An Indian city that has yet to have its mysterie's laid bare and
banished by electric light is a stage deliberately set for massacre. The
bazaars run criss-crosswise; any way at all save parallel, and anyhow
but straight. Between them lies always a maze of passages, and alleys,
deep sided, narrow, overhung by trellised windows and loopholed walls
and guarded stairways.
For every square inch where the sun can shine there are a hundred where
a man could hide unseen. Through century piled on suspicious century, no
designer, no architect, no builder has neglected to provide a means of
secret ingress, and still more secret egress, to each new house. And the
newest house is built on secret passages that hid conspirators against
the kings of men who lived before the oldest house was thought of.
After the Mutiny of '57 came broader roads--so that a cannon might be
trained along them.
But in '57, Jailpore was a nest of winding alley-ways and blind bat
and rat holes, where weird smells and strange unlisted poisons and
prophecies were born. In its midst, tight-packed in a roaring babel-din
of many-colored markets, stood a stone-walled palace, built once by a
Hindu king to commemorate a victory over Moslems, added to by a Moslem
Nizam, to celebrate his conquest of the Hindus and added to once again
by the Honorable East India Company, to make a suitable barracks for its
native troops.
From the rat-infested slums, from the hot shadows and the mazy
back-bazaars, from temples, store-houses, shops, and from the
sin-steeped underworld, there screamed and surged and swept the
many-graded, many-minded polyglot rebellion-spume. A quarter of a
million underdogs had turned against their masters. A hundred factions
and as many more religions, all had one common end in view--to loot. All
were agreed on one thing--that the first stage of the game must be to
turn Jailpore and, after Jailpore, India, into a charnel-house.
Around and around the burning palace the mob screamed and swept
uncontrolled. Moslem looted Hindu, and Hindu Moslem. Armed sepoys,
with the blood of their British officers fresh-soaked on their British
uniforms, and the unspent pay of “John Company” still jingling in their
pockets, danced weird, wild devil-dances through the streets, clearing
their way, when they saw fit, with cold steel or wanton volleys. Women
screamed. Caste looted caste. Loose horses galloped madly through the
streets. Here and there a pitched battle raged, where a merchant who had
wealth had also courage, and apprentices and friends to help him defend
his store.
And through all the din and clamor, under and above the howling and
the volleys and the roar of flames, sounded the steady thumping of
the sacred war-drums. The whole sky glowed red. The Indian night was
scorched and smoked and lit by arson. Hell screamed with the cooking of
red mutiny, and throbbed with the thunder of the sacred temple-drums.
And that was only one of the hells, and a small one. India glowed red
that night from end to end!
Juggut Khan, free-lance Rajput and gentleman of fortune, had ridden out
of that caldron of Jailpore. His house was a heap of glowing ashes, and
his goods were tossed for and distributed among a company. But his mark
lay indelibly impressed upon the town. There were three European women
and a child who were nowhere to be found; and there was a trail that led
from somewhere near the palace to the western gate. It was a red trail.
In one spot lay a sepoy pierced through by a lance, and with half of the
lance-shaft still standing upright in him. That had been bad art--sheer
playing to the gallery! Juggut Khan had run him through and tried to
lift him on the lance-end for a trophy. It was luck that saved the day
for him that time, not swordsmanship.
But a man who has done what he had done that day may be forgiven. There
lay nine other men behind him where his lance was left, and each of them
lay face upward with a round red hole in his anatomy where the lance had
entered.
And from the point where he had broken his lance and left it, up to
where a self-appointed guard had refused at first to open the city gate
for him, there was a trail that did honor to the man who taught him
swordsmanship. One man lay headless, and another's head was only part of
him, because the sword had split it down the middle and the two halves
were still joined together at the neck.
There were men who claimed afterward that of the twenty-three who lay
between his lance-shaft and the city gate, some five or six had been
slain in brawls and looting forays. And Juggut Khan was never known
to discuss the matter. But the fact remains that every man of them was
killed by the blade or point of a cavalry-saber, and that Juggut Khan
broke out of the place untouched.
And another fact worthy of record is, that underneath a stone floor, in
a building that was partly powder-magazine-surrounded at every end and
side by mutineers who searched for them, and very nearly stifled by the
dust of decaying ages--there lay three women and a child, with a jar of
water close beside them and a sack of hastily collected things to eat.
They lay there in all but furnace-heat, close-huddled in the darkness,
and they shuddered and sobbed and blessed Juggut Khan alternately.
Below them the whispering echoes sighed mysteriously through a maze of
tunnels. Around them, and around their sack of food, the rats scampered.
Above them, where a ten-ton stone trapdoor lay closed over their heads,
black powder stood in heaps and sacks and barrels. Closing the trapdoor
had been easy. One pushed it and it fell. Not all the mutineers in
Jailpore nor Juggut Khan nor any one could open it again without the
secret. And no man living knew the secret. The three women and the child
were safe from immediate intrusion!
Those three women and that child were not so exceptionally placed for
India, of that date. Two of the women had seen their husbands slain
that afternoon, before their eyes. They were mother and daughter and
grandson; and the fourth was an English nurse, red-cheeked still from
the kiss of English Channel breezes.
“If only Bill were here!” the nurse wailed. “I know he'd find a way out.
There wasn't never nothing nowhere that beat Bill. Bill wouldn't
ha' left us! Bill'd ha' took us out o' here, an' saved our lives.
Bill--snnff, snnff--Bill wouldn't ha'--snnff, snnff--shoved us in a
rat-hole and took hisself off!”
She had not yet lost her English point of view. She still believed that
the strong right arm of an English lover could play ducks and drakes
with Destiny. One-half of the world, at least, still swears that she
was wrong, and her mistress and the other woman thought her despicable,
ridiculous, unenlightened. It was a hardship to them, to be endured with
dignity and patience, but none the less a hardship, that they should be
left and should have to die with this woman of the Ranks Below to keep
them company. She was an honest woman, or they would never have engaged
her and paid her passage all the way to India. But she was not of their
jat, and she was a fool. It happens, however, that her point of view
saved England for the English, and that the other point of view had
brought England to the brink of utter ruin.
“If you'd leave off talking about your truly tiresome lover, and would
pray to God, Jane,” said Mrs. Leslie, “the rest of us might have a
chance to pray to God too! This isn't the time, let me tell you, to be
thinking of carnal love-affairs. Recall your sins, one by one, and ask
forgiveness for them.”
In the gloom of the vault, poor Jane was quite invisible. The sound
of her snuffling and sobs was the only clue to her direction. But her
bridling was a thing that could be felt through the stuffy blackness,
and there was a ring in her retort that gave the lie to the tears that
she was shedding.
“The only sin I ask forgiveness for,” she answered in a level voice, “is
having let Bill come to India alone. Pray to God, is it? Go on! Pray!
If Bill was here, he'd start on that stone door without no words
nor argument, unless some one tried to stop him. Then there'd be an
argument! And he'd get it open too. Bill's the kind that does his
prayin' afterward, and God helps men like Bill!”
“Well--I'm afraid that your Bill isn't here, and can't get here. So the
best thing that you can do is to pray and let us pray.”
“I'll pray for Bill!” said Jane defiantly. “Bill don't know that I'm in
India, and he surely doesn't know I'm here. But if he knew--Oh, God! Let
him know! Tell him! He'd come so quick. He'd--snnff, snnff--he'd--why,
he'd ha' been here long ago! Dear God, tell Bill I'm here, that's all!”