Kitabı oku: «The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny», sayfa 14
CHAPTER XIV
WHY MALCOLM DID NOT WRITE
It was the saddest hour in Havelock’s life when he decided that his Invincibles must retreat. Yet, after another week’s fighting, that course was forced on him.
On July 25 he plunged fearlessly into Oudh, leaving a wide and rapid river in his rear, with other rivers, canals, and fortified towns and villages in front, on three sides swarms of determined enemies gathered under the standards of Nana Sahib and the Oudh Taluqdars, and everywhere a hostile if not actually mutinous peasantry.
With his usual daring, trusting to the unsurpassed élan of his troops, he fought battles at Onao and Busseerutgunge. Then when the thunder of the fighting was faintly heard by listeners in the Residency, Havelock took thought and regretted that he had ventured to leave Cawnpore.
His force numbered about half the men who marched out of Allahabad on the 7th. Cholera had broken out; stores were scanty; there was not a single litter for another wounded man; and, worst of all, ammunition was failing. To advance farther meant the total destruction of his little army, the sure and instant fall of the Residency, and the disappearance of the British flag from an enormous territory.
Yet he hesitated before he gave the final order. He fell back a couple of marches and wrote to Neill on the 31st that he could “do nothing for the relief of Lucknow,” until he received a re-enforcement of a thousand men and a new battery.
Neill, who was holding Cawnpore with three hundred rifles, returned the most amazing reply that ever a subordinate officer addressed to his chief.
“The natives don’t believe you have won any real victories,” he wrote, in effect. “Your retreat has destroyed the prestige of England. While you are waiting for re-enforcements that cannot arrive Lucknow will be lost. You must advance again and not halt until you have rescued the garrison. Then return here sharp, as there is much to be done between this and Agra and Delhi.”
Neill’s zeal outran his discretion. Havelock told him in plain language his opinion of this curious epistle.
“Your letter is the most extraordinary I have ever perused,” he said… “Consideration of the obstruction which would arise in the public service alone prevents me from placing you under immediate arrest. You now stand warned. Attempt no further dictation.”
Yet Neill’s advice rankled and there were men on Havelock’s staff who agreed with the outspoken Irishman. Neill, however, coolly bottled his wrath and sent on a company of the 84th and three guns.
They brought despatches from Sir Patrick Grant, Commander-in-Chief at Calcutta, telling Havelock that the troops sent from the capital had been turned aside to deal with mutineers in Behar.
The gallant Crimean veteran therefore hardened his heart, set out once more for Lucknow and fought another most successful battle at Busseerutgunge. There could be no questioning either the victory or its cost. Another such success and his column would not number a half battalion.
That night he watched the weary soldiers digging graves for their fallen comrades, and, while his brain was torn with conflicting problems, a spy brought news that the powerful Gwalior Contingent was marching to seize Cawnpore. He hesitated no longer. As a general he had no right to be swayed by emotion. He must protect Cawnpore as a base and trust to the fortune of war that Lucknow might keep the flag flying.
Malcolm was with him when he formed this resolution. Outwardly cold, Sir Henry seemed to his youthful observer, who now knew him better, to resemble a volcano coated with ice.
“Major,” he said, “the column will retreat at daybreak. But I will get my other aides to make arrangements. Are you quite recovered from your wound? Are you capable of undergoing somewhat severe exertion, I mean?”
Frank answered modestly that he thought he had never been better in health or strength, though he wondered inwardly what sort of exertion could be more “severe” than his experiences of the preceding three weeks.
But Havelock knew what he was talking about, as shall be seen.
“I want you to make the best of your way to Delhi,” he said in his unbending way. “I leave details to you, except that I would like you to start to-night if possible. Of course any kind of escort that is available would be fatal to your success, but, if I remember his record rightly, that servant of yours may be useful. I do not propose to give you any despatches. If you get through tell the Commander-in-Chief in the Punjab exactly how we are situated here. Tell him Lucknow will not be relieved for nearly two months, but that I will hold Cawnpore till the last man falls. I hope and trust you may be spared to make the journey in safety. If you succeed you will receive a gratuity and a step in rank. Good-by!”
