“Are you …?” he began, and then yelled. “Christ – it’s a mutineer – 3rd Cavalry! Jim!”
And I hadn’t got my mouth open when out of the shadows someone sprang; I had an instant’s vision of a white face, red moustache, staring eyes, and whirling sabre, and then I was locked with him, crashing to the floor, while I yelled:
“You bloody idiot! I’m English, damn you!”
But he seemed to have gone mad; even as I wrestled his sabre from him and sprang away he yelled to his pal, who feebly shoved his sabre towards him; the next thing he was slashing at me, yelling curses, and I was guarding and trying to shout sense at him. I broke ground, fell over something soft, and realised as I struck the ground that it was a white woman, in evening dress – or rather it was her body, for she was lying in a pool of blood. I flung up my sabre to guard another maniac slash, but too late; I felt a fiery pain across my skull, just above the left ear, and the fellow on the floor screams:
“Go it, Jim! Finish him, finish –”
The crash of musketry filled the room; the fellow above me twisted grotesquely, dropping his sabre, and tumbled down across my legs; there were black faces grinning at the window above me through the powder smoke, and then they were in the room, yelling with triumph as they drove their bayonets into the wounded Tommy, hacking at him, smashing the furniture, and finally one of them was helping me up, shouting:
“Just in time, brother! Thank the 11th N.I., sowar! Aieee! Three of the pigs! God be praised – have ye been at their goods, then?”
I was dizzy with pain, so he dropped me, and while they ransacked the bungalow, growling like beasts, I crawled out on to the verandah and into the bushes. I lay there, staunching the blood that was running down my cheek; it wasn’t a bad wound – no worse than the schlager cut beside it, which de Gautet had given me years ago. But I didn’t come out, even after they’d gone, taking my pony with them; I was too shaken and scared – that idiot Jim had come within an ace of finishing me – my God, it had been Jim Lewis, of course – the veterinary. I’d bowed him out of Mason’s bungalow only a couple of nights before. And now, he was dead, and his wife Mary – and I was alive, saved by the mutineers who’d murdered them.
I lay there, still half-dazed, trying to make sense of it. This was mutiny, no doubt of it, and on the grand scale – the 3rd Cavalry were out, of course, and I’d seen 20th N.I. men under arms on the Grand Trunk; the fellows who’d inadvertently saved me were 11th N.I., so that was the whole Indian garrison of Meerut. But where the devil were the two British regiments? – their lines weren’t more than a half-mile from where I was lying, beyond the Mall, but although two or three hours must have passed since the rioting started, there wasn’t a sign of any activity by the authorities. I lay listening to the crackle of firing, and the distant tumult of voices and wrecking and burning – there were no bugle calls, no sound of volleys, no shouted orders, no heavy gunfire amidst the confusion. Hewitt couldn’t just be sitting doing nothing – a terrible thought struck me: they couldn’t have been wiped out, surely? No, you can’t beat two thousand disciplined soldiers with a mutinous mob – but what the hell was keeping ’em quiet, then?26
In the long run I decided I’d have to make a break for it, up to the Mall and across towards the British infantry lines; it would take me past Duff Mason’s bungalow, and the MacDowalls’, so I could see what was happening there, though no doubt the people would have withdrawn already to the safety of the British camps. Yes, I could see, when I stood up, that some of the bungalows south of the Mall were burning, and there was a hell of a din and shooting coming from the British Town farther west; I would have to keep well clear of that.
I moved cautiously through the trees, and found the little drive that led up to the eastern end of the Mall. There was a bungalow burning like blazes a hundred yards ahead, and half a dozen sepoys standing by its fence, cursing and occasionally firing a shot into it; on the other side of the road, a crowd of servants were huddled under a tree, and as I stole quietly towards them in the shadows I could hear them wailing. That was Surgeon Dawson’s bungalow; as I came level with it, I remembered that Dawson had been down with smallpox – he and his wife and children had all been confined to the house – and there was its roof caving in with a thunderous whoosh of sparks. I felt giddy and ill at the thought – and then hurried on, past that hellish scene; the drive ahead was deserted as far as I could see in the light of the rising moon.
