by V. A. Stuart
“It is the only way left to us, Sheridan Sahib,” the man answered, a catch in his voice. “We cannot leave our comrades to rot in their chains. They are our brothers, they are of our Faith. We cannot desert them in their hour of need. I went yesterday to the Colonel Sahib, to plead for them, but he would not listen.”
“But soon the Rifles will be here and the Dragoons,” Alex said. “And these men will have to suffer the penalty for what they have done … only it will not be ten years’ transportation for this night’s work, it will be death. Can you not help us to restore order?” He was conscious of genuine grief when the rissaldar shook his head.
“Nahin, Sahib, I cannot. We shall release our brothers from the jail and then we shall go. But we intend you no harm, Sahib. I will select some reliable men to escort you back to your quarters. You must go at once, it is dangerous for you here. There are wild ones, who think only to kill. If you and Gough Sahib will wait until I can get the men mounted, I will myself ensure that you are unmolested.”
“What do you think, sir?” Gough asked, when the rissaldar had gone. “Can we do any good here if we stay?”
“I doubt it,” Alex confessed regretfully. “But when we’ve collected our escort, I think we should try our luck at the jail. They can’t all have gone mad and it’s possible that we might be able to reason with them when they’ve done what they set out to do.”
“Released the prisoners, you mean?”
“Yes. But—” hearing the thud of galloping hooves, and a fresh outbreak of firing coming from the road that ran past the west side of the Sudder Bazaar, he stiffened. From behind the blazing huts two horsemen appeared, bent low in their saddles, both with sabres drawn, followed by a third, who was evidently wounded, and then a fourth horse, to which two riders clung, came pounding bareback after them. The first two drew rein and turned to face the mob of white-clad mutineers who were pursuing them, with the obvious intention of giving the other three time to escape, and a concerted howl went up from the mob.
“My God, that looks like Henry Craigie!” Gough exclaimed, drawing his own sabre. He and Alex galloped to join the two who had halted, Alex letting his knotted reins lie loose on Sultan’s neck to enable him to draw his pistol, urging the horse on with knees and heels. The escort with which they had started did not follow them but when, after a brief exchange of sabre thrusts and pistol shots, they ranged themselves beside the other two, the mob surprisingly drew off, still screaming for their blood but, for some reason, reluctant to take it. They retreated slowly to the shelter of the darkened magazine, where they found the other fugitives being guarded by the Indian noncommissioned officers who had responded to the bugle call.
“Wait here, Sahib,” a daffadar of B Troop advised Alex, in an urgent whisper. “We go to get our horses and then we will take the wounded sahibs to the hospital.”
They vanished and Henry Craigie wiped the sweat from his brow with a shaking hand. “That was a close call,” he said wryly. “Thanks for your timely assistance.” He gestured in the direction in which the daffadar had gone. “Are those all the men who are with us?”
“Not quite all. My rissaldar has promised to provide a reliable escort for us,” Alex told him. “When—if—he keeps his word, we intend going after the rest to the jail, to see if we can reason with them.”
“I see. Well, I’ll try to rally some of my troop to join you. But,” he lowered his voice, “it’s a damned ugly situation, Sheridan. And it’s a hell of a lot worse in the Infantry lines. The two who were with us just managed to escape with their lives. They’re both officers of the 11th and they’ve both been hit. They’d have been killed if they hadn’t found a riderless horse. The third fellow we picked up on our way here; I don’t know who he is, but he’s badly hurt and …” he sighed despondently as Gough and young Alfred Mackenzie, who had gone to the aid of the wounded officer, lowered him to the ground and, meeting his mutely questioning gaze, shook their heads. “Poor devil! Well, that’s another they’ll have to answer for, damn them.”
“What happened, do you know?” Alex asked. He was attempting to reload his Adams and Craigie took it from him. “Here, let me do that for you,” he offered. “As to what happened, one of them told me that they went with their C. O., Colonel Finnis, to try and steady their men. The colonel’s a popular officer and, backed up by his Indian N. C. O.s, he’d apparently succeeded in holding them when some madman started yelling that the 20th were coming to attack them.”
