That regiment, for its part, had halted and dismounted on the neck
which in the Wimbledon days had been the camping-ground of the
“Members” and of the “Victorias.” Its formation was identical with
that of the Scarlet Hussars--column of squadrons--and its front looked
across the undulating plateau in the direction of Colonel Sabretasche’s
light-bobs. Colonel Guardlex had allowed his troopers but a short halt,
and they had already mounted, and were waiting for the command to
return to their billets, when the noise of the first shots fired from
out the front rank of the Hussars came down on the soft wind. “Slovenly
work, sir,” the Adjutant of the Regals was remarking to his chief,
“getting rid of blank ammunition only now.”
Guardlex suddenly started.
“Blank ammunition be ----!” he exclaimed. “You heard the whistle of
that bullet--and there’s another--and another! By the living God, the
blackguards are shooting down their officers! The Scarlet Hussars have
mutinied! Steady there, the Regals!” roared the chief, wheeling his
horse and facing his own regiment “Squadrons, eyes centre! Officers,
see to the dressing!”
Suddenly from near the flank of the right troop of the first squadron
shot out a dragoon, bellowing, as he turned in his saddle--
“To h-- with the Widow! Down with the officers! Come on, chaps, and
join our gallant comrades yonder. On, lads, to liberty and license!”
One or two men moved out half-a-horse’s length, and then halted
irresolutely. The captain commanding the right troop drew his sword--he
was within three horses’ length of the mutineer.
“Steady, officers and men!” rang out in the deep voice of the chief.
“Captain Hurst, return your sword, sir!”
As he gave these commands, Colonel Guardlex was cantering steadily
and coolly towards the right, where stood the mutineer. The man did
not quail as the Colonel approached, with that grim smile on his
weather-beaten face which habitual defaulters knew so well. Nay, the
trooper, a desperado to the backbone, drew his sword and confronted the
Colonel, throwing up his guard.
It was all over in two seconds. A riderless horse was galloping away.
On the sward lay a sword with a severed hand still grasping its hilt,
and close by a dead dragoon with a sword-thrust through his heart.
Cool and stern, the chief was back in his place, issuing curt rapid
orders to his officers. Captain Francis commanded the right troop,
Captain Clements the left troop, of the rear squadron. Captain Francis
he ordered to take his troop out by a circuit through the broken
ground, and so by the back of the butts, till well in rear of the
Scarlet Hussars; Captain Clements to move down the hollow on his left,
the “Glenalbyn” of the Wimbledon days, and, with a wide bend round the
right flank of the Hussars, reunite with Francis in their rear and bar
the way of retreat--both movements to be executed at a gallop. To each
of his majors he gave a troop of the second squadron, with orders to
move out to the right and left front, manœuvre for the flanks of the
Hussars, and ride in on both obliquely. The first squadron he kept in
his own hand, moving it straight forward at a trot until within about
five hundred paces of the front of the Hussars. Then he halted, kept
the front rank in the saddle, dismounted two men in each three of his
rear rank, and ordered them to load their carbines and stand fast,
hidden by the mounted men in their front.
All these dispositions were made in less than half the time it has
taken the reader to peruse the necessarily rather minute detail of
them. Meanwhile curiosity, excitement, and a certain involuntary awe
had considerably disorganised the Scarlet Hussars. L’Estrange had
quietly taken the command, and his non-commissioned accomplices,
now acting as officers, were busily reconstituting their respective
commands, for the accomplishment of which a few minutes sufficed.
L’Estrange had for the moment been otherwise engaged, and no one else
in the Hussars had noticed what, if anything, in the Regals had
occurred consequent on the first demonstration of mutiny among the
Hussars. But L’Estrange had now time to notice the conduct of the
Regals. _They_ had not mutinied, that was now certain; and by Heaven,
beyond all question, Colonel Guardlex was skilfully preparing to assume
the offensive!
Clever fellow as was L’Estrange, his _coup d’œil_ was defective. What
he thought he saw in progress was an extension of front on the part of
the Regals. He promptly conformed by ordering up the second squadron of
the Scarlet Hussars in line with the first, keeping the third squadron
in rear of his centre as a reserve. Then he resolved on the hardy, if
not desperate, expedient of taking the initiative. Should he remain
passive, he rapidly argued with himself, the Regals would drive the
lighter corps, perhaps indeed shatter it. He realised that up till now
his _coup_ had been a _coup manqué_; yet all was not lost if only the
dashing and nimble Hussars could smite and break the lumbering and
clumsy heavies over against him there. So, hardening his heart, he gave
the command, “The line will advance! At a trot, march!” he himself
galloping out to the front.
L’Estrange had not galloped far, and the squadrons behind him were
instinctively preparing to spring from the trot into the gallop, when
he noticed for the first time the two troops of the Regals commanded by
the majors coming down obliquely, one on either flank of the Hussars.