He held out his hand, and his calm eyes kindled for a moment. Then Frank found himself walking to his tent and reviewing all that this meant to Winifred and himself. He was none the less a brave man if his lips trembled somewhat and there came a tightening of the throat that suspiciously resembled a sob.
Two months! Could a delicate girl live so long in another such Inferno at Lucknow as he had seen in Wheeler’s abandoned entrenchment at Cawnpore?
“God help us both!” he murmured bitterly, passing a hand involuntarily over his misty eyes. With the action he brushed away doubt and fears. He was a soldier again, one to whom hearing and obedience were identical.
“Chumru,” he said, when he found his domestic scratching mud off a coat with his nails for lack of a clothes-brush, “we set out for Delhi to-night, you and I.”
“All right, sahib,” was the unexpected parry to this astounding thrust, and Chumru kept on with his task.
“It is a true thing,” said Malcolm, who knew full well that the Mohammedan understood the extraordinary difficulty of such a mission. “It is the General-sahib’s order, and he wishes you to go with me. Will you come?”
“Huzoor, have you ever gone anywhere without me since you came to my hut that night when I was stricken with smallpox – ”
“Only once, you rascal, and then you came after me to my great good fortune. Very well, then; that is settled. Stop raising dust and listen. We ride to-night. Let us discuss the manner of our traveling, for ’tis a long road and full of mischief.”
Chumru laid aside the garment and tickled his wiry hair underneath his turban.
“By the Kaaba,” he growled, “such roads lead to Jehannum more easily than to Delhi. Do you go to the Princess Roshinara, sahib?”
Malcolm’s overwrought feelings found vent in a hearty laugh.
“What fiend tempted thee to think of her, owl?” he cried.
“Nay, sahib, no fiend other than a woman. What else would bring your honor to Delhi? Is there not occupation here in plenty?”
“I tell thee, image, that the General-sahib hath ordered it. And I am making for the British camp on the Ridge, not for the city.”
Chumru dismissed the point. He was a fatalist and he probably reserved his opinion. Malcolm had beguiled the long night after they left Rai Bareilly with the story of his strange meetings with the King’s daughter. To the Eastern mind there was Kismet in such happenings.
“I would you had not lost Bahadur Shah’s pass, huzoor,” he said. “That would be worth a bagful of gold mohurs on the north road now. But, as matters stand, we must fall back on walnut juice. You have blue eyes and fair hair, alack, yet must we – ”
“What! Wouldst thou make me a brother of thine?” demanded Malcolm, understanding that the walnut juice was intended to darken his skin.
“There is no other way, huzoor. This is no ride of a night. We shall be seven days, let us go at the best, and meeting budmashes at every mile. If you did not talk Urdu like one of us, sahib, I should bid you die here in peace rather than fall in the first village. Still, we may have luck, and you can bandage your hair and forehead and swear that those cursed Feringhis nearly cut your scalp off. But you must be rubbed all over, sahib, until you are the color of brown leather, for we can have no patches of white skin showing where, perchance, your garments are rent.”
Malcolm saw the wisdom of the suggestion and fell in with it. While Chumru went to compound walnut juice in the nearest bazaar, he, in pursuance of the plan they had concocted together, got a native writer to compile a letter which purported to emanate from Nana Sahib, and was addressed to Bahadur Shah. It was a very convincing document. Malcolm contributed a garbled history of recent events, and one of the Brahmin’s seals, which came into Havelock’s possession when Cawnpore was occupied, lent verisimilitude to the script.
Then the Englishman covered himself with an oily compound that Chumru assured him would darken his skin effectually before morning, though the present effect was more obvious to the nose than to the eye. Chumru donned his rissaldar Brahmin’s uniform and Malcolm secured a similar outfit from a native officer on the staff. Well-armed and well-mounted the pair crossed the Ganges north of Bithoor, gained the Grand Trunk Road and were far from the British column when they drew rein for their first halt of more than an hour’s duration.
They had adventures galore on the road to Delhi, but Chumru’s repertory of oaths anent the Nazarenes, and Malcolm’s dignified hauteur as a messenger of the man who ranked higher in the native world than the octogenarian king, carried them through without grave risk. True, they had a close shave or two.
