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Forbes Archibald. Barracks, Bivouacs and Battles
Barracks, Bivouacs and Battles
Table of Contents
HOW “THE CRAYTURE” GOT ON THE STRENGTH
THE FATE OF “NANA SAHIB’S ENGLISHMAN”
THE OLD SERGEANT
THE GENTLEMAN PRIVATE OF THE “SKILAMALINKS”
JELLYPOD; ALIAS THE MULETEER
THE DOUBLE COUP DE GRÂCE
BILL BERESFORD AND HIS VICTORIA CROSS
LA BELLE HÉLÈNE OF ALEXINATZ. A SKETCH OF THE SERVIAN WAR-TIME
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
AN OUTPOST ADVENTURE
THE DIVINE FIGURE FROM THE NORTH
A YARN OF THE “PRESIDENT” FRIGATE
Narrative
FIRE-DISCIPLINE
A CHRISTMAS DINNER DE PROFUNDIS
ABSIT OMEN!
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
A FORGOTTEN REBELLION
MY CAMPAIGN IN PALL MALL
Statement enclosed
Отрывок из книги
Archibald Forbes
Published by Good Press, 2021
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Spite of cruel heat, sunstrokes, cholera, and the exhaustion of long marches, the little column pressed on blithely, for the stimulus of hope was in the hearts of the men. But that hope was killed just when its fulfilment was all but accomplished. To the soldiers, spent with the fighting of the day, as they lay within but one short march of Cawnpore, came in the dead of night the woful tidings of the massacre of the company of women and children, the forlorn remnant of the Cawnpore garrison whom the Nana Sahib had spared from the butchery of the Slaughter Ghaut. Next morning Havelock’s little army camped on the Cawnpore maidan, and Mick and his chum, accompanied by big Jock Gibson, one of the 78th pipers, with his pipes under his arm, set out in a search for the scene of the tragedy. Directed by whispering and terrified natives, they reached the Bibi Ghur, the bungalow in which the women and children had been confined, and in which they had been slain. With burning eyes and set faces, the men looked in on the ghastly and the woful tokens of the devilry that had been enacted inside those four low walls—the puddles of blood, the scraps of clothing, the broken ornaments, the leaves of bibles, the children’s shoes—ah, what need to catalogue the pitiful relics! Then they followed the blood-trail to the brink of the awful well, filled and heaped with the hacked and battered dead. Sullivan lifted up his voice and wept aloud. His comrade, of dourer nature, gazed on the spectacle with swelling throat. Big Jock Gibson sank down on the ground, sobbing as he had never done since the day his mother said him farewell, and gave him her Gaelic blessing in the market-place of Tain. As he sobbed, his fingers were fumbling mechanically for the mouthpiece of his pipes. Presently he slipped it absently into his mouth. As the wind whistles through the bare boughs of the trees in winter, so came, in fitful soughs, the first wayward notes from out weeping Jock’s drone and chanter. At length he mastered the physical signs of his woe, or rather, it might have been, he transferred his emotion from his heart into his pipes; and as the other two left him, he was sitting there, over the great grave, pouring forth a wild shrill dirge—a pibroch and a coronach in one.
An hour later, to a group of comrades gathered in a little tope in front of the tents, Mick Sullivan was trying, in broken words, to tell of what he had seen. He was abruptly interrupted by Jock Gibson, who strode into the midst of the circle, his face white and drawn, his pipes silent now, carried under his arm.
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