Читать книгу The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny - Tracy Louis, Louis Tracy - Страница 4

In Meerut reigned that blessed thing, Pax Britannica, otherwise known as the British bulldog. But the bulldog was kept on the chain and peace obtained only within his kennel. Malcolm, deprived of his regiment, gathered under his command a few young civilians who were eager to act as volunteer cavalry, and was given a grudging permission to ride out to the isolated bungalows of some indigo planters, on the chance that the occupants might have defended themselves successfully against the rioters.

In each case the tiny detachment discovered blackened walls and unburied corpses. The Meerut district abounded with Goojers, the hereditary thieves of India, and these untamed savages had lost none of their wild-beast ferocity under fifty years of British rule. They killed and robbed with an impartiality that was worthy of a better cause. When Europeans, native travelers and mails were swept out of existence they fought each other. Village boundaries which had been determined under Wellesley’s strong government at the beginning of the century were re-arranged now with match-lock, spear and tulwar. Old feuds were settled in the old way and six inches of steel were more potent than the longest Order in Council. Yet these ghouls fled at the sight of the smallest white force, and Malcolm and his irregulars rode unopposed through a blood-stained and deserted land.

On the 21st of May, eleven days after the outbreak of the Mutiny, though never a dragoon or horse gunner had left Meerut cantonment since they marched back to their quarters from the ever-memorable bivouac, Malcolm led his light horsemen north, along the Grand Trunk Road in the direction of Mazuffernugger.

A native brought news that a collector and his wife were hiding in a swamp near the road. Happily, in this instance, the two were rescued, more dead than alive. The man, ruler of a territory as big as the North Riding of Yorkshire, his wife, a young and well-born Englishwoman, were in the last stage of misery. The unhappy lady, half demented, was nursing a dead baby. When the child was taken from her she fell unconscious and had to be carried to Meerut on a rough litter.

The little cavalcade was returning slowly to the station4 when one of the troopers caught the hoof beats of a galloping horse behind them. Malcolm reined up, and soon a British officer appeared round a bend in the road. Mounted on a hardy country-bred, and wearing the semi-native uniform of the Company’s regiments, the aspect of the stranger was sufficiently remarkable to attract attention apart from the fact that he came absolutely alone from a quarter where it was courting death to travel without an escort. He was tall and spare of build, with reddish brown hair and beard, blue eyes that gleamed with the cold fire of steel, close-set lips, firm chin, and the slightly-hooked nose with thin nostrils that seems to be one of nature’s tokens of the man born to command his fellows when the strong arm and clear brain are needed in the battle-field.

He rode easily, with a loose rein, and he waved his disengaged hand the instant he caught sight of the white faces.

“Are you from Meerut?” he asked, his voice and manner conveying a curious blend of brusqueness and gentility, as his tired horse willingly pulled up alongside Nejdi.

“Yes. And you?” said Malcolm, trying to conceal his amazement at this apparition.

“I am Lieutenant Hodson of the 1st Bengal Fusiliers. I have ridden from Kurnaul, where the Commander-in-Chief is waiting until communication is opened with Meerut. Where is General Hewitt?”

“I will take you to him! From Kurnaul, did you say? When did you start?”

“About this hour yesterday.”

Malcolm knew then that this curt-spoken cavalier had ridden nearly a hundred miles through an enemy’s country in twenty-four hours.

“Is your horse equal to another hour’s canter?” he inquired.

“He ought to be. I took him from a bunniah when my own fell dead in a village about ten miles in the rear.”

Bidding a young bank manager take charge of the detachment, Frank led the newcomer rapidly to headquarters. Hodson asked a few questions and made his companion’s blood boil by the unveiled contempt he displayed on hearing of the inaction at Meerut.

“You want Nicholson here,” said he, laughing with grim mirth. “By all the gods, he would horse-whip your general into the saddle.”

“Hewitt is an old man, and cautious, therefore,” explained Frank, in loyal defense of his chief. “Perhaps he deems it right to await the orders you are now bringing.”

“An old man! You mean an old woman, perhaps? I come from one. I had to go on my knees almost before I could persuade Anson to let me start.”

“Well, you must admit that you have made a daring and lucky ride?”

“Nonsense! Why is one a soldier! I would cross the infernal regions if the need arose. If I had been in Meerut on that Sunday evening, no general that ever lived could have kept me out of Delhi before daybreak. The way to stop this mutiny was to capture that doddering old king and hold him as a hostage, and twenty determined men could have done it easily in the confusion.”