Once a suspicious sepoy who knew every native officer in the 7th Cavalry, to which corps “Rissaldar Ali Khan” was supposed to belong, had to be quietly choked to death within earshot of a score of his own comrades who were marching to the Mogul capital. On another occasion, a moulvie, or Mohammedan priest, was nearly the cause of their undoing. Malcolm was not sufficiently expert in the ritual of the Rêka and this shortcoming aroused the devotee’s ire, but he was calmed by Chumru’s assurance that his excellent friend, Laiq Ahmed, was still suffering from the wound inflicted by the condemned Giaours, and the storm blew over.
These incidents simply served to enliven a tedious journey. Its main features were climatic discomfort and positive starvation. Rain storms, hot winds, sweltering intervals of intolerable heat – these were vagaries of nature and might be endured. But the absence of food was a more serious matter. The passage to and fro of rebel detachments had converted the Grand Trunk Road into a wilderness. The sepoys paid for nothing and looted Mohammedans and Hindus alike. After two months of constant pilfering the unhappy ryots had little left. For the most part they deserted their hovels, gathered such few valuables as had escaped the human locusts who devoured their substance, and either retreated to remote villages or boldly sought a living in some other province. Indeed, it may be said in all candor that the Mutiny caused far more misery to the great mass of the people than to the foreign rulers against whom it was supposed to be directed. The sufferings of the English residents in India were terrible and the treatment meted out to them was unspeakably vile, but for one English life sacrificed during the country’s red year there were five hundred natives killed by the very men who professed to defend their interests.
Malcolm and Chumru were given proof in plenty of this fact as they rode along. Generations of local feuds had taught the villagers to construct their rude shanties in such wise that any place of fairly large population formed a strong fort. Where the ryots were collected in sufficient numbers to render such a proceeding possible, they armed themselves not only against the British but against all the world.
Many times the travelers were fired at by men who took them for sepoys, and they often found active hostilities in progress between a party of desperate rebels who wanted food and a horde of sturdy villagers who refused to treat with men in any sort of uniform.
Still, they managed to live. In the fields they found ripening grain and an abundance of that small millet or pulse-pea known as gram, which is the staple food of horses in India. Occasionally Malcolm shot a peacock, but shooting birds with a revolver is a difficult sport and wasteful of ammunition. Where hares were plentiful Chumru seldom failed to snare one during the night. These were feast days. At other times they chewed millet and were thankful for small mercies.
The journey occupied nearly twice the time of their original estimate. Nejdi, good horse as he was, wanted a rest; Chumru’s steed was liable to break down any hour; and it was a sheer impossibility to obtain a remount in that wasted tract.
All things considered it was a wonderful achievement when, on the evening of the eleventh day, they began their last march.
They planned matters so that the Jumna lay between them and their goal. When they left the tope of trees in which they had slept away the hot hours their ostensible aim was the bridge of boats which carried the Meerut road across the river into the imperial city.
That was their story if they fell in with company. In reality they meant to leave the dangerous locality with the best speed their horses were capable of. There could be no doubt that Delhi was the stronghold of the mutineers. Even discounting by ninety per cent the grandiloquent stories they heard, it was evident that the British still held the ridge, but were rather besieged than besiegers. For the rest, the natives were assured that the foreign rule had passed forever. Their version of the position was that “great fighting took place daily and the Nazarenes were being slaughtered in hundreds.”
The one statement nullified the other. Malcolm reasoned, correctly as it happened, that the British force was able to hold its own, but not strong enough to take the city; that the Punjab was quiet and that the general in command on the ridge was biding his time until re-enforcements arrived. Therefore if Chumru and he could strike the left bank of the Jumna, a few miles above Delhi, there should be no difficulty in crossing the stream and reaching the British camp.
For once, a well-laid scheme did not reveal unforeseen pitfalls. He had the good fortune to fall in with a corps of irregular horse scouting for a half-expected flank attack by the rebels, in the gray dawn of the morning of August 11. Chumru and he were nearly shot by mistake, but that is ever the risk of those who wear an enemy’s uniform, and by this time, John Company’s livery was quite discredited in the land which he, in his corporate capacity, had opened up to Europeans.
