ON THE WAY TO CAWNPORE
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 station[4] 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.
[Footnote 4: In India the word "station" denotes any European settlement
outside the three Presidency towns. In 1857 there were few railways in
the country.]
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.
[Footnote 5: A personal servant, often valet and waiter combined.]
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-log[6] dance."
[Footnote 6: A generic term for Europeans.]
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 melee 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."