That was William Hodson’s way. Men who met him began by disliking his hectoring, supercilious bearing. They soon learnt to forget his gruffness and think only of his gallantry and good-comradeship.

At any rate his stirring advice and the dispatches he brought roused the military authorities at Meerut into activity. Carrying with him a letter to the Commander-in-Chief he quitted Meerut again that night, and dismounted outside Anson’s tent at Kurnaul at dawn on the second day!

On the 27th, Archdale Wilson led the garrison towards the rendezvous fixed on by the force hurriedly collected in the Punjab for the relief of Delhi. On the afternoon of the 30th, cavalry vedettes reported the presence of a strong body of mutineers on the right bank of the river Hindun, near the village of Ghazi-ud-din Nuggur and at a place where a high ridge commanded an iron suspension bridge. It was found afterwards that the rebels meant to fight the two British forces in detail before they could effect a junction. The generalship of the idea was good, but the sepoys did not count on the pent-up wrath of the British soldiers, who were burning to avenge their murdered countrymen and dishonored countrywomen, for it was now becoming known that many a fair English lady had met a fate worse than death ere sword or bullet stilled her anguish.

A company of the 60th Rifles dashed forward to seize the bridge, Lieutenant Light and his men took up the enemy’s challenge with their heavy eighteen-pounders, and Colonel Mackenzie and Major Tombs, at the head of two batteries of horse artillery, crossed the river and turned the left flank of the sepoy force. Then the Rifles extended and charged, the mutineers yielded, and Colonel Custance with his dragoons sabered them mercilessly for some miles.

Next morning, Whit-Sunday, while the chaplains were conducting the burial service over those who had fallen, the mutineers came out of Delhi again. A severe action began instantly. Tombs had two horses shot under him, and thirteen out of fifty men in his battery were killed or wounded. But the issue was never in doubt. After three hours’ hard fighting the rebels broke and fled. So those men in Meerut could give a good account of themselves when permitted! Actually, they won the two first battles of the campaign.

Exhausted by two days’ strenuous warfare in the burning sun, they could not take up the pursuit. The men were resting on the field when a battalion of Ghoorkahs, the little fighting men of Nepaul, arrived under the command of Colonel Reid. They had marched by way of Bulandshahr, and Malcolm heard to his dismay that the native infantry detachment stationed there, aided by the whole population of the district, had committed the wildest excesses.

Yet Winifred and her uncle had passed through that town on the road to Cawnpore. Aligarh, too, was in flames, said Reid, and there was no communication open with Agra, the seat of Government for the North-West Provinces. There was a bare possibility that the Maynes might have reached Agra, or that Nana Sahib had protected them for his own sake. Such slender hopes brought no comfort. Black despair sat in Malcolm’s heart until the Brigadier sent for him and ordered him to take charge of the guard that would escort the records and treasure from Meerut to Agra. He hailed this dangerous mission with gloomy joy. Love had no place in a soldier’s life, he told himself. Henceforth he must remember Winifred only when his sword was at the throat of some wretched mutineer appealing for mercy.

He went to his tent to supervise the packing of his few belongings. His bearer,5 a Punjabi Mohammedan, who cursed the sepoys fluently for disturbing the country during the hot weather, handed him a note which had been brought by a camp follower.

It was written in Persi-Arabic script, a sort of Arabic shorthand that demands the exercise of time and patience ere it can be deciphered by one not thoroughly acquainted with it. Thinking it was a request for employment which he could not offer, Malcolm stuffed it carelessly into a pocket. He rode to Meerut, placed himself at the head of the 8th Irregular Cavalry, a detachment whose extraordinary fidelity has already been narrated, and set forth next morning with his train of bullock carts and their escort.

He called the first halt in the village where he had parted from Winifred. The headman professed himself unable to give any information, but the application of a stirrup leather to his bare back while his wrists were tied to a cart wheel soon loosened his tongue.

The king’s hunting lodge was empty, he whined; and the Roshinara Begum had gone to Delhi. Nana Sahib’s cavalcade went south soon after the Begum’s departure, and a moullah had told him, the headman, that the Nana had hastened through Aligarh on his way to Cawnpore, not turning aside to visit Agra, which was fifty miles down the Bombay branch of the Grand Trunk Road.

