On the Face of the Waters Part 60

What then? They could see better. See the outer gateway open, the footway of the drawbridge destroyed, the inner door closed save for the wicket.

"Come on," shouted Home, and was across the bare beams like a boy, followed by the others.

Incredible daring! What did it mean? The doubt made the scared enemy close the wicket hastily. So against it, at the rebels' very feet, the powder bags were laid. True, one sergeant fell dead with his; but as it fell against the gates his task was done.

"Ready, Salkeld!--your turn," sang out young Home from the ditch, into which, the bags laid, the fuse set, he dropped unhurt. So across the scant foothold came the firing party, its leader holding the portfire.

But the paralysis of amazement had pa.s.sed; the enemy, realizing what the audacity meant, had set the wicket wide. It bristled now with muskets; so did the parapet.

"Burgess!--your turn," called Salkeld as he fell, and pa.s.sed the portfire to the corporal behind him. Burgess, alias Grierson,--someone perchance retrieving a past under a new name,--took it, stooped, then with a half articulate cry either that it was "right" or "out," fell back into the ditch dead. Smith, of the powder party, lingering to see the deed done, thought the latter, and, matchbox in hand, sprang forward, cuddling the gate for safety as he struck a light. But it was not needed. As he stooped to use it, the port-fire of the fuse exploded in his face, and, half blinded, he turned to plunge headlong for escape into the ditch. A second after the gate was in fragments.

"Your turn, Hawthorne!" came that voice from the ditch. So the bugler, who had braved death to sound it, gave the advance. Once, twice, thrice, carefully lest the din from the breaches should drown it. Vain precaution, not needed either; for the sound of the explosion was enough. That thousand on the road was hungering to be no whit behind the others, and with a wild cheer the stormers made for the gate.

But Nicholson was already in Delhi, though ten minutes had gone in a fierce struggle to place a single ladder against an avalanche of shot and stone. But that one had been the signal for him to slip into the ditch, and, calling on the 1st Bengal Fusiliers to follow, escalade the bastion, first as ever.

Even so, others were before him. Down at the Water Bastion, though three-quarters of the laddermen had fallen and but a third of the storming party remained, those twenty-five men of the 8th had gained the breach, and, followed by the whole column, were clearing the ramparts toward the Cashmere gate. Hence, again, without a check, joined by the left half of Nicholson's column, they swept the enemy before them like frightened sheep to the Moree gate; though in the bastion itself the gunners stood to their guns and were bayoneted beside them. There, with a whoop, some of the wilder ones leaped to the parapet to wave their caps in exultation to the cavalry below, which, in obedience to orders, was now drawn up, ready to receive, guarding the flank of the a.s.sault, despite the murderous fire from the Cabul gate, and the Burn Bastion beyond it. Sitting in their saddles, motionless, doing nothing, a mark for the enemy, yet still a wall of defense. So, leaving them to that hardest task of all--the courage of inaction--the victorious rush swept on to take the Cabul gate, to sweep past it up to the Burn Bastion itself--the last bastion which commanded the position.

And then? Then the order came to retire and await orders at the Cabul gate. The fourth column, after clearing the suburbs, was to have been there ready for admittance, ready to support. It was not. And Nicholson was not there also, to dare and do all. He had had to pause at the Cashmere gate to arrange that the column which had entered through it should push on into the city, leaving the reserve to hold the points already won. And now, with the 1st Fusiliers behind him, he was fighting his way through the streets to the Cabul gate. So, fearing to lose touch with those behind, over-rating the danger, under-estimating the incalculable gain of unchecked advance with an eastern foe, the leader of that victorious sweeping of the ramparts was content to set the English flag flying on the Cabul gate and await orders. But the men had to do something. So they filled up the time plundering. And there were liquor shops about. Europe shops, full of wine and brandy.

The flag had been flying over an hour when Nicholson came up. But by that time the enemy--who had been flying too--flying as far as the boat bridge in sheer conviction that the day was lost--had recovered some courage and were back, crowding the bastion and some tall houses beside it. And in the lane, three hundred yards long, not ten feet wide, leading to it, two bra.s.s guns had been posted before bullet proof screens ready to mow down the intruders.

Yet once more John Nicholson saw but one thing--the Burn Bastion.

Built by Englishmen, it was one of the strongest--the only remaining one, in fact, likely to give trouble. With it untaken a thorough hold on the city was impossible. Besides, with his vast knowledge of native character, he knew that the enemy had expected us to take it, and would construe caution into cowardice. Then he had the 1st Bengal Fusiliers behind him. He had led them in Delhi, they had fallen in his track in tens and fifties, and still they had come on--they would do this thing for him now.

"We will do what we can, sir," said their commandant, Major Jacob--but his face was grave.

