." "Where?" asked the chief. "To England. But he was a harmless man, and he is too old to have any vigour."
Andy has a touch of fever, and some of the men may get leave for shooting. I must get back at once." "You can't. Why, man, you couldn't get half way. And what's more, I can't go. This place wants all the looking after it can get. A row in the hills means a very good possibility of a row in Bardur, and that is too dangerous a game. And besides myself there is scarcely a man in the place who counts.
"I don't mind telling you a secret," he said, "or rather it's only a secret here, for once you get out there you will find 'Gribton's view, as they call it, well enough known and very much laughed at. I've always been held up to ridicule as an alarmist about that Kashmir frontier, and especially about that Bardur country. Take the whole province.
Then your troubles will begin, my friend, and I can wish nothing better for you than the support of some man in the Commons who knows that Bardur is not quite so pastoral as Hampshire. He may relieve you of some of the popular odium you are courting, and at the worst he can be sent out." Wratislaw whistled long and low. "I think not," he said. "He is too good to throw away.
Anyhow, he hoped to quiet all local disturbances, and he would undertake to see that every station on the line was warned. He would receive reinforcements from Abbotabad by the afternoon of the next day; if Bardur and Gilgit, or Yasin as it might be, could delay the attack till then everything might be safe unless, indeed, the whole nexus of hill-tribes rose as one man.
A stupider man, with a sharp, practical brain, would have taken himself seriously and come to Bardur with an intent and satisfied mind. He would have assumed the air of a diplomatist, have felt the dignity of his mission, and in success and failure have borne himself with self-confidence. But to Lewis the business which loomed serious in England, at Bardur took on the colour of comedy.
I think I have already made you a present of most. By the by, I see from the papers that an official expedition is going north from Bardur. What idiot invented that?" Wratislaw pulled his head in and sat back in his chair. "You are sure you don't happen to know?" "Sure. But it is just the sort of canard which the gentry on the other side of the frontier would invent to keep things quiet.
"God, man! it's invasion, an unheard-of thing!" "It's the most desperate truth, unheard-of or no. The whole thing lies in our hands. They cannot come till after midnight, and by that time Thwaite may be ready in Bardur, and the Khautmi men may be holding the road. That would delay them for a little, and by the time they took Bardur they might find the south in arms.
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