“SHIVA THE DESTROYER.”
Close to the Suttee Choura Ghaut, the place at which the garrison were
to embark, there rose a Hindoo temple; it was known as the Hurdes, or
the Fisherman’s Temple. It stood upon the banks of the Ganges, and
its shadows darkened the water. Many a religious festival had been
held within its walls, and many a pious Hindoo fisherman had come from
afar, that he might fall down before the god it enshrined, and invoke
a blessing upon himself and his calling. But on the morning that the
English people went forth from their defences, it was devoted to a far
different purpose.
Enthroned on a “chaboutree,” or platform, of the temple, sat Tantia
Topee. He had been commissioned by Nana Sahib to carry out the
hellish work. Near him were Azimoolah, and Teeka Singh, and they were
surrounded with numerous dependants. From their position, they were
enabled to command an uninterrupted view of the river, through the open
doors and windows. At the proper time the fatal signal was to be given
in that temple by Tantia Topee. The signal was to be the blast of a
bugle.
But all unmindful of the awful danger, the garrison went on--women,
and children, and men, who had survived the horrors of those awful
weeks--gaunt, and ghastly, their garments hanging in shreds, and
scarcely covering their emaciated bodies, enfeebled by want, their
bones almost protruding through their skins, some wounded, and bearing
upon them the indelible marks of the battle.
In the hearts of most was a glimmering of a peaceful future.
Here a little child carried in its arms a broken and smoke-blackened
doll; there a woman huddled to her breast some household treasure that
had been saved from the great wreck; but they were a pitiable crowd.
The beautiful had left their beauty; the young had left their youth in
the battered barracks; and even the faces of the children were pinched
and wizened, showing how fearful had been the suffering during those
dark weeks.
The wounded were carried mostly in palkees (palanquins); the women
and children were in rough native carts, a few rode on elephants; and
the able-bodied men marched. But the attempt at martial array was but
a mockery--they were soldiers only in spirit. Outwardly they were
starving tatterdemalions.
The grim old warrior, General Wheeler, was accompanied by his wife and
daughters. He was worn and broken spirited--for the capitulation had
crushed his heart. In spite of the starvation which stared him in the
face, in spite of the hordes of rebels arrayed against them, and in
spite of the sickness and misery which were upon them, the poor old
man was reluctant to surrender, for he still hoped for succour from
outside. But his officers had forced it upon him, for the sake of the
unhappy women and children.
It was but a mile down to the Ghaut, but it was a long, long weary
journey. The place of embarkation was reached at last, and the weary
eyes of the people saw the fleet of boats that they hoped were to
convey them to safety. They were common country eight-oared boats,
known as “budgerows.” They were unwieldy things, with heavy thatched
roofs, so that they resembled, from a distance, stacks of hay. It
was the close of an unusually dry season, and the water was at its
shallowest--the mud and sand-banks being far above the water in many
places. The banks of the river were lined with natives, who had turned
out in thousands to see the humiliated English. There were thousands of
soldiers there too--horse, foot, and artillery. The troopers sat with
their horses’ heads turned towards the river, and seemed impatient for
the sport to commence.
Such a deep-laid plot, such a diabolical act of treachery, the world
had surely never known before. Not even the imagination of Danté could
have conceived blacker-hearted demons to have peopled his “Inferno”
with, than those surging crowds of natives. Those floating budgerows
were not to be arks of safety, but human slaughter-houses.
Slowly the people embarked, and, as they did so, there floated out
into the stream a small wooden idol: it represented the Hindoo god
Shiva--Shiva the Destroyer. As it was pushed out into the stream, every
native who saw it smiled, for he knew too well what it signified.