"We will do what men can do, sir," said the commandant of that left half of the column; "but honestly, I don't think it can be done. We have tried it once." His face was graver still.

"Nor I," said Nicholson's Brigade-major.

Nicholson, as he stood by the houses around the Cabul gate, which had been occupied and plundered by the troops, looked down the straight lane again. It hugged the city wall on its right, its scanty width narrowed here and there by b.u.t.tresses to some three feet. About a third of the way down was the first gun, placed beside a feathery kikar tree which sent a lace-like tracery of shadow upon the screen.

As far behind was the second. Beyond, again, was the bastion jutting out, and so forcing the lane to bend between it and some tall houses.

Both were crowded with the enemy--the screens held bayonets and marksmen. There was a gun close to the bastion in the wall, but to the left, cityward, in the low, flat-roofed mud houses there seemed no trace of flanking foes.

"I think it can be done," he said. He knew it must be done ere the Palace could be taken. So he gave the orders. Fusiliers forward; officers to the front!

And to the front they went, with a cheer and a rush, overwhelming the first gun, within ten yards of the other. And one man was closer still, for Lieutenant Butler, pinned against that second bullet-proof screen by two bayonets thrust through the loopholes at him, had to fire his revolver through them also, ere he could escape this two-p.r.o.nged fork.

But the fire of every musket on the bastion and the tall houses was centered on that second gun. Grape, canister, raked the narrow lane--made narrower by fallen Fusiliers--and forced those who remained to fall back upon the first gun--beyond that even. Yet only for a moment. Reformed afresh, they carried it a second time, spiked it and pressed on. Officers still to the front!

Just beyond the gun the commandant fell wounded to death. "Go on, men, go on!" he shouted to those who would have paused to help him.

"Forward, Fusiliers!"

And they went forward; though at dawn two hundred and fifty men had dashed for the breach, and now there were not a hundred and fifty left to obey orders. Less! For fifty men and seven officers lay in that lane itself. Surely it was time now for others to step in--and there were others!

Nicholson saw the waver, knew what it meant, and sprang forward sword in hand, calling on those others to follow. But he asked too much.

Where the 1st Fusiliers had failed, none cared to try. That is the simple truth. The limit had been reached.

So for a minute or two he stood, a figure instinct with pa.s.sion, energy, vitality, before men who, G.o.d knows with reason, had lost all three for the moment. A colossal figure beyond them, ahead of them, asking more than mere ordinary men could do. So a pitiful figure--a failure at the last!

"Come on, men! Come on, you fools--come on, you--you----"

What the word was, which that bullet full in the chest arrested between heart and lips, those who knew John Nicholson's wild temper, his indomitable will, his fierce resentment at everything which fell short of his ideals, can easily guess.

"Lay me under that tree," he gasped, as they raised him. "I will not leave till the lane is carried. My G.o.d! Don't mind me! Forward, men, forward! It _can_ be done."

An hour or two afterward a subaltern coming out of the Cashmere gate saw a dhooli, deserted by its bearers. In it lay John Nicholson in dire agony; but he asked nothing of his fellows then save to be taken to hospital. He had learned his lesson. He had done what others had set him to do. He had entered Delhi. He had p.r.i.c.ked the bubble, and the gas was leaking out. But he had failed in the task he had set himself. The Burn Bastion was still unwon, and the English force in Delhi, instead of holding its northern half up to the very walls of the Palace, secure from flanking foes, had to retire on the strip of open ground behind the a.s.saulted wall--if, indeed, it had not to retire further still. Had one man had his way it would have retired to the Ridge. Late in the afternoon, when fighting was over for the day, General Wilson rode round the new-won position, and, map in hand, looked despairingly toward the network of narrow lanes and alleys beyond. And he looked at something close at hand with even greater forebodings; for he stood in the European quarter of the town among shops still holding vast stores of wine and spirits which had been left untouched by that other army of occupation.

But what of this one? This product of civilization, and culture, and Christianity; these men who could give points to those others in so many ways, but might barter their very birthright for a bottle of rum.

Yet even so, the position must be held. So said Baird Smith at the chief's elbow, so wrote Neville Chamberlain, unable to leave his post on the Ridge. And another man in hospital, thinking of the Burn Bastion, thinking with a strange wonder of men who could refuse to follow, muttered under his breath, "Thank G.o.d! I have still strength left to shoot a coward."

And yet General Wilson in a way was right. Five days afterward Major Hodson wrote in his diary: "The troops are utterly demoralized by hard work and hard drink. For the first time in my life I have had to see English soldiers refuse repeatedly to follow their officers. Jacob, Nicholson, Greville, Speke were all sacrificed to this."

A terrible indictment indeed, against brave men.

