The water supply had run very low, and the men were already subsisting upon rations that were scarcely sufficient for the maintenance of life.

There was sickness among them, and there were also many wounded.
The white men were reduced to four, including himself, the native soldiers had begun to desert, and he had been forced at last to face the fact that the end was very near.
All this had Muriel Roscoe come through, physically scathless, mentally torn and battered, and she could not bring herself to realise that the long-drawn-out misery of the siege could ever be over.
Lying there, tense and motionless, she listened to the shots and yells in the distance with a shuddering sense that it was all a part of her life, of her very being, even.

The torture and the misery had so eaten into her soul.

Now and then she heard the quick thunder of one of the small guns that armed the fort, and at the sound her pulses leaped and quivered.

She knew that the ammunition was running very low.