“The Twentieth?” Alex echoed. “But for God’s sake—”
“Yes, I know, the whole blasted thing’s crazy,” Craigie admitted. “But poor Finnis went to the 20th’s lines and they shot him down and then turned on the rest of their officers. The 11th promptly did the same and now they’re running amok, breaking out their arms and burning their huts as our men appear to have done. So far, though, they haven’t left their own lines and if we can keep them there until … where the devil are the Rifles and the Dragoons? Have they been told what’s going on, for heaven’s sake?”
It was Gough who answered him. “I went to the C.O. as soon as I heard that our men had broken out, sir. He said he would inform General Wilson at once and told me to do what I could here. Colonel Sheridan and I have been here ever since.”
“Colonel Sheridan?” Craigie returned the loaded pistol, a brief smile twisting his smoke-blackened lips. “Then you’re in command, sir. What orders do you have?”
“It looks as if that’s been decided for me,” Alex answered. He pointed to where, under one of their own rissaldars, the men of the 3rd Light Cavalry were forming up in orderly ranks, mounted and properly accoutered. There were about two hundred of them and they might have been mustering for duty, so perfect was their turnout, so disciplined their response to the shouted commands. But when the rissaldar stood up in his stirrups, with sabre raised, and ordered them to the jail, the cheers that went up from the packed ranks were chilling in their savagery.
“Din! Din!” came the roar, from two hundred throats. “For the Faith! The Company’s Raj is ended. … Death to the feringhi!”
“We shall have to go after them, Captain Craigie,” Alex warned. “With or without an escort. They’ve got to be stopped, but we’ll have to summon help. Lieutenant Gough!” Gough was at his side, blue eyes blazing. “Ride for the Artillery barracks, as fast as you can make it. Tell whoever’s in command that the jail is about to be attacked and we require Horse Artillery support, and then inform the C.O. of the Rifles. Captain Craigie and I are going after them and we’ll take Mackenzie with us. The two wounded officers had better go with you but don’t delay on their account, they’ll have to fend for themselves. It’s to be hoped that the Dragoons are already on their way here but if they’re not, then get a message sent to them.” He hesitated, assailed by a sudden, nagging fear. The destination of the 3rd Light Cavalry was in no doubt. But what of the two mutinous infantry regiments?
Gough saw his hesitation and asked quietly, “Anything else, sir?”
“Yes,” Alex told him, tight-lipped. “I’m taking it for granted that steps will have been taken to send British troops to protect the cantonment bungalows but if they have not, then for God’s sweet sake impress on any senior officer you can find that it is imperative they should be. I’ll give you the best escort I can but don’t stop for anything or anyone, d’you understand? It’s vital that you get through.”
“I understand, sir.” Gough’s face was white. “But with two Queen’s regiments available and the artillery, surely—” he did not complete his sentence and Craigie said, shaken, “My wife and Alfred Mackenzie’s sister were on their way to church. I waited to see them off. But they must have got there by now, they must have! Pray heaven they’ve stayed there.”
“Ride past Captain Craigie’s bungalow, Gough,” Alex ordered. “To make sure it’s empty. If you should find the ladies there, take them with you to the Dragoons’ guardroom and go by Circular Road. Don’t attempt to go through the bazaar
in any case.”
“Thanks,” Henry Craigie acknowledged briefly. “I …” his voice lost some of its anxiety. “Look, sir, our escort. Ten, no, by God, twelve of them have kept their word! That has restored my faith in miracles. Give me five minutes, will you please, to see if I can induce a few more to follow their example? There are still some of my troop saddling up over there and they’re good men. I might be able to talk them around.”
Alex agreed without hesitation. He sent Gough’s original escort and half the newly arrived men to accompany him on his errand and when they had gone, with the two wounded officers of the 11th Infantry in their midst, he occupied the time of waiting by looping the ends of his reins round his stirrups, so as to leave his single arm free. The old rissaldar watched him for a moment and then, dismounting, came to his aid.
