Flashman In The Great Game fp-5

by George MacDonald Fraser

"His highness asks you to reassure General Wheeler, and to add that while you are considering his most generous proposal, he is instructing our troops to observe an armistice. I myself will come tomorrow for General Wheeler's answer."

  And that was that. Moore and I trudged back through the pandy lines — and if anything was needed to convince me that surrender was imperative it was the sight of those glowering black faces at the gun emplacements and round the bivouacs. They might look less smart and orderly than they'd done as loyal Company troops, but by God there were plenty of them, and no signs of weakening or desertion.

  It was touch and go, though, when we got back to the entrenchment and reported to Wheeler what Nana's proposals were. He called a council of all the officers, and we sat or stood crowded into the stifling corner of the barrack which was his office, with the moaning of the wounded beyond the partition, and the wailing of the children, while we heard rehearsed again all the arguments that had been whispered to and fro that morning. It frightened me, I may tell you, for Wheeler was still smelling treachery, and our younger sparks were in full cry against the notion of surrender.

  "We've held out this long," cries Delafosse, "and now they're weakening. Tell him to go to blazes, I say, and ten to one he'll raise the siege."

  There were growls of approval at this, until Vibart says:

  "And if he don't raise it? What then? We'll not have a child or woman alive in this hellish place three days hence. Are you prepared to accept that?"

  "Are you prepared to accept a rebel's word?" retorts )elafossc. "While we're in a defensive position here, at least we can make sonic show against him — and he may raise the siege, or Lawrence may march. But once we accept his terms and step into the open, we're at his mercy."

  "And we'll have hauled down our flag to a pack of rebels," says Thomson bitterly. "How do we go home to England and tell 'em that?"

  At this some cried "Bravo!" and urged Wheeler to answer Nana with defiance, but old Ewart, who was so sick that he had to attend the council lying on a stretcher, wondered what England would say if we condemned hundreds of women and children to die in the useless defence of a couple of ruined mud buildings. The older men nodded agreement, but the youngsters shouted him down, and Delafosse repeated the argument, red in the face, that Nana must be weakening or he'd never have made the offer.

  Wheeler, who'd been sitting tugging his moustache while they bickered, looks at Moore and me.

  "You saw his camp, gentlemen; what opinion did you form? Is he negotiating from weakness, because his troops have lost heart?"

  I'd said nothing throughout; I was biding my time, and let Moore answer. He said we'd seen no signs of flagging morale, which was true enough. Wheeler looked glum, and shook his head.

  "I cannot think the Nana is to be trusted," says he. "And yet … it is a cruel choice. All my nature, every instinct, tells me to fight this command to the last; to die in my duty as a soldier should do, and let my country avenge me. But to do that at the cost of our loved ones' lives … already, so many … "

  He broke off, and there was an uneasy silence; everyone knew that Wheeler's own son had died the day before. Finally he rubbed his face and looked round.

  "If it were ourselves alone, there could be but one answer. As it is, I confess I should be tempted, for our women and children's sake, to accept this murderer's terms, were it not that my judgement tells me he will play us false. I … "

  "Forgive me, sir," says Moore, quietly, "but if he does, we've lost nothing. For if we don't trust him, we're dead anyway — all of us. We know that, and —"

  "At least we can die with honour!" cries some fool, and the younger chaps cheered like the idiots they were. At this Wheeler's head came up, and I saw his stubborn lip go out, and I thought, now, Flashy, now's your time, or the stupid old bastard will damn us all in the name of Duty and Hon-our. So I growled in my throat, and scraped my heel, and that caught his attention, just in time, and he looked at me.

  "You've said nothing, Flashman," says he. "What is your thought?"

  I felt all their eyes turn to me, and deliberately took my time, for I knew Wheeler was within an ace of deciding to fight it out to a finish, and I was going to have to humbug him, and the rest of them, into surrendering. But it was going to require my most artistic handling.

  "Well, sir," says I, "like you, I wouldn't trust the Nana as far as the tuck-shop." (Someone laughed; homely old Flashy, you sec, with his schoolboy metaphors.) "But as Moore here says — that don't matter. What does — or so it seems to me — is the fate of our ladies —" (here I looked red-faced and noble) " — and the … the youngsters. If we accept the Nana's offer, at least there's a chance they'll come off safe."

  "You'd surrender?" says Wheeler, in a. strained voice.

  "For myself?" growls I, and looked at the floor. "Well, I never quite got the habit … goes against the grain, I reckon. Matter of honour — as someone said just now. And I suppose it can be said that honour demands we fight it out to the last —"

  "Shabash!" cries Delafosse. "Well done, Flashy!"

  " — but, d'ye know, sir," I went on, "the day my honour has to be maintained by sacrificing Vibart's little boy — or ' I'unstall's mother — or Mrs Newnham's daughter, well … " I raised my head and stared at the circle of faces, a strong, simple man stirred to his depths; you could have heard a pin drop. "I don't know — I may be wrong … but I don't think my honour's worth that much, d'ye know?"

