Now, fifteen hundred, horse and man,
Reel at the word of one!
Loosed by the brazen trumpet's peal--
Knee to knee and toe on heel--
Troop on troop the squadrons wheel
Outbrazening the sun!
WITHIN a fortnight of the outbreak of the mutiny, men spoke with bated
breath about the Act of God. It burst at the moment when India's reins
were in the hands of some of the worst incompetents in history. A week
found strong men in control of things--the right men, with the right
handful behind them.
Some of the men in charge went mad, and were relieved. Some threw
up their commands. Some of the worst incompetents were killed by the
mutineers, and more than one man who could have changed the course
of history for the worse were taken sick and died. Instead of finding
themselves faced by spineless nincompoops, the rebels reeled before
the sudden, well-timed tactics of real officers with eyes and ears
and brains. The mask was off on both sides, and the sudden, stripped
efficiency of one was no less disconcerting than the unexpected
rebellion of the other.
Byng-bahadur--“Byng the Brigadier”--was in command of a force again
within three days of the news of the first massacre; and because he was
Byng, with Byng's record, and Byng's ability to handle loyal natives,
the men who succeeded to the reins packed him off at once with a free
hand, and with no other orders than to hit, hit hard, and keep on
hitting.
“Go for them, Byng, old man. Live off the country, keep moving, and
don't let 'em guess once what your next move's going to be!”
So Byng recruited as he went, and struck like a brain-controlled tornado
at whatever crossed his path. But irreparable damage had been done
before the old school was relieved, and Byng--like others--was terribly
short of men. Many of his own irregulars were so enraged at having been
disbanded at a moment's notice that they refused to return to him. Their
honor, as they saw it, had been outraged. Only two British regiments
could be spared him, and they were both thinned by sickness from the
first. They were Sikhs, who formed the bulk of his headquarterless
brigade, and many of them were last-minute friends, who came to him
unorganized and almost utterly undrilled.
But Byng was a man of genius, and his bare reputation was enough to
offset much in the way of unpreparedness. He coaxed and licked and
praised his new men into shape as he went along; within a week he had
stormed Deeseera, blowing up their greatest reserve of ammunition and
momentarily stunning the rebellion's leaders. But cholera took charge in
the city, and two days later found him hurrying out again, to camp
where there was uncontaminated water, on rising ground that gave him the
command of three main roads. It was there that the rebels cornered him.
They blew up a hundred-yard-long bridge behind him at the one point
where a swiftly running river could be crossed, and from two other sides
at once mutinied native regiments and thousands from the countryside
flocked, hurrying to take a hand in what seemed destined to be Byng's
last action. The fact that so many swaggering soldier Sikhs were
cornered with him was sufficient in itself to bring out Hindoo and
Mohammedan alike.
The mutinous regiments had all been drilled and taught by British
officers until they were as nearly perfect as the military knowledge of
the day could make them; the fact that they had killed their officers
only served to make them savage without detracting much from their
efficiency. They had native officers quite capable of taking charge, and
sense enough to retain their discipline.
So Byng intrenched himself on the gradual rise, and sent out as many
messengers as he could spare to bring reinforcements from whatever
source obtainable. Then, when almost none came, he got ready to die
where he stood, using all the soldier gift he had to put courage into
the last-ditch loyalists who offered to die with him. He had counted
most on aid from Cunningham and Mahommed Gunga, but that source seemed
to have failed him; and he gave up hope of their arrival when a body
of several thousand rebels took up position on his flank and cut off
approach from the direction whence Cunningham should come.
The sun blazed down like molten hell on sick and wounded. Rotting
carcasses of horses and cattle, killed by the rebels' artillery-fire,
lay stenching here and there, and there was no possibility of disposing
of them. A day came very soon, indeed, when horse, or occasional
transport bullock, was all there was to eat, and a night came when
Govind Singh, the leader of the Sikhs, came to him and remonstrated.
The old man had to be carried to Byng's tent, for a round shot had
disabled him, and he had himself set down by the tent-door, where the
General sat on a camp-stool.
