The Red Year Part 26

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, ca.n.a.ls, 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 unsurpa.s.sed elan 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?

"G.o.d help us both!" he murmured bitterly, pa.s.sing 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 Ros.h.i.+nara, 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 pa.s.s, 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 doc.u.ment. 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 a.s.sured 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 Reka and this shortcoming aroused the devotee's ire, but he was calmed by Chumru's a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sage 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 ma.s.s 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 st.u.r.dy 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 peac.o.c.k, 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.