Yet not worse than that underlying the chief's order of the 15th, directing the Provost-marshal to search for and smash every bottle and barrel to be found, and let the beer and wine, so urgently needed by the sick, run into the gutters; or his admission three days later that another attempt to take the Lah.o.r.e gate had failed from "the refusal of the European soldiers to follow their officers. One rush and it could have been done easily--we are still, therefore, in the same position to-day as we were yesterday."

So much for drink.

But the enemy luckily was demoralized also. It was still full of defense; empty of attack.

For one thing, attack would have admitted a reverse; and over on that eastern wall of the Palace, in the fretted marble balcony overlooking the river, there was no mention, even now, of such a word. Reverse!

Had not the fourth column been killed to a man? Had not Nikalseyn himself fallen a victim to valor? But Soma, and many a man of his sort, gave up the pretense with bitter curses at themselves. They had seen from their own posts that victorious escalade, that swift, unchecked herding of the frightened sheep. And they--intolerable thought!--were sheep also. They saw men with dark faces, no whit better than they--better!--the Rajpoot had at least a longer record than the Sikh!--led to victory while they were not led at all. So brought face to face once more with the old familiar glory and honor, the old familiar sight of the master first--uncompromisingly, indubitably first to s.n.a.t.c.h success from the grasp of Fate, and hand it back to them--they thought of the past three months with loathing.

And as for Nikalseyn's rebuff. Soma, hearing of it from a comrade, hot at heart as he, went to the place, and looked down the lane as John Nicholson had done. By all the Pandavas! a place for heroes indeed!

Ali! if he had been there, he would have stayed there somehow. He walked up and down it moodily, picturing the struggle to himself; thinking with a curious anger of those men on the housetops, in the bastion, taking potshots at the unsheltered men below. That was all there would be now. They might drive the masters back for a time, they might inveigle them into lanes and reduce their numbers by tens and fifties, they, men of his sort, might make a brave defense.

Defense! Soma wanted to attack. Attracted by the faint shade of the kikar tree he sat down beneath it, resting against the trunk, looking along the lane once more, just as, a day or two before, John Nicholson had rested for a s.p.a.ce. And the iron of failure entered into this man's heart also, because there was none to lead. And with the master there had been none to follow.

Suddenly he rose, his mind made up. If that was so, let him go back to the plow. That also was a hereditary trade.

That night, without a word to anyone, leaving his uniform behind him, he started along the Rohtuck road for his ancestral village. But he had to make a detour round the suburbs, for, despite that annihilation spoken of in the Peace, they were now occupied by the English.

Yet but little headway had been made in securing a firmer hold within the city itself.

"You can't, till the Burn Bastion is taken and the Lah.o.r.e gate secured," said Nicholson from his dying bed, whence, growing perceptibly weaker day by day, yet with mind clear and unclouded, he watched and warned. The single eye was not closed yet, was not even made dim by death. It saw still, what it had seen on the day of the a.s.sault; what it had coveted then and failed to reach.

But it was not for five days after this failure that even Baird Smith recognized the absolute accuracy of this judgment, and, against the Chief's will, obtained permission to sap through the shelter of the intervening houses till they could tackle the bastion at close and commanding quarters without asking the troops to face another lane. So on the morning of the 19th, after a night of storm and rain cooling the air incredibly, the pick-ax began what rifles and swords had failed to do. By nightfall a tall house was reached, whence the bastion could be raked fore and aft. Its occupants, recognizing this, took advantage of the growing darkness to evacuate it. Half an hour afterward the master-key of the position was in English hands.

Rather unsteady ones, for here again the troops--once more the 8th, the 75th, the Sikh Infantry, and that balance of the Fusiliers--had found more brandy.

"_Poisoned, sir?_" said one thirsty trooper, flouris.h.i.+ng a bottle of Exshaw's Number One before the eyes of his Captain, who, as a last inducement to sobriety, was suggesting danger. "Not a bit of it.

Capsules all right."

But this time England could afford a few drunk men. The bastion was gone, and by the Turkoman and Delhi gates half the town was going. And not only the town. Down in the Palace men and women, with fumbling hands and dazed eyes, like those new roused from dreams, were s.n.a.t.c.hing at something to carry with them in their flight. Bukht Khan stood facing the Queen in her favorite summer-house, alone, save for Hafzan, the scribe, who lingered, watching them with a certain malice in her eyes. She had been right. Vengeance had been coming. Now it had come.

"All is not lost, my Queen," said Bukht Khan, with hand on sword. "The open country lies before us, Lucknow is ours--come!"

"And the King, and my son," she faltered. The dull glitter of her tarnished jewelry seemed in keeping with the look on her face. There was something sordid in it. Sordid, indeed, for behind that mask of wifely solicitude and maternal care lay the thought of her hidden treasure.