“The Sahib is wise,” he approved, with unconscious irony. “For he may well need to draw his tulwar before this night is over. Mackenzie Sahib”—his gaze went to where young Alfred Mackenzie was draping a horse blanket over the body of the unknown officer who had died of his wounds—“Mackenzie Sahib is saying that you would go to the jail. That, Sahib, is not wise.”
“It is my duty,” Alex told him. “I ask that you will come also, Rissaldar Sahib, but I shall not order you to do so. We would speak to the men, that is all. I shall not draw my tulwar save in my own defense. I have sent for guns but I shall bid them hold their fire if the men will hear me.”
“They will not hear you, Sahib. They have gone too far. They are deaf to all but the call of their Faith. It would be better not to go.”
“I have to go. Do you come or stay?”
The old native officer was silent but finally he bowed his head. “I will come,” he agreed reluctantly. “I gave my word and I will keep it if I can. But if the white soldiers attack, I must fight with my brothers.” He smiled, with unexpected warmth. “And that may not be wise but I have my duty also. Does the Sahib understand?”
“I understand, Rissaldar-ji, although with sadness.” Alex offered his hand and the rissaldar took it, his smile fading. “This is a sad day, Sheridan Sahib. I would it were over.”
“Captain Craigie’s coming, sir,” Mackenzie warned, swinging himself into his saddle. Alex glanced round and felt his heart lift as he saw that some thirty sowars were cantering at their troop commander’s back, with Melville Clark riding beside him, bareheaded and on a foam-flecked horse. They set off at once after the main body and Clark said breathlessly, as they circled the still smouldering huts, “I’ve just got here, sir. The colonel sent me to alert the Carabineers but I never expected this.” He looked about him in stunned disbelief. “Oh, God, what an appalling sight!”
“Did you alert the Carabineers?” Alex demanded. “Are they on their way?”
The adjutant shook his head. “They were ordered to the Rifles’ parade ground. They’d gone when I got there, two mounted squadrons and the rest on foot, the guard commander told me. The general’s orders, he said, sir.”
Alex stared at him. “How long ago was that?”
“About … oh, about an hour ago, I think. I ran into several parties of the N. I., making for the Sudder Bazaar and I got this,” he indicated a sabre cut which had severed his left shoulder-chain and slashed through the cloth of his sleeve, “from a sepoy of the 11th, who must have stolen an officer’s horse. He nearly did for me, because I didn’t see him coming and I had to run him through, because it was either him or me.” He talked on excitedly but Alex scarcely heard him.
If the general had ordered the Dragoons to the Rifles’ parade ground, presumably this must be with the intention of mustering all his British troops, including the Artillery, preparatory to sending them to the native lines. No doubt patrols had already been despatched and some must, by this time, have returned with their reports. Hugh Gough might well have met and joined up with one of them but, even if he hadn’t, he should soon be at the Rifles’ barracks, so support would not be long delayed.
“I gave your Sikh orderly my twelve-bore,” Melville Clark was saying. “And told him to stand guard in our quarters. I was afraid that …” his words died in his throat. “Oh, my God, sir, look at them! Every budmash from the bazaar is out!”
They emerged into Suddar Street and Alex saw that he was right. A vast crowd was milling about, screaming and shouting wildly as the sepoys had done for the blood of the feringhi. Most of them were armed with clubs and spears, a few with matchlocks and almost all carried flaming brands and torches with which they were setting fire to every building they passed. Over to his left, he saw with mounting dismay, the British cantonments were a sea of flames and men were running, uniformed infantry sepoys among them, laden with plunder of every description, from silverware to furniture and he did not need a second glance to tell him that it had come from looted British bungalows.
Alex’s first instinct was to charge and disperse the howling predators and, glancing at Craigie, he saw his own thoughts mirrored in the troop commander’s grimly set face.
“What do you think?” he asked and Craigie regretfully shook his head.
“We daren’t trust them, sir. I’m sorry. I wish I could say we could. But they’ve only agreed to escort us to the jail. They …” He swore. “Sweet Mother in Heaven, look! It’s a British woman!”