“General-sahib, I have not been asked for advice; I am here to offer
it.”
The huge black dome of heaven was punctuated by a billion dots of steely
white that looked like pin-pricks. All the light there was came from the
fitful watch-fires, where even the wagons were being burned now that
the meagre supply of rough timber was giving out. The rebels, too, were
burning everything on which they could lay their hands, and from between
the spaced-out glow of their bonfires came ever and again the spurt of
cannon-flame.
“Speak, Govind Singh!”
“Sahib, we have no artillery with which to answer them. We have no food;
and the supply of ammunition wanes. Shall we die here like cattle in a
slaughter-house?”
“This is as good as any other place” said Byng.
“Nay, sahib!” “How, then?”
“In their lines is a better place! Here is nothing better than a
shambles, with none but our men falling. They know that our food is
giving out--they know that we lose heavily--they wait. They will wait
for days yet before they close in to finish what their guns have but
begun, and--then--how many will there be to die desperately, as is
fitting?”
“We might get reinforcements in the morning, Govind Singh.”
“And again, we might not, sahib!”
“I sent a number of messengers before we were shut in.”
“Yes, sahib--and to whom? To men who would ask you to reinforce them if
they could get word to you! Tomorrow our rear will be surrounded, too;
they have laid planks across the little streams behind us, and are
preparing to drag guns to that side, too. Now, sahib, we have fire left
in us. We can smite yet, and do damage while we die. Tomorrow night
may find us decimated and without heart for the finish. I advise you to
advance at dawn, sahib!”
That advice came as a great relief to Byng-bahadur. He had been the
first to see the hopelessness of the position, and every instinct that
he had told him to finish matters, not in the last reeking ditch, but
ahead, where the enemy would suffer fearfully while a desperate charge
roared into them, to peter out when the last man went down fighting.
Surrender was unthinkable, and in any event would have been no good,
for the mutineers would be sure to butcher all their prisoners; his only
other chance had been to hold out until relief came, and that hope was
now forlorn.
A Mohammedan stepped out of blackness and saluted him--a native officer,
in charge of a handful of irregular cavalry, whose horses had all been
shot.
“Well--what is it?”
“This, sahib. Do we die here? I and my men would prefer to die yonder,
where a mutineer or two would pay the price!”
A Ghoorka officer--small as a Japanese and sturdy-looking came up next.
The whole thing was evidently preconcerted.
“My men ask leave to show the way into the ranks ahead, General-sahib!
They are overweary of this shambles!”
“We will advance at dawn!” said Byng. “Egan--” He turned to a British
officer, who was very nearly all the staff he had. “Drag that table up.
Let's have some paper here and a pencil, and we'll work out the best
plan possible.”
He sent for the commanding officers of the British regiments--both of
them captains, but the seniors surviving--and a weird scene followed
round the lamp set on the tiny table. British, Sikh, Mohammedan, and
Ghoorka clustered close to him, and watched as his pencil traced
the different positions and showed the movement that was to make the
morrow's finish, their faces outlined in the lamp's yellow glow and
their breath coming deep and slow as they agreed on how the greatest
damage could be done the enemy before the last man died.
As he finished, and assigned each leader to his share in the last
assault that any one of them would take a part in, a streak of light
blazed suddenly across the sky. A shooting-star swept in a wide parabola
to the horizon. A murmur went up from the wakeful lines, and the silence
of the graveyard followed.
“There is our sign, sahib!” laughed the Mohammedan. The old Sikh nodded
and the Ghoorka grinned. “It is the end!” he said, without a trace of
discouragement.
“Nonsense!” said Byng, his face, too, turned upward.
“What, then, does it mean, sahib?”
“That--it means that God Almighty has relieved a picket! We're the
picket. We're relieved! We advance at dawn, and we'll get through
somehow! Join your commands, gentlemen, and explain the details
carefully to your men--let's have no misunderstandings.”
The dawn rose gold and beautiful upon a sleepless camp that reeked and
steamed with hell-hot suffering. It showed the rebels stationary, still
in swarming lines, but scouts reported several thousand of them moving
in a body from the flank toward the British rear.
