It is not easy to give any kind of real impression of India twenty-four
hours after the outbreak of the mutiny. Movement was the keynote of
the picture--stealthy, not-yet-quite-confident pack-movement on the one
hand, concentrated here and there in blood-red eddies, and, on the other
hand, swift, desperate marches in the open.
The moment that the seriousness of the outbreak had been understood, and
the orders had gone out by galloper to “Get a move on!” each commanding
officer strained every nerve at once to strike where a blow would
have the most effect. There was no thought of anything but action, and
offensive, not defensive action. Until some one at the head of things
proved still to be alive, and had had time to form a plan, each
divisional commander acted as he saw fit. That was all that any one was
asked to do at first: to act, to strike, to plunge in headlong where the
mutiny was thickest and most dangerous, to do anything, in fact; except
sit still.
Even with the evidence of mutiny and treachery on every side, with red
flames lighting the horizon and the stench of burning villages on every
hand, the strange Anglo-Saxon quality persisted that has done more even
that the fighting-quality to teach the English tongue to half the world.
The native servants who had not yet run away retained their places
still, unquestioned. When an Englishman has once made up his mind to
trust another man, he trusts him to the hilt, whatever shade of brown or
red or white his hide may be.
But, since every rule has its exceptions, there were some among the
native servants, who remained ostensibly loyal to their masters, who
would better have been shot or hanged at the first suggestion of
an outbreak. For naturally a man who is trusted wrongly is far more
dangerous than one who is held in suspicion. But it never was the
slightest use endeavoring to persuade an average English officer that
his own man could be anything but loyal. He may be a thief and a liar
and a proved-up rogue in every other way; but as for fearing to let him
sleep about the house, or fearing to let him cook his master's food,
or fearing to let him carry firearms--well! Perhaps, it is conceit, or
maybe just ordinary foolishness. It is not fear!
So, in a country where the art of poisoning has baffled analysts since
analysts have been invented, and where blood-hungry fanatic priests,
both Hindu and Mohammedan, were preaching and promising the reward
of highest heaven to all who could kill an Englishman or die in the
attempt, a native cook whose antecedents were obscured in mystery cooked
dinner for a British general, and marched with his column to perform the
same service while the general tried to trounce the cook's friends and
relatives!
But General Baines felt perfectly at ease about his food. He never gave
a thought to it, but ate what was brought to him, sitting his horse most
likely, and chewing something as he rode among the men, and saw that
they filled their bellies properly. He had made up his mind to march on
Harumpore, and to take over the five-hundred-strong contingent there.
Then he could swoop down on any of a dozen other points, in any one of
which a blow would tell.
He was handicapped by knowing almost too much. He had watched so long,
and had suspected for so long that some sort of rebellion was brewing
that, now that it had come, his brain was busy with the tail-ends of
a hundred scraps of plans. He was so busy wondering what might be
happening to all the other men subordinate to him, who would have to be
acting on their own initiative, that his own plans lacked something of
directness. But there was no lack of decision, and no time was lost. The
men marched, and marched their swiftest, in the dust-laden Indian heat.
And he marched with them, in among them, and ate what the cook brought
him, without a thought but for the best interests of the government he
served.
So they buried General Baines some eighty-and-twenty miles from
Harumpore, and shot the cook. And, according to the easy Indian
theology, the cook was wafted off to paradise, while General Baines
betook himself to hell, or was betaken. But the column, three thousand
perspiring Britons strong, continued marching, loaded down with
haversacks and ammunition and resolve.
It was met, long before the jackals had dug down to General Baines'
remains, by the advance-guard of Colonel Kendrick's column, which was
coming out of Harumpore because things were not brisk enough in that
place to keep it busy. Kendrick himself was riding with the cavalry
detachment that led the way southward.
“Who's in command now?” he asked, for they had told him of General
Baines' death by poison.
“I am,” said a gray-haired officer who rode up at that moment.
“I'm your senior, sir, by two years,” answered Kendrick.
“Then you command, sir.”
“Very good. Enough time's been wasted. The column can wait here until my
main body reaches us. Then we'll march at once on Jailpore. This idea
of leaving Jailpore to its fate is nonsense! The rebels are in strength
there, and they have perpetrated an abominable outrage. There we will
punish them, or else we'll all die in the attempt! If we have to raze
Jailpore to the ground, and put every man in it to the sword before we
find the four Europeans supposed to be left alive there, our duty is
none the less obvious! Here comes my column. Tell the men to be ready to
march in ten minutes.”
He turned his horse, to look through the dust at the approaching column,
but the man who had been superseded touched him on the sleeve.
“What's that? Better have a rest? Tired out, you say? Oh! Form them all
up in hollow square, then, and I'll say a few words to them. There are
other ways of reviving a leg-weary column than by letting it lie down.”
Ten minutes later a dull roar rose up through a steel-shot dust-cloud,
and three thousand helmets whirled upward, flashing in the sun. Three
thousand weary men had given him his answer! There was no kind of handle
to it; no reserve--nothing but generous and unconditional allegiance
unto hunger, thirst, pain, weariness, disease or death. It takes a real
commander to draw that kind of answer from a tired-out column, but it
is a kind of answer, too, that makes commanders! It is not mere talk, on
either side. It means that by some sixth sense a strong man and his men
have discovered something that is good in each other.