Malcolm drew a negative comfort from the moullah’s tale. That night he encamped near a fair-sized village which was ominously denuded of men. Approaching a native hut to ask for a piece of charcoal wherewith to light a cigar, he happened to look inside. To his very great surprise he saw, standing in a corner, a complete suit of European armor, made of tin, it is true, but a sufficiently bewildering “find” in a Goojer hovel.

A woman came running from a neighbor’s house. While giving him the charcoal she hastily closed the rude door. She pretended not to understand him when he sought an explanation of the armor, whereupon he seized her, and led her, shrieking, among his own men. The commotion brought other villagers on the scene, as he guessed it would. A few fierce threats, backed by a liberal display of naked steel, quickly evoked the curious fact that nearly all the able-bodied inhabitants “had gone to see the sahib-log6 dance.”

Even Malcolm’s native troops were puzzled by this story, but a further string of terrifying words and more saber flourishing led to a direct statement that the white people who were to “dance” had been captured near the village quite a week earlier and imprisoned in a ruined tomb about a mile from the road. It was risky work to leave the valuable convoy for an instant, but Malcolm felt that he must probe this mystery. Taking half a dozen men with him, and compelling the woman to act as guide, he went to the tomb in the dark.

The building, a mosque-like structure of considerable size, was situated in the midst of a grove of mango trees. A clear space in front of the tomb was lighted with oil lamps and bonfires. It was packed with uproarious natives, and Malcolm’s astonished gaze rested on three European acrobats doing some feat of balancing. A clown was cracking jokes in French, some nuns were singing dolefully, and a trio of girls, wearing the conventional gauze and spangles of circus riders, were standing near a couple of piebald ponies.

He and his men dashed in among the audience and the Goojers ran for dear life when they caught sight of a sahib at the head of an armed party. The performers and the nuns nearly died of fright, believing that their last hour had surely come. But they soon recovered from their fear only to collapse more completely from joy. A French circus, it appeared, had camped near a party of nuns in the village on the main road, and were captured there when the news came that the English were swept out of existence. Most fortunately for themselves the nuns were regarded as part of the show, and the villagers, after robbing all of them, penned them in the mosque and made them give a nightly performance. There were five men and three women in the circus troupe, and among the four nuns was the grave reverend mother of a convent.

Malcolm brought them to the village and caused it to be made known that unless every article of value and every rupee in money stolen from these unfortunate people, together with a heavy fine, were brought to him by daybreak, he would not only fire each hut and destroy the standing crops, but he would also hang every adult male belonging to the place he could lay hands on.

These hereditary thieves could appreciate a man who spoke like that. They met him fairly and paid in full. When the convoy moved off, even that amazing suit of armor, which was used for the state entry of the circus into a town, was strapped on to the back of a trick pony.

The nuns, he ascertained, were coming from Fategarh to Umballa and they had met the great retinue of Nana Sahib below Aligarh. With him were two Europeans, a young lady and an elderly gentleman, but they were traveling so rapidly that it was impossible to learn who they were or whither they were going.

Here, then, was really good news. Like every other Englishman in India Malcolm believed that the Mutiny was confined to a very small area, of which his own station was the center. He thought that if Winifred and her uncle reached Cawnpore they would be quite safe.

He brightened up so thoroughly that he quite enjoyed a sharp fight next day when the budmashes of Bulandshahr regarded the straggling convoy as an easy prey.

There were three or four such affairs ere they reached Agra, and his Frenchmen proved themselves to be soldiers as well as acrobats. On the evening of the 2d of June he marched his cavalcade into the splendid fortress immortalized by its marble memorials of the great days of the Mogul empire.

The fact that a young subaltern had brought a convoy from Meerut was seized on by the weak and amiable John Colvin, Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Provinces, as a convincing proof of his theory that the bulk of the native army might be trusted, and that order would soon be restored. Each day he was sending serenely confident telegrams to Calcutta and receiving equally reassuring ones from a fatuous Viceroy. It was with the utmost difficulty that his wiser subordinates got him to disarm the sepoy regiments in Agra itself. He vehemently assured the Viceroy that the worst days of the outbreak were over and issued a proclamation offering forgiveness to all mutineers who gave up their arms, “except those who had instigated others to revolt, or taken part in the murder of Europeans.”