“What proportion of the rebel force?” asked Byng. “New arrivals, or some
of the old ones taking up a new position?”
“The same crowd, sir. They're just moving round to hem us in
completely.”
“So much the better for us, then! That leaves fewer for us to deal with
in front.”
As he spoke another man came running to report the arrival of five
gallopers, coming hell-bent-for leather, one by one and scattered,
with the evident purpose of allowing one man to get through, whatever
happened.
“That'll be relief at last!” said Byng-bahadur. And, instead of ordering
the advance immediately, he waited, scouring the sky-line with his
glasses.
“Yes--dust--lance-heads--one--two--three divisions, coming in a hurry.”
Being on rising ground, he saw the distant relieving force much sooner
than the rebels did, and he knew that it was help for him on the way
some time before the first of the five gallopers careered into the camp,
and shouted:
“Cunnigan-bahadur comes with fifteen hundred!”
“Fifteen hundred,” muttered Byng. “That merely serves to postpone the
finish by an hour or two!”
But he waited; and presently the rebel scouts brought word, and their
leaders, too, became aware of reinforcements on the way for somebody.
They made the mistake, though, of refusing to believe that any help
could be coming for the British, and by the time that messengers had
hurried from the direction of the British rear, to tell of gallopers who
had ridden past them and been swallowed by the shouting British lines,
three squadrons on fresh horses were close enough to be reckoned
dangerous.
“Is that a gun they've got with them?” wondered Byng. “By the lord
Harry, no,--it's a coach and six! They're flogging it along like a
twelve-pounder! And what the devil's in those wagons?”
But he had no time for guesswork. The desultory thunder of the rebel
ordnance ceased, and the whole mass that hemmed him in began to revolve
within itself, and present a new front to the approaching cavalry.
“Caught on the hop, by God! The whole line will advance! Trumpeter!”
One trumpet-call blared out and a dozen echoed it. In a second more a
roar went up that is only heard on battle-fields. It has none of the
exultant shout of joy or of the rage that a mob throws up to heaven;
it is not even anger, as the cities know it, or the men who riot
for advantage. It is a welcome ironically offered up to
Death--full-throated, and more freighted with moral effect on an enemy
than a dozen salvoes of artillery.
The thousands ahead tried hard to turn again and face two attacks at
once; but, though the units were efficiently controlled, there were none
who could swing the whole. Byng's decimated, forward-rushing fragment
of a mixed brigade, tight-reined and working like a piece of mechanism,
struck home into a mass of men who writhed, and fell away, and shouted
to each other. A third of them was out of reach, beyond the British
rear; fully another third was camped too far away to bring assistance at
the first wild onslaught. Messengers were sent to bring them up, but the
messengers were overtaken by a horde who ran.
Then, like arrows driven by the bows of death, three squadrons took them
on the flank as Cunningham changed direction suddenly and loosed his
full weight at the guns. Instead of standing and serving grape, the
rebel gunners tried to get their ordnance away--facing about again too
late, when the squadrons were almost on them. Then they died gamely,
when gameness served no further purpose. The Rangars rode them down and
butchered them, capturing every single gun, and leaving them while they
charged again at the rallying hordes ahead.
The strange assortment of horsed wagons and the lumbering six-horse
coach took full advantage of the momentary confusion to make at a gallop
for the British rear, where they drew up in line behind the Sikhs, who
were volleying at short range in the centre.
Byng detached two companies of British soldiers to do their amateur
damnedest with the guns, and, for infantry, they did good service with
them; fifteen or twenty minutes after the first onslaught the enemy was
writhing under the withering attention of his own abandoned ordnance.
But the odds were still tremendous, and the weight of numbers made the
ultimate outcome of the battle seem a foregone conclusion.
From the British rear heads appeared above the rising ground; the
deserted camp was rushed and set alight. The tents blazed like a beacon
light, and a moment later the Ghoorkas retaliated by setting fire to
such of the rebel camp as had fallen into British hands.