Our bungalow wasn’t burning, anyway – but just before I reached it my eye was caught by something on the verandah of the Courtneys’ place across the way. Something was moving; it was a human figure, trying to crawl. I hesitated fearfully, and then slipped through the gate and up the path; the figure was wheezing horribly; it suddenly rolled over on its back, and I saw it was a native servant, with a bayonet buried in his chest. As I stood appalled his head rolled, and he saw me; he tried to lift a hand, pointing towards the house, and then he flopped back, groaning.
For the life of me I can’t think what made me go inside, and I wish I hadn’t. Mrs Courtney was dead in her chair, shot and bayonetted, with her head buried in the cushions, and when I looked beyond I vomited on the spot – her three children were there as well. It was a sight to blast your eyes; the place was like a slaughter-house, stinking with blood – I turned and ran, retching, and didn’t stop until I found myself stumbling on to Duff Mason’s verandah.
The place was still as death – but I had to go in, for I knew that in Duff Mason’s bottom desk-drawer there was a Colt and a box of ammunition, and I wanted them both as I wanted my next breath. I glanced through the trees towards the Dawsons’ burning home, but there was no sign of approaching mutineers, so I slipped through the chick-door into the hall. And there I fainted dead away – something I haven’t done more than twice in my life.
The reason I’ll tell you quickly – Mrs Leslie’s head was lying on the hall table. Her body, stripped naked – that same plump white body that I’d fondled only a few hours earlier, was lying a few feet beyond, unspeakably gashed. And in the doorway to the dining-room, Mrs Captain MacDowall was huddled grotesquely against the jamb, with a tulwar pinning her to the wall; clenched in one hand was a small vase, with the flowers it had held scattered on the boards – I realised that she must have snatched it up as a weapon.
I don’t remember getting Duff Mason’s revolver, but I know that later I was standing in the hall, keeping my eyes away from those ghastly things on the floor, loading it with cartridges and weeping and cursing to myself together. Why – why the hell should they do this? – I found myself blubbering it aloud. I’ve seen death and horror more than most men, but this was worse than anything – it was beyond bestiality. Gobinda? Pir Ali? Old Sardul? Ram Mangal, even? They couldn’t have done this – they wouldn’t have done it to the wives of their bitterest enemies. But it had been done – if not by them, then by men like them. It was mad, senseless, incredible – but it was there, and if I tell you of it now, it is not to horrify, but to let you understand what happened in India in ’57, and how it was like nothing that any of us had ever seen before. And none of us – not even I – was ever the same again.
You know me, and what a damned coward and scoundrel I am, and not much moved by anything – but I did an odd thing in that house. I couldn’t bring myself to touch Mrs Leslie, or even to look again at that ghastly head, with its frizzy red hair and staring eyes – but before I left I went to Mrs Captain MacDowall, and forced the vase from her fingers, and I collected the flowers and put them in it. I was going to set it on the floor beside her, and then I remembered that carping Scotch voice, and her contemptuous sniff – so I set it on a little table instead, with a napkin under it, just so. I took one more look round – at the wreckage of the place that my bearers had made the finest house on the station; the polished wood scarred and broken, the ornaments smashed, the rug matted with blood, the fine chandelier that had been Miss Blanche’s pride wantonly shattered in a corner – and I
went out of that house with such hate in my heart as I’ve never felt before or since. There was something I wanted to do – and quickly; I had my chance in the next five minutes, as I slipped up to the corner of the drive, and looked westward along the Mall.
The shots were still crackling in the British Town – were there any of our folk left alive down there, I wondered. How many bungalows, burned or whole, contained the same horrors that I’d found? I wasn’t going to look – and I wasn’t going a step farther, either. Burning buildings, screaming mobs, death and wreckage – they were all there, ahead of me; as I looked north through the trees I could see torchlight and hear yelling between me and the British lines. Whatever Hewitt and Carmichael-Smith and the rest of them were doing – supposing they were still alive – I’d now decided they could do without me: all I wanted was to get out of Meerut, and away from that hell, as fast as I could, and find peace and safety, and rest the hellish pain in my wounded head. But first I must do what I lusted above all things to do – and here came the chance, in the shape of a trooper, cantering along the Mall, swaying in his saddle, singing drunkenly to himself as he rode. Behind him, against the distant flames, there were a few parties of sepoys straggling on the Mall; eastward the road was quite empty.