A palanquin-gharry— a boxed-in carriage, drawn by a single horse—came careering drunkenly towards them from a side street. There was no driver, the terrified horse was out of control and riding beside it, his sabre raised, was a sowar of the 3rd Light Cavalry. As they watched, the heavy blade descended on the hapless occupant of the gharry and was raised again, ominously stained. Without waiting for orders, Craigie and Mackenzie spurred forward to meet the gharry and Craigie’s sabre took the sowar across the back of the neck. He fell with a shriek and behind them, Alex heard angry murmurs from their escort.
“You are soldiers!” he reminded them, in ringing tones. “Not murderers of defenseless women!” and the murmurs were stilled. The crowd, however, was not so easily appeased; they had recognized the four British officers riding at the head of what they had, at first, taken to be a body of mutineers on their way to free their comrades from the jail, and shouts went up, calling on their escort to turn on them.
“Death, death to the sahib-log!”
“Why do you ride at their heels, like cowed dogs?”
“Kill them! kill them! Would you betray us, who come to fight your battle with you?”
“Maro—sab lal hogea! Maro, maro!”
The cries came from all sides and one man, a butcher by the look of him, made a dash for Mackenzie, aiming a blow with a meat-axe at his horse. Alex felled him with a single shot from his pistol and the crowd retreated, suddenly silent. Their escort, in obedience to his shouted command, spread out, driving the mob before them, offering no violence but gaining their ascendancy by disciplined steadiness.
All might have been well had not Mackenzie’s horse, shying away from the butcher’s fallen body, carried him to the road verge, where a trailing wire—the severed telegraph cable, Alex afterwards realized—whipped around the upper part of his body and brought him thudding to the ground. With commendable presense of mind, the boy retained his grasp of the reins but several of the sowars rode over him before he was able to drag himself, shaken and covered with dust, back into the saddle, calling out breathlessly that he was all right.
They were nearing the junction of the canal and the Grand Trunk Road now, still without seeing any sign of British patrols or reinforcements and everywhere they looked, it seemed, looters and arsonists were running riot, and more and more buildings were being set alight. The smoke was suffocating, clouds of ash were blown into their faces and the glare from the flames revealed corpses, hideously mutilated, lying beside the road or in the trampled, smoke-shrouded gardens of blazing bungalows. These were the Civil Lines and many hapless Eurasian and Indian Christian families had evidently been the first victims of the crowd’s bloodlust. A
lex saw, with a sense of shocked revulsion, that the blue-uniformed civil police, armed with their steel-tipped lathis, were at the forefront of several of the rioting mobs.
He said, uneasily, to Craigie, “I’m worried about the cantonment bungalows and the British married families’ quarters, not to mention our own.” He jerked his head in the direction of The Mall. “It may be my imagination, but I believe I can see fires burning over there.”
“It’s not just your imagination,” Craigie answered thickly. “They are. In heaven’s name, what are the Queen’s regiments doing? They must have got patrols out by now. They’ve had over two thousand men, mustered and under arms, on the Rifles’ parade ground for well over an hour.”
“It’s more like two,” Clark put in glumly. “It took me an hour to get to our lines from the Dragoons’ barracks, Henry, and it’s taken us over half an hour to get this far. And I haven’t seen a patrol or heard any firing, have you?”
They looked at each other, unwilling to believe that the British regiments could have remained inactive for so long.
“They may have gone to the jail,” Clark said, without conviction. “Or be on their way there, with the gunners. The Dragoons had two troops mounted.”
Henry Craigie groaned. “I hope to God you’re right! Dammit, you must be. The Rifles are a first-rate regiment and their C.O., Colonel Jones, isn’t the sort of fellow to sit back and do nothing when the whole place is going up in smoke. Probably they’ve brought all the women and children into barracks by this time—their own, at all events. I’m not so sure about ours. And of course, if the general …” He swallowed hard, reluctant, even now, to express his doubts concerning General Hewitt’s competence.
Remembering the obese, tottering old man who had stood on the saluting base the previous day, looking about him with lackluster eyes, Alex felt fear clutch at his throat. If the senile old general were in command then the inactivity was understandable but there was Wilson who, for all his unwillingness to accept the possibility of a mutiny, was an efficient and experienced officer. “The general would surely listen to advice from his staff, Craigie,” he suggested.