It was those two fires that saved the day. From the sky-line to the
rebel rear came the thunder of a salvo of artillery. It was the short
bark of twelve-pounders loaded up with blank--a signal--and the rebels
did not wait to see whether this was friend or foe. Help from one
unexpected source had reached the British; this, they argued, was
probably another column moving to the relief, and they drew off in
reasonably decent order--harried, pestered, stung, as they attempted
to recover camp-equipment or get away with stores and wagons, by
Cunningham, Alwa, and Mahommed Gunga.
In another hour the rebel army was a black swarm spreading on the
eastern sky-line, and on the far horizon to the north there shone the
glint of bayonets and helmet spikes, the dancing gleam of lance-tips,
and the dazzle from the long, polished bodies of a dozen guns. A
galloper spurred up with a message for Byng.
“You are to join my command,” it ran, “for a raid in force on Howrah,
where the rebels are supposed to have been concentrating for months
past. The idea is to paralyze the vitals of the movement before
concentrating somewhere on the road to Delhi, where the rebels are sure
to make a most determined stand.”
As he read it Mahommed Gunga galloped up to him, grinning like a boy.
“Cunnigan-sahib's respects, General-sahib! He asks leave to call his men
off, saying that he has done all the damage possible with only fifteen
hundred.”
“Yes. Call 'em off and send Cunningham to me. How did he shape?”
“Like a son of Cunnigan-bahadur! General-sahib-salaam!”
“No. Here, you old ruffian--shake hands, will you? Now send Cunningham
to me.”
Cunningham came up fifteen minutes later, with a Rangar orderly behind
him, and did his best to salute as though it were nothing more than an
ordinary meeting.
“Oh! Here you are. 'Gratulate you, Cunningham! You came in the nick of
time. What kept you?”
“That 'ud take a long time to tell, sir. I've fifteen hundred horses
about ten miles from here, sir, left in charge of native levies, and
I'd like permission to go and fetch them before the levies make off with
them.”
“Splendid! Yes, you'd better go for them. What's in the wagons.”
“The Howrah treasure, sir!”
“What?”
“The whole of the Howrah treasure, sir! It's held as security. Howrah
guarantees to keep the peace and protect the homes of my men. I
guaranteed to hand him back the treasure when the show's over, less
deductions for damage done!”
“Well, I'm--Who thought of that? You or Mahommed Gunga?”
“Oh, I expect we cooked it up between us, sir.”
“H-rrrr-umph! And what's in the six-horse coach?”
“A lady and her father.”
“The deuce they are!”
Byng rode up to the lumbering vehicle, signing to Cunningham to follow
him.
“General Byng,” said Cunningham. “Miss McClean, sir.”
A very much dishevelled and very weary-looking young woman with a
wealth of chestnut hair leaned through the window and smiled, not at the
General but at Cunningham. Byng stared--looked from one to the other of
them--and said “Hu-rrrr-umph!” again.
“It was she who made the whole thing possible, sir.”
“The very deuce it was!” It began to be evident that Byng was not a
ladies' man!
“This is Mr. McClean, sir--Rosemary's father. He helped her put the
whole scheme through.”
Byng nodded to the missionary and looked back at Rosemary McClean--then
from her to Cunningham again.
“Hu-rrrr-umph! Christian names already! More 'gratulations, eh?”
Rosemary's head and shoulders disappeared and Cunningham looked foolish.
“Well! Send Mahommed Gunga for the horses. Ride over there to where you
see General Evans's column and tell him the whole story. Take a small
escort and the treasure with you. And--ah--er--lemme see--take this
carriage, too. Oh, by the bye--you'd better ask General Evans to make
some arrangements for Miss McClean. Leave her over there with the
treasure. I want you back with my brigade, and I want you to be some
sort of use. Can't have love-making with the brigade, Mr. Cunningham!”
The Brigadier rode off with a very perfunctory salute.
“Isn't he a rather curmudgeony sort of officer?” asked Rosemary the
moment that his back was turned.
“Oh, no!” laughed Cunningham. “That's Byng-bahadur's little way, that's
all. He's quite likely to insist on being best man or something of that
sort when the show's all over! Wait here while I fetch the escort.”
END