Such a man was sure to regard Malcolm’s bold journey from the wrong point of view. So delighted was he that he gave the sowars two months’ pay, lauded Malcolm in the Gazette, and forthwith despatched him on a special mission to General Sir Hugh Wheeler at Cawnpore, to whom he recommended Frank for promotion and appointment as aide-de-camp.

This curious sequence of events led to Malcolm’s following Winifred Mayne along the road she had taken exactly three weeks earlier. The route to Cawnpore lay through Etawah, a place where revolt had already broken out, but which had been evacuated by the mutineers, who, like those at Aligarh, Bulandshahr, Mainpuri, Meerut, and a score of other towns, ran off to Delhi after butchering all the Europeans within range.

With a small escort of six troopers, his servant, and two pack-horses, he traveled fast. As night was falling on June 4th, he re-entered the Grand Trunk Road some three miles north of Bithoor, where, all unknown to him, Nana Sahib’s splendid palace stood on the banks of the Ganges.

It was his prudent habit to halt in small villages only. Towns might be traversed quickly without much risk, as even the tiniest display of force insured safety, but it was wise not to permit the size of his escort to be noted at leisure, when a surprise attack might be made in the darkness.

Therefore, expecting to arrive at Cawnpore early next day, he elected not to push on to Bithoor, and proposed to pass the night under the branches of a great pipal tree. Chumru, his Mohammedan bearer, was a good cook, in addition to his many other acquirements. Having purchased, or made his master pay for, which is not always the same thing in India, a small kid (by which please understand a young goat) in the village, he lit a fire, slew the kid, to the accompaniment of an appropriate verse from the Koran, and compounded an excellent stew.

A native woman brought some chupatties and milk, and Malcolm, being sharp set with hunger, ate as a man can only eat when he is young, and in splendid health, and has ridden hard all day.

He had a cigar left, too, and he was searching his pockets for a piece of paper to light it when he brought forth that Persi-Arabic letter which reached him at the close of the second battle of Ghazi-ud-din Nuggur.

He was on the point of rolling it into a spill, but some subtle influence stopped him. He rose, walked to Chumru’s fire, and lit the cigar with a burning stick. Then summoning a smart young jemadar with whom he had talked a good deal during the journey, he asked him to read the chit. The woman who supplied the chupatties fetched a tiny lamp. She held it while the trooper bent over the strange scrawl, and ran his eyes along it to learn the context.

And this is what he read:

“To all whom it may concern – Be it known that Malcolm-sahib, late of the Company’s 3d Regiment of Horse, is a friend of the heaven-born princess Roshinara Begum, and, provided he comes to the palace at Delhi within three days from the date hereof, he is to be given safe conduct by all who owe allegiance to the Light of the World, the renowned King of Kings and lord of all India, Bahadur Shah, Fuzl-Ilahi, Panah-i-din.”

The trooper scowled. Those concluding words – “By the grace of God, Defender of the Faith” – perhaps touched a sore place, for he, too, was a true believer.

“You are a long way from Delhi, sahib, and the chit is a week old. I suppose you did not pay the expected visit to her Highness the Begum?” he said.

“If you are talking of the Begum Roshinara, daughter of the King of Delhi,” put in the woman, who was ready enough to indulge in a gossip with these good-looking soldiers, “she passed through this place to-day.”

“Surely you are telling some idle tale of the bazaar,” said Malcolm.

“No, sahib. My brother is a grass-cutter in the Nana’s stables. While I was at the well this morning a carriage came down the road. It was a rajah’s carriage, and there were men riding before and behind. I asked my brother if he had seen it, and he said that it brought the Begum to Bithoor, where she is to wed the Nana.”

“What! A Mohammedan princess marry a Brahmin!”

“It may be so, sahib. They say these great people do not consider such things when there is aught to be gained.”

“But what good purpose can this marriage serve?”

The woman looked up at Malcolm under her long eyelashes.

“Where have you been, sahib, that you have not heard that the sepoys have proclaimed the Nana as King?” she asked timidly.

“King! Is he going to fight the Begum’s father?”

“I know not, sahib, but Delhi is far off, and Cawnpore is near. Perchance they may both be kings.”

A man’s voice called from the darkness, and the woman hurried away. Malcolm, of course, was in a position to appraise the accuracy of her story. He knew that the Nana, a native dignitary with a grievance against the Government, was a guest of Bahadur Shah a month before the Mutiny broke out, and was at the Meerut hunting lodge on the very night of its inception. Judging by Princess Roshinara’s words, her relations with the Brahmin leader were far from lover-like. What, then, did this sudden journey to Cawnpore portend? Was Sir Hugh Wheeler aware of the proposed marriage, with all the terrible consequences that it heralded? At any rate, his line of action was clear.