I stepped into the Mall as he rode up; he had a bloody tulwar in one hand, a foolish animal grin on his filthy black face, and the grey coat of the 3rd Cavalry on his back. Seeing me in the same rig he let out a whoop and reined in unsteadily.
“Ram-ram,e sowar,” says I, and forced myself to leer at him. “Have you slain as many as I have, eh? And whose blood is that?” I pointed at his sword.
“Hee-hee-hee-hee,” giggles he, lurching in the saddle. “Is it blood? It is? Whose – why, maybe it is Carmik-al-Ismeet’s?” He waved the blade, goggling drunkenly. “Or Hewitt Sahib’s? Nay, nay, nay!”
“Whose, then?” says I, genially, and laid a hand on his crupper.
“Ah, now,” says he, studying the blade. “The Riding-Master Langley Sahib’s – eh? That son of a stinking mangy pork-eating dog! Nay, nay, nay!” He leaned precariously from the saddle. “Not Langley. Hee-hee-hee-hee! He will have no grand-children by his daughter! Hee-hee-hee-hee!”
And I’d chased her growling, off the verandah, just the previous night. I had to hold on to his leather to keep my balance, biting back the bile that came into my mouth. I took another quick glance along the Mall; the nearest sepoys were still some distance off.
“Shabash!” says I. “That was a brave stroke.” And as he leered and chortled I brought my hand up with the Colt in it, aimed carefully just above his groin, and fired.
He reared up, and I clutched the bridle to steady the horse as he went flying from the saddle; a second and I had it managed, then I was up and in his place, and he was threshing on the ground, screaming in agony – with luck he would take days to die. I circled him once, snarling down at him, looked back along the Mall, at those distant black figures like Dante’s demons against the burning inferno behind them, and then I was thundering eastward, past the last bungalows, and the sights and sounds of horror were fading behind me.27
God knows how far I rode that night – probably no great distance. I don’t think I was quite right in the head, partly from the shock of what I’d seen, but much more from the pain of my wound, which began to act up most damnably. It felt as though my left temple was wide open, and white heat was getting into my brain; I could hardly see out of my left eye, and was haunted by the fear that the cut would send me blind. I had enough sense, though, to know which way I wanted to go – south by east at first to skirt Meerut city, and then south by west until I struck the Delhi road at a safe distance. Delhi meant the safety of a great British garrison (or so I thought), and since there were telegraph lines between it and Meerut I felt certain that I’d meet help coming along it. I wasn’t to know that the fool Hewitt hadn’t even sent a message to tell of the Meerut outbreak.
So that was the course I followed, half-blind with pain, and constantly losing my bearings, even in the bright moonlight, so that I had to stop and cast about among the groves and hamlets. I forged ahead, and when I came on the Delhi road at last, what did I see but two companies of sepoys tramping along under the moon, in fair order, singing and chanting as they went, with their muskets slung and the havildars calling the step. For an instant I thought they must be reliefs from Delhi, and then it dawned on me that they were marching in the wrong direction – but I was too done up to care; I just sat my pony by the roadside, and when they spotted me half a dozen of them broke ranks, crying that it was a 3rd Cavalryman, and cheering me until they saw the blood on my face and coat. Then they helped me down, and sponged my head and gave me a drink, and their havildar says:
“You’re in no case to catch your pultan tonight, bhai.f They must be half-way to Delhi by now,” at which the rest of them cheered and threw up their hats.
“Are they so?” says I, wondering what the devil he meant.
“Aye, first among the loot, as usual,” cries another. “They have the advantage of us, on their ponies – but we’ll be there, too!” And they all cheered and laughed again, black faces with grinning white teeth looking down at me. Even in my bemused state this seemed to mean only one thing.
“Has Delhi fallen, then?” I asked, and the havildar says, not yet, but the three regiments there would surely rise, and with the whole of the Meerut garrison marching to help them the sahibs would be overthrown and slaughtered within the day.
“We were only the beginning!” says he, sponging away at my wound. “Soon Delhi – then Agra, Cawnpore, Jaipur – aye, and Calcutta itself! The Madras army is on the move also, and from one end of the Grand Trunk to the other the sahibs have been driven into their compounds like mice into their holes. The North is rising – there, lie still, man – there will be sahibs enough for your knife-edge, when your wound is healed. Best come with us, if you can travel; see, we hold together in good company, like soldiers – lest the sahibs send out riders who may snap us up piecemeal.”
