The Red Year Part 28

The British soldier, who has fought and bled in so many lands, showed his remarkable adaptability to circ.u.mstances 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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 gra.s.ses. Roads were few, but tortuous paths ran everywhere, and it was easy to see how the rebels could steal out un.o.bserved 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 s.h.i.+rts 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 n.o.ble array of mosques and temples, flat-roofed houses of n.o.bles 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 Gloucesters.h.i.+re 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 antic.i.p.ation.

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 Ros.h.i.+nara, 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 G.o.ds smile when they dispose of man's affairs.

CHAPTER XV

AT THE KING'S COURT

Without guns to breach the walls, even the heroic Nicholson was powerless against a strongly fortified city.

The siege train was toiling slowly across the Punjab, but the setting in of the monsoon rendered the transit of heavy cannon a laborious task.

On the 24th of August an officer rode in from the town of Baghput, twenty-five miles to the north, to report that the train was parked there for the night.

"What sort of escort accompanies it?" asked Nicholson, when the news reached him.

"Almost exclusively natives and few in numbers at that," he was told.

An hour later a native spy from Delhi came to the camp.

"The mutineers are mustering for a big march," he said. "They are providing guns, litters, and commissariat camels, and the story goes that they mean to fight the Feringhis at Bahadurgarh."

The place named was a large village, ten miles northwest of the ridge, and Nicholson guessed instantly that the sepoys had planned the daring coup of cutting off the siege train. With him, to hear was to act. He formed a column of two thousand men and a battery of field artillery and left the camp at dawn on the 25th. If a forced march could accomplish it, he meant not only to frustrate the enemy's design but inflict a serious defeat on them.

Malcolm went with him and never had he taken part in a harder day's work. The road was a bullock track, a swamp of mud amid the larger swamp of the ploughed land and jungle. Horses and men floundered through it as best they might. The guns often sank almost to the trunnions; many a time the infantry had to help elephants and bullocks to haul them out.

In seven hours the column only marched nine miles, and then came the disheartening news that the spy's information was wrong. The rebels had, indeed, sent out a strong force, but they were at Nujufgarh, miles away to the right.

Officers and men ate a slight meal, growled a bit, and swung off in the new direction. At four o'clock in the afternoon they found the sepoy army drawn up behind a ca.n.a.l, with its right protected by another ca.n.a.l, and the center and left posted in fortified villages. Evidently, too, a stout serai, or inn, a square building surrounding a quadrangle set apart for the lodgment of camels and merchandise was regarded as a stronghold. Here were placed six guns and the walls were loopholed for musketry.

In a word, had the mutineers been equal in courage and _morale_ to the British troops, the resultant attack must have ended in disastrous failure.

But Nicholson was a leader who took the measure of his adversaries.

Above all, he did not s.h.i.+rk a battle because it was risky.

The 61st made a flank march, forded the branch ca.n.a.l under fire and were ordered to lie down. Nicholson rode up to them, a commanding figure on a seventeen-hands English hunter.

"Now, 61st," he said, "I want you to take that serai and the guns. You all know what Sir Colin Campbell told you at Chillianwallah, and you have heard that he said the same thing at the battle of the Alma. 'Hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes,' he said, 'and then, my boys, we will make short work of it.' Come on! Let us follow his advice here!"

Swinging his horse around, he rode straight at serai and battery.

Grape-shot and bullets sang the death-song of many a brave fellow, but Nicholson was untouched. The 61st leaped to their feet with a yell, rushed after him, and did not fire a shot until they were within twenty yards of the enemy. A volley and the bayonet did the rest. They captured the guns, carried the serai, and pelted the flying rebels with their own artillery. The 1st Punjabis had a stiff fight before they killed every man in the village of Nujufgarh on the left, but the battle was won, practically in defiance of every tenet of military tactics, when the 61st forced their way into the serai.

Utterly exhausted, the soldiers slept on the soddened ground. That night, smoking a cigar with his staff, Nicholson commented on the skill shown in the enemy's disposition.

"I asked a wounded havildar who it was that led the column, and he told me the commander was a new arrival, a subadar of the 8th Irregular Cavalry, named Akhab Khan," he said.

Malcolm started. Akhab Khan was the young sowar whose life he had spared at Cawnpore when Winifred and her uncle and himself were escaping from Bithoor.

"I knew him well, sir," he could not help saying. "He was not a subadar, but a lance-corporal. He was one of a small escort that accompanied me from Agra to the south, but he is a smart soldier, and not at all of the cut-throat type."

Nicholson looked at him fixedly. He seemed to be considering some point suggested by Malcolm's words.

"If men like him are obtaining commands in Delhi they will prove awkward," was his brief comment, and Frank did not realize what his chief was revolving in his mind until, three days later, the Brigadier asked him to don his disguise again, ride to the southward, and endeavor to fall in with a batch of mutineers on the way to Delhi. Then he could enter the city, note the dispositions for the defense, and escape by joining an attacking party during one of the many raids on the ridge.

"You will be rendering a national service by your deed," said Nicholson, gazing into Frank's troubled eyes with that magnetic power that bent all men to his will. "I know it is a distasteful business, but you are able to carry it through, and five hours of your observation will be worth five weeks of native reports. Will you do it?"

"Yes, sir," said Malcolm, choking back the protest on his lips. He could not trust himself to say more. He refused even to allow his thoughts to dwell on such a repellent subject. A spy! What soldier likes the office?

It stifles ambition. It robs war of its glamour. It may call for a display of the utmost bravery--that calm courage of facing an ign.o.ble death alone, unheeded, forgotten, which is the finest test of chivalry, but it can never commend itself to a high-spirited youth.

Frank had already won distinction in the field; it was hard to be chosen now for such a doubtful enterprise.

His worst hour came when he sought Chumru's aid in the matter of walnut-juice.

"What is toward, sahib?" asked the Mohammedan. "Have we not seen enough of India that we must set forth once more?"

"This time I go alone," said Frank, sadly. "Perchance I shall not be long absent. You will remain here in charge of my baggage and of certain letters which I shall give you."

"Why am I cast aside, sahib?"

"Nay. Say not so. 'Tis a matter that I must deal with myself, and not of my own wish, Chumru. I obey the general-sahib's order."

"Jan Nikkelsen-sahib Bahadur?"

"Yes. I would refuse any other. But haste thee, for time presses."