“Get the men together, Akhab Khan,” he said to the jemadar. “We march at once.”

Within five minutes they were on the road. There was no moon, and the trees bordering both sides of the way made the darkness intense. The still atmosphere, too, was almost overpowering. The dry earth, sun-baked to a depth of many feet, was giving off its store of heat accumulated during the day. The air seemed to be quivering as though it were laden with the fumes of a furnace. It was a night when men might die or go mad under the mere strain of existence. Its very languor was intoxicating. Nature seemed to brood over some wild revel. A fearsome thunderstorm or howling tornado of dust might reveal her fickleness of mood at any moment.

It was man, not the elements, that was destined to war that night. The small party of horsemen were riding through the scattered houses of Bithoor, and had passed a brilliantly lighted palace which Malcolm took to be the residence of Nana Sahib, when they were suddenly ordered to halt. Some native soldiers, not wearing the Company’s uniform, formed a line across the road. Malcolm, drawing his sword, advanced towards them.

“Whose troops are you?” he shouted.

There was no direct answer, but a score of men, armed with muskets and bayonets, and carrying a number of lanterns, came nearer. It must be remembered that Malcolm, a subaltern of the 3d Cavalry, wore a turban and sash. He spoke Urdu exceedingly well, and it was difficult in the gloom to recognize him as a European.

“We have orders to stop and examine all wayfarers – ” began some man in authority; but a lifted lantern revealed Frank’s white face; instantly several guns were pointed at him.

“Follow me!” he cried to his escort.

A touch of the spurs sent Nejdi with a mighty bound into the midst of the rabble who held the road. Malcolm bent low in the saddle and a scattered volley revealed the tree-shrouded houses in a series of bright flashes. Fortunately, under such conditions, there is more room to miss than to hit. None of the bullets harmed horse or man, and the sowars were not quite near enough to be in the line of fire. After a quick sweep or two with his sword, Malcolm saw that his men were laying about them heartily. A pack-horse, however, had stumbled, bringing down the animal ridden by Chumru, the bearer. To save his faithful servant Frank wheeled Nejdi, and cut down a native who was lunging at Chumru with a bayonet.

More shots were fired and a sowar was wounded. He fell, shouting to his comrades for help. A general mêlée ensued. The troopers slashed at the men on foot and the sepoys fired indiscriminately at any one on horseback. The uproar was so great and the fighting so strenuous that Malcolm did not hear the approach of a body of cavalry until a loud voice bawled:

“Why should brothers slay brothers? Cease your quarreling, in the name of the faith! Are there not plenty of accursed Feringhis on whom to try your blades?”

Then the young officer saw, too late, that he was surrounded by a ring of steel. Yet he strove to rally his escort, got four of the men to obey his command, and, placing himself in front, led them at the vague forms that blocked the road to Cawnpore. In the confusion, he might have cut his way through had not Nejdi unfortunately jumped over a wounded man at the instant Frank was aiming a blow at a sowar. His sword swished harmlessly in the air, and his adversary, hitting out wildly, struck the Englishman’s head with the forte of his saber. The violent shock dazed Malcolm for a second, but all might yet have been well were it not for an unavoidable accident. A sepoy’s bayonet became entangled in the reins. In the effort to free his weapon the man gave such a tug to the bit on the near side that the Arab crossed his fore-legs and fell, throwing his rider violently. Frank landed fairly on his head. His turban saved his neck, but could not prevent a momentary concussion. For a while he lay as one dead.

When he came to his senses he found that his arms were tied behind his back, that he had been carried under a big tree, and that a tall native, in the uniform of a subadar of the 2d Bengal Cavalry, was holding a lantern close to his face.

“I am an officer of the 3d Cavalry,” he said, trying to rise. “Why do you, a man in my own service, suffer me to be bound?”

“You are no officer of mine, Feringhi,” was the scornful reply. “You are safely trussed because we thought it better sport to dangle you from a bough than to stab you where you dropped. Quick, there, with that heel-rope, Abdul Huq. We have occupation. Let us hang this crow here to show other Nazarenes what they may expect. And we have no time to lose. The Nana may appear at any moment.”