Unconfronted, they would take him _en flagrant délit_, and roll him
up. On the spur of the moment he shouted the order, “First and second
squadrons, outwards half wheel!” and he himself rode a little farther
to the front, halted, and faced round, to watch the effect of the
evolution.
Meanwhile Colonel Guardlex had passed his dismounted men through the
still mounted front rank of the squadron he had kept in his own hand,
had numbered them off--there were thirty of them--and held them with
loaded carbines, waiting for his command to fire. “I can plug that
beggar out to the front there, sir,” said Jack Osborne, the champion
marksman of the Regals, in a low tone to the Adjutant; “will you
ask the Colonel whether I may fire?” Colonel Guardlex overheard the
entreaty. “No, my man,” answered the chief; “please God, we’ll take
that scoundrel alive. Shooting is too good for him!”
But the aspiration was not to be fulfilled. Rough-riding Sergeant Bob
Swash was a historic character in the Regal Dragoons while as yet he
was in the regiment. He had been born in it, he had served in it for
ever so many years, and he meant to die in it. He was as good a man at
fifty-five, he swore, as he had been at twenty-five; he had enlisted
“for life or until unfit for further service”; he was still eminently
fit for service, and he spurned the acceptance of the pension to
which he had been entitled for more than a decade. Generation after
generation of recruits had been quaintly objurgated by him in every
riding-school in the United Kingdom. Old Bob could neither read nor
write, else he would not now have been a “simple sergeant,” but at
fifty-five he was still the best horseman and the best swordsman in the
Regal Dragoons. He always went on the line of march with the regiment,
riding one of the officers’ young horses, to which he taught manners
on the journey. He rode about independently, not being tied to any
particular position; and it happened that he had been close to the
Scarlet Hussars when the mutiny in that regiment burst out. The old
man’s glance toward his own regiment told him that Colonel Guardlex
was alive to the situation, and did not need any information that he
could bring, so he continued in the vicinity of the mutinied regiment,
watching for a chance at L’Estrange, whom he had discerned to be the
arch-mutineer.
That chance he saw, and grasped, when L’Estrange, alone and well out
to the front, halted to watch the outward half-wheel of his first and
second squadrons. It was but a snap chance, Swash realised, since the
reserve squadron of the Hussars was rapidly advancing to fill up the
interval which the outward wheel was creating. But if it had been a
worse chance old Bob would have taken it. Shooting past the flank of
one of the wheeling squadrons, he galloped furiously on L’Estrange with
a great shout of execration. L’Estrange had just time to fire a couple
of shots from his revolver, one of which wounded but did not disable
Swash, when the big man on the big horse struck the smaller man on
the lighter horse with terrific impetus and weight. L’Estrange and
his horse were hurled to the ground with a crash; the horse staggered
to his feet, but L’Estrange lay stone dead--the dragoon’s sword-point
had pierced his heart. Swash galloped on for a few strides, then
swayed in the saddle, and fell to the ground. At the moment of impact,
L’Estrange’s revolver had sent a bullet through his brain. Old Bob had
his wish: he died, as he had been born, in the Regal Dragoons.
The swift sudden death of the man who had been their inspiration and
their leader staggered the mutinous Hussars. The squadrons drew rein
and lapsed from trot to walk. Colonel Guardlex had his finger on the
pulse of events. He gave the word to his marksmen to fire a volley.
But he was not bloodthirsty. Ten men only he ordered to take aim; the
rest were bidden to fire high. The volley sped: two or three men in
each of the three Hussar squadrons went down. The marksmen promptly
reloaded, but no more firing was necessary. The Hussar squadrons halted
for a moment, then broke up into wild confusion, the troopers crowding
independently in toward the centre. All at once the ordered ranks
fell into utter chaos. The marksmen of the Regals remounted; Guardlex
formed his squadron in rank entire, and galloped in upon the Hussars.
The other squadrons of his regiment promptly conformed, and in a few
minutes the weltering chaos of Hussars was encircled by a ring of Regal
Dragoons.
The stentorian commands of Colonel Guardlex dominated the babel of
sounds that pulsated within the silent cordon formed by his staunch
troopers. The cowed Hussars sullenly obeyed him as he formed them up,
dismounted them, stripped their belts and arms, and took away their
horses.
The mutinied regiment remained strictly guarded in a “prison-camp”
on Wimbledon Common for several days, and was then conveyed by train
to Dartmoor Prison, where the court-martial era set in with stern
severity, in spite of the vehement and persistent remonstrances of
certain members of Parliament who appeared to regard murderous mutiny
as rather laudable than otherwise. The _Gazette_ presently promulgated
the melancholy intimation that the Scarlet Hussars had been disbanded,
and that there was no longer a regiment of that once proud name in the
British Army. Colonel Guardlex, having undergone a _pro-formâ_ trial by
court-martial, was acquitted with honour and credit, and his promotion
to major-general was announced in the same _Gazette_ in which the
Scarlet Hussars were obliterated.