“No – no,” says I, struggling up. “I’ll ride on to join my pultan.” And despite their protests I clambered on to my pony again.
“He thirsts for white blood!” shouts one. “Shabash, sowar! But leave enough for the rest of us to drink!”
I shouted something incoherent, about wanting to be first in at the death, and as they halloed encouragement after me I put my pony to a trot, hanging on grimly, and set off down the road. The other company was yelling and singing as I passed – I remember noting that they were wearing flower garlands round their necks. I carried on until I had distanced them, my head splitting at every step and swelling up like a balloon, and then I remember swinging off into the forest, and blundering until I slumped out of the saddle and lay where I fell, utterly exhausted.
When I came to – if you can call it that – I was extremely ill. I’ve no clear idea of what followed, except that there were long periods of confused dreaming, and moments of vivid clarity, but it’s difficult to tell one from the other. I’m sure that at one point I was lying face-down in a tank, gulping down brackish water while a little girl with a goat stood and watched me – I can even remember that the goat had a red thread round its horns. On the other hand, I doubt if Dr Arnold truly did come striding through the trees in an enormous turban, crying: “Flashman, you have been fornicating with Lakshmibai during first lesson; how often must I tell you there is to be no galloping after morning prayers, sir!” Or that John Charity Spring stood there four-square shouting: “Amo, amas, amat! Lay into him, doctor! The horny young bastard is always amo-ing! Hae nugae in seria ducent mala,g by God!” And then they changed into a wrinkled old native woman and a scrawny nigger with a white moustache; she was holding a chattih to my mouth – it felt hard and cold, but it became suddenly soft and warm, and the chatti was Mrs Leslie’s lips against mine, and what was running into my mouth wasn’t water, but blood, and I screamed silently while all the grinning faces whirled roun
d me, and the whole world was burning while a voice intoned: “Cartridge is brought to the left hand with right elbow raised” … and then the old man and woman were there again, peering anxiously down at me while I slipped into black unconsciousness.
It was in their hut that I finally came to myself, with a half-healed wound on my temple, having lost heaven knows how much blood and weight, verminous and stinking and weak as a kitten – but with my head just clear enough to remember what had happened. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to prove quite so clear about thinking ahead.
I’ve since calculated that I lay ill and delirious in their hovel for nearly three weeks, perhaps longer. They didn’t seem to know – apart from being the lowest kind of creatures, they were scared stiff of me, and it wasn’t until I’d prevailed on them to fetch someone from a nearby village that I could get any notion of what was happening. They finally drummed up an ancient pensioner, who shied off as soon as he saw me – my cavalry coat and gear, and my filthy appearance must have marked me as a mutineer par excellence – but before he could get out of the door I had soothed him with my revolver, held in a shaky hand, and in no time he was crouching beside my charpoy, babbling like the man from Reuters, while the rest of his village peeped through cracks in the walls, shivering.
Delhi had fallen – he had been there, and there had been a terrible slaughter of sahibs, and all their folk. The King of Delhi had been proclaimed and now ruled all India. It had been the same everywhere – Meerut, Bareilly, Aligarh, Etawah, Mainpuri (all of which were within a hundred miles or so), the splendid sepoys had triumphed all along the line, and soon every peasant in the land would receive a rupee and a new chicken. (Sensation.) The sahibs had tried to fall treacherously on the native soldiers at Agra, Cawnpore and Lucknow, but there was no doubt that these places would succumb also – two regiments of mutineers had passed through his own village last night, with cannon, to assist in the overthrow of Agra – everywhere there were dead sahibs, obviously there would soon be none left in the world. Bombay had risen, Afghan fighters were pouring in from the north, a great Muslim jihad had been proclaimed, fort after fort of the hated gora-log was going down, with fearful slaughter. Doubtless I had already borne my part? – excellent, I would certainly be rewarded with a nawab’s throne and treasure and flocks of amorous women. What less did I deserve? 3rd Cavalry, was I not? Doughty fighters – he had been in the Bombay Sappers, himself, thirty-one years’ service, and not so much as a naik’s stripes to swell his miserable pinshun – aieee, it was time the mean, corrupt and obscene Sirkar was swept away …
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