Moreover, between dirt and walnut-stain Malcolm was like an animated bronze statue, and it was good to see the incredulous expression on a brother officer’s face when he rode up with the cheery cry:
“By Jove, old fellow, I am glad to see you. I am Malcolm of the 3d Cavalry, and I have brought news from General Havelock.”
The leader of the scouting party, a stalwart subaltern of dragoons, thought that it was a piece of impudence on the part of this “dark” stranger to address him so familiarly.
“I happen to be acquainted with Mr. Malcolm – ” he began.
“Not so well as I know him, Saumarez,” said Frank, laughing. He had not counted on his disguise being so complete. But the laugh proved his identity, for there is more distinctive character in a man’s mirth than in any other inflection of the voice.
Saumarez testified to an amazed recognition in the approved manner of a dragoon.
“Either you are Malcolm or I am bewitched,” he cried. Then he looked at Chumru.
“This gentleman, no doubt, is at least a brigadier,” he went on. “But, joking apart, have you really ridden from Allahabad?”
The question showed the lack of information of events farther south that obtained in the Punjab. By this time the sepoys had torn down the telegraph posts and cut the wires in all directions. Even between Cawnpore and Calcutta, whenever they crossed the Grand Trunk Road they destroyed the telegraph. As one of them said, looking up at a damaged pole which was about to serve as his gallows:
“Ah, you are able to hang me now because that cursed wire strangled all of us in our sleep.”
His metaphor was correct enough. There is no telling what might have been the course of history in India if the sepoys had stopped telegraphic communication from the North to Calcutta early in May.
Malcolm gave Saumarez a summary of affairs in the Northwest Provinces as they rode on ahead of the troop.
“And now,” he said, “how do matters stand here?”
“You have used the right word,” said the other. “Stand! That is just what we are doing. We’ve had three commander-in-chiefs and each one is more timid than his predecessor. Thank goodness Nicholson arrived four days ago. Things will begin to move now.”
“Is that the Peshawar Nicholson?” asked Frank, remembering that Hodson had spoken of a man of that name, a man who would “horse-whip into the saddle” a general who feared to assume responsibility.
“Yes. Haven’t you seen him? By gad, he’s a wonder. A giant of a fellow with an eye like a hawk and a big black beard that seems, somehow, to suggest a blacksmith. He turned up at our mess on the first evening he was in camp. Everybody was laughing and joking as usual and he never said a word. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I noticed that Nicholson just glowered at each man who told a funny story, and, by degrees, we were all sitting like mutes at a funeral. Then he said, in a deep voice that made us jump: ‘When some of you gentlemen can spare me a moment I shall be glad to hear what you have been doing here during the last ten weeks.’ There was no sneer in his words. We have had fighting enough, Heaven knows, but we felt that by ‘doing’ he meant ‘attacking,’ not ‘defending.’ Sure as death, he will create a stir. Indeed, the leaven is working already. He sent me out here this morning, as he has gone to meet the movable column from Lahore, and there was a rumor of a sortie from Delhi to cut it off.”
Malcolm fresh from association with Havelock realized that a grave and serious-minded soldier could ill brook the jests and idle talk that dominated the average military mess of the period.
“Nicholson sounds like the right man in the right place,” he commented.
The dragoon vouched for it emphatically.
“He has put an end to pony-racing and quoits,” said he, “and there is to be no more fighting in our shirt sleeves. Bear in mind, we have had a deuce of a time. I’ve been in twenty-one fights myself, and that is not all. The sepoys usually swarm out hell-for-leather and we rush to meet them. There is a scrimmage for an hour or so, we shove ’em back, Hodson gets in a bit of saber-work, we pick up the wounded, tell off a burial party, and start a cricket match or a gymkhana. Of course the fighting is stiff while it lasts and my regiment has lost its two best bowlers, a really sound bat and a crack rider in the pony heats. Still if we don’t lose any ground we gain none, and I can’t help agreeing with Nicholson that war isn’t a picnic.”
Frank managed not to smile at the naïveté of his companion. Though Saumarez was nearly his own age he felt that their difference in rank was not nearly so great as the divergence in their conception of the magnitude of the task before Britain in India. Nevertheless Saumarez saw that Nicholson was a force, and that was something.