  The beauty of it was, while it was the most fearful gammon, coming from me — it was stark truth for the rest of them, gallant and honourable souls that they were. The irony was that for my own cowardly, selfish reasons, I was arguing the sane and sensible course, and having to dress it up in high-sounding bilge in order to break down their fatuous notions of Duty. Reason wouldn't have done it, but to suggest that the true honour demanded surrender, for the women and children's sake — that shamed 'em into sanity.

  Old Ewart put the final touch to it. "And that, gentle-men, you would do well to bear in mind —" he glared almost defiantly at Delafosse" — is the opinion of the man who held Piper's Fort, and led the Light Brigade."

  Wheeler put it to the formality of a vote, but it was foregone now. When Moore and Whiting voted to surrender, even the fieriest of the younger men gave way, and inside half an hour Wheeler's answer was on its way to Nana, agreeing to capitulate with the honours of war.31 But he added the condition that we should not only keep our arms, but sixty rounds a man instead of the proposed twenty —"then, if there is treachery, it will profit him little," he told us, and echoed the thought Azeemoolah had expressed in the afternoon: "We can fight as well in the open as in this death-trap." That was all he knew.

  He was still fearful of treachery, you see. I was not — you may think I was deluding myself, but the fact was I couldn't see that the Nana had anything to gain by playing us false. I state that honestly now, and I've explained the details of the Cawnpore surrender because it was a momentous thing, not only in the Mutiny, but in Indian history. I had spoken — and, as I've said, I believe mine was the decisive voice — for surrender, because I saw it as the only way to save my skin. But apart from that vital consideration, I still believe that surrender was right, by every canon of soldiering and common sense. Call me a fool if you like, and shake your heads in the light of history — nothing could have been worse than fighting on in that doomed entrenchment.

  Whatever misgivings Wheeler may have had, hardly anyone else shared them when word got round of what had been decided, and Azeemoolah and Jwala Pershad had come to the entrenchment with the Nana's undertakings all signed and witnessed: draught animals were to arrive at dawn for the mile-long journey to the river where boats would be waiting, and throughout the night there was bustle and eagerness and thanksgiving all through the garrison. It was as though a great shadow had been lifted; cooking fires blazed outside the barrack for the first time in weeks, the wounded were brought out of that stinking oven to lie in the open air, and e
ven the children frolicked on the parapet where we'd been slashing at the sepoys two days before. Tired, worn faces were smiling, no one minded the dirt and stench any longer, or gave a thought to the rebels' massed guns and infantry a few hundred yards away; the firing had stopped, the fear of death had lifted, we were going out to safety, and throughout the night, over the din of packing and preparation, the sound of hymns rolled up to the night sky.

  One of the few croakers was Ilderim. Wheeler had told those sepoys who had remained loyal and fought in the garrison to slip away over the southern rampart, for fear of reprisals from their mutinous fellows in the morning, but Ilderim wouldn't have it. He came to me in the dark at the north entrenchment, where I was smoking a cheroot and enjoying my peace of mind.

  "Do I slip away like a cur when someone throws a stone at it?" says he. "No — I march with Wheeler Sahib and the rest of you tomorrow. And so that no pi-dog of a mutineer will take me for anything but what I am, I have put this on, for a killut*(*Dress of honour, usually on ceremonial occasions.) —" and as he stepped closer in the gloom, I saw he was in the full fig of a native officer of cavalry, white coat, gauntlets, long-tailed puggaree and all. "It is just a down-country regiment's coat, which I took from one of those we slew the other day, but it will serve to mark me as a soldier." He grinned, showing his teeth. "And I shall take my sixty rounds — do thou likewise, blood-brother."

  "We're not going to need 'em, though," says I, and he shrugged.

  "Who knows? When the tiger has its paw on the goat's neck, and then smiles in friendship … Wheeler Sahib does not trust the Nana. Dost thou?"

  "There's no choice, is there?" says I. "But he's signed his name to a promise, after all —"

  "And if he breaks it, the dead can complain," says he, and spat. "So I say — keep thy sixty rounds to hand, Flashman sahib."

  I didn't heed him much, for Pathans are notoriously suspicious of everyone, reason or none, and when day broke there was too much to do to waste time in thinking. The mutineers came in the first mists of dawn, with bullocks and elephants and carts to carry us to the river, and we had the herculean task of getting everyone into the convoy. There were two hundred wounded to be moved, and all the women and children, some of them just babes-in-arms, and old people who'd have been feeble enough even without three weeks on starvation rations. Everyone was tired and filthy and oddly dispirited now that the first flush of excitement had died away. As the sun came up it shone on a strange, nightmare sight that lives with me now only as a series of pictures as the evacuation of Cawnpore began.

  I can see the straggling mass of the procession, the bullock-carts with their stretchers carrying the blood-stained figures of the wounded, gaunt and wasted; bedraggled white women, either sitting in the carts or standing patiently alongside, with children who looked like White-