General Wheeler remained till the last. He had been riding in a
palanquin, and as he put his head out, a scimitar flashed in the
air, and the brave veteran rolled into the water a corpse. Almost at
the same moment Tantia Topee raised his hand in the temple, and the
notes of a bugle rose clear and distinct. Then the foul design became
apparent, and the unhappy people knew that they had been lured into a
death-trap. From every conceivable point on both sides of the river,
there belched forth fire, and grape and musket balls were poured into
the doomed passengers; in a little while the thatch of the budgerows
burst into flame, for in every roof hot cinders had been previously
inserted. Men leapt overboard, and strove to push the vessels out into
the stream, but the majority of the boats remained immovable. The
conflagration spread; the sick and wounded were burnt to death. The
stronger women took to the water with their children in their arms, but
they were shot down or sabred by the troopers, who rode in after them.
In a large and elegant tent on the cantonment plain, the fiend and
tiger, Nana Sahib, paced uneasily. He heard the booming of the guns,
the rattle of the musketry, and occasionally the dying shriek of an
unhappy woman was borne upon his ear. He knew that Shiva the Destroyer
was doing his hellish work. Perhaps as he paced up and down, there
came into his black heart a pang of remorse, or, more probably, a
thrill of fear; for in his solitude he might have seen a vision of
the Great White Hand that was to smite him into the dust. Or perhaps
there stole over him a sense that there was a destroyer mightier even
than Shiva--even the Supreme God of the Christians, who would exact a
terrible retribution for his unutterable crimes.
It is certain that as Dundoo Pant paced his tent, he was ill at ease.
He was haunted by the ghosts of his victims, even as was that bloody
tyrant of infamous memory, Richard the Third, the night before
Bosworth.
“Ah! What do you want?” cried the guilty Nana, as a messenger suddenly
entered the tent--so suddenly that the conscience of Dundoo caused his
heart to leap into his mouth.
“The work speeds well, your Highness,” said the man, kneeling before
his master; “but these Feringhees are fighting to the death.”
“Go back with all haste to Tantia Topee, and say that, as he values
his own life, not another woman or child is to be slaughtered; but let
every man with a white face be hacked to pieces. Mark me well. _Not an
Englishman is to be spared!_ Tell Azimoolah to see to all this.”
The messenger withdrew, and the tiger ground his teeth and resumed his
walk.
Down at the Ghaut the work was truly speeding well, but when the
Nana’s message arrived it stopped as far as the women were concerned;
and about one hundred and thirty women and children--some fearfully
wounded, others half drowned and dripping with the slime of the
Ganges--were carried back in captivity to Cawnpore.
Thirty-nine boats had been destroyed; but there was one that got into
the fairway of the stream, and down on the dark bosom of the waters
it drifted, a lonely waif. There were no boatmen, there were no oars,
there was no rudder, but there were hearts of steel on board; heroes
who would die, ay, suffer death a hundred times before they would
surrender. That solitary boat contained about eighty men--such men
that, if they had had a fair chance, not all the legions of the
accursed Nana could have conquered them. Slowly it drifted on between
the banks. Hissing shot and burning arrows were discharged at it in
showers, but it seemed almost as if it had been surrounded with a
charm, for it drifted on unscathed. Next a blazing budgerow was sent
after it, but that failed to harm it, and its occupants, slender
as was the chance, began to think that they would escape. But as
the sun commenced to decline, and burnish the river with his golden
rays, a boat, filled with about sixty men, was sent in pursuit, with
orders from Tantia Topee to slaughter every Englishman. The lonely
boat grounded on a sand-bank. Hope sank again. On came the would-be
destroyers, and their boat stuck on the same bank. Then occurred a last
grand burst of courage--courage even in death, and which is always so
conspicuous in British heroism. On the bows of the pursuer there stood
up a tall, powerful Sepoy, and, in a loud voice, cried:
“In the name of the Nana Sahib, I call upon you to surrender.”
He might as well have called upon the winds to stay their course, or
the tides to cease to flow. Surrender forsooth! And to the Nana Sahib,
the insatiable Tiger of Cawnpore, whose name, and name of all his race,
will descend to posterity covered with infamy, and who will be held up
to execration and scorn until time shall be no more!