“Is the Hodson you mention the same man who rode from Kurnaul to Meerut before the affair of Ghazi-ud-din-Nuggur?” he asked.
“Yes, same chap. A regular firebrand and no mistake. He has gathered a crowd of dare-devils known as Hodson’s Horse, and they go into action with a dash that I thought was only to be found in regular cavalry. But here we are at our ghât. That is a weedy-looking Arab you are riding – plenty of bone, though. Will he go aboard a budgerow without any fuss?”
“Oh, yes. He will do most things,” was the quiet reply.
Malcolm dismounted and fondled Nejdi’s black muzzle. How little the light-hearted dragoon guessed what those two had endured together! Nejdi as a weed was a new rôle. For an instant Frank thought of making a match with his friend’s best charger after Nejdi had had a week’s rest.
It was altogether a changed audience that Havelock’s messenger secured that evening when Nicholson rode to the ridge with the troops sent from the north by Sir John Lawrence, Edwardes, and Montgomery, while the generosity of Bartle Frere in sending from Scinde regiments he could ill spare should be mentioned in the same breath.
Saumarez’s “giant of a fellow” was there, and Archdale Wilson, the commander-in-chief, and Neville Chamberlain, and Baird-Smith, and Hervey Greathed. Inspired by the presence of such men Malcolm entered upon a full account of occurrences at Lucknow, Cawnpore and elsewhere during the preceding month. His hearers were aware of Henry Lawrence’s death and the beginning of the siege of Lucknow. They had heard of Massacre Ghât, the Well, and Havelock’s advance, but they were dependent on native rumor and an occasional spy for their information, and Frank’s epic narrative was the first complete and true history that had been given them.
He was seldom interrupted. Occasionally when he was tempted to slur over some of the dangers he had overcome personally, a question from one or other of the five would force him to be more explicit.
Naturally, he spoke freely of the magnificent exploits of Havelock’s column and he saw Nicholson ticking off each engagement, each tremendous march, each fine display of strategic genius on the part of the general, with an approving nod and shake of his great beard.
“You have done well, young man,” said General Wilson when Frank’s long recital came to an end. “What rank did you hold on General Havelock’s staff?”
“That of major, sir.”
“You are confirmed in the same rank here. I have no doubt your services will be further recognized at the close of the campaign.”
“If Havelock had the second thousand men he asked for he would now be marching here,” growled Nicholson.
No one spoke for a little while. The under meaning of the giant’s words was plain. Havelock had moved while they stood still. The criticism was a trifle unjust, perhaps, but men with Napoleonic ideas are impatient of the limitations that afflict their less powerful brethren. If India were governed exclusively by Nicholsons, Lawrences, Havelocks, Hodsons, and Neills, there would never have been a mutiny. It was Britain’s rare good fortune that they existed at all and came to the front when the fiery breath of war had scorched and shriveled the nonentities who held power and place at the outbreak of hostilities.
Then some one passed a remark on Frank’s appearance. He was bareheaded. The fair hair and blue eyes that had perplexed Chumru looked strangely out of keeping with his brown skin.
“How in the world did you manage to escape detection during your ride north?” he was asked.
He explained Chumru’s device, and they laughed. Like Havelock, Baird-Smith thought the Mohammedan would make a good soldier.
“With all his pluck, sir, he is absolutely afraid of using a pistol,” said Frank. “He was offered the highest rank as a native officer, but he refused it.”
“Then, by gad, we must make him a zemindar. Tell him I said so and that we all agree on that point.”
When Frank gave the message to Chumru it was received with a demoniac grin.
“By the Holy Kaaba,” came the gleeful cry, “I told the Moulvie of Fyzabad that I was in the way of earning a jaghir, and behold, it is promised to me!”
Next day Malcolm, somewhat lighter in tint after a hot bath, made himself acquainted with the camp. Seldom has war brought together such a motley assemblage of races as gathered on the Ridge during the siege of Delhi. The far-off isles of the sea were represented by men from every shire, and Britain’s mixed heritage in the East sent a bewildering variety of types. Small, compactly built Ghoorkahs hobnobbed with stalwart Highlanders; lively Irishmen made friends of gaunt, saturnine Pathans; bearded Sikhs extended grave courtesies to pert-nosed Cockneys; “gallant little Wales” might be seen tending the needs of wounded Mohammedans from the Punjab. The language bar proved no obstacle to the men of the rank and file. A British private would sit and smoke in solemn and friendly silence with a hook-nosed Afghan, and the two would rise cheerfully after an hour passed in that fashion with nothing in common between them save the memory of some deadly thrust averted when they fought one day in the hollow below Hindu Rao’s house, or a draught of water tendered when one or other lay gasping and almost done to death in a struggle for the village of Subsee Mundee.
The British soldier, who has fought and bled in so many lands, showed his remarkable adaptability to circumstances by the way in which he made himself at home on the reverse slope of the Ridge. A compact town had sprung up there with its orderly lines of huts and tents, its long rows of picketed horses, commissariat bullocks and elephants, its churches, hospitals, playgrounds, race-course and cemetery.
Malcolm took in the general scheme of things while he walked along the Ridge towards the most advanced picket at Hindu Rao’s House. On the left front lay Delhi, beautiful as a dream in the brilliant sunshine. The intervening valley was scarred and riven with water-courses, strewn with rocks, covered with ruined mosques, temples, tombs, and houses, and smothered in an overgrowth of trees, shrubs, and long grasses. Roads were few, but tortuous paths ran everywhere, and it was easy to see how the rebels could steal out unobserved during the night and creep close up to the pickets before they revealed their whereabouts by a burst of musketry. Happily they never learnt to reserve their fire. Every man would blaze away at the first alarm, and then, of course, in those days of muzzle-loaders, the more resolute British troops could get to close quarters without serious loss. Still the men who held the Ridge had many casualties, and until Nicholson came the rebel artillery was infinitely more powerful than the British. Behind his movable column, however, marched a strong siege train. When that arrived the gunners could make their presence felt. Thus far not one of the enemy’s guns had been dismounted.
Frank had ocular proof of their strength in this arm before he reached Hindu Rao’s house. The Guides, picturesque in their loose, gray-colored shirts and big turbans, sent one of their cavalry squadrons over the Ridge on some errand. They moved at a sharp canter, but the Delhi gunners had got the range and were ready, and half a dozen eighteen-pound balls crashed into the trees and rocks almost in the exact line of advance. A couple of guns on the British right took up the challenge, and the duel went on long after the Guides were swallowed up in the green depths of the valley.
At last Malcolm stood in the shelter-trench of the picket and gazed at the city which was the hub of the Mutiny. Beyond the high, red-brick walls he saw the graceful dome and minarets of the Jumma Musjid, while to the left towered the frowning battlements of the King’s palace. To the left again, and nearer, was the small dome of St. James’s Church with its lead roof riddled then, as it remains to this day, with the bullets fired by the rebels in the effort to dislodge the ball and cross which surmounted it. For the rest his eyes wandered over a noble array of mosques and temples, flat-roofed houses of nobles of the court and residences of the wealthy merchants who dwelt in the imperial city.
The far-flung panorama behind the walls had a curiously peaceful aspect. Even the puffs of white smoke from the guns, curling upwards like tiny clouds in the lazy air, had no tremors until a heavy shot hurtled overhead or struck a resounding blow at the already ruined walls of the big house near the post.
The 61st were on picket that day and one of the men, speaking with a strong Gloucestershire accent, said to Malcolm:
“Well, zur, they zay we’ll be a-lootin’ there zoon.”
“I hope so,” was the reply, but the phrase set him a-thinking.
Within that shining palace most probably was a woman to whom he owed his life. In another palace, many a hundred miles away, was another woman for whom he would willingly risk that life if only he could save her from the fate that the private of the 61st was gloating over in anticipation.
What a mad jumble of opposites was this useless and horrible war! At any rate why could not women be kept out of it and let men adjust their quarrel with the stern arbitrament of sword and gun!
Then he recalled Chumru’s words anent the Princess Roshinara, and the fancy seized him that if he were destined to enter Delhi with the besiegers he would surely strive to repay the service she had rendered Winifred and Mayne and himself at Bithoor.
That is the way man proposes and that is why the gods smile when they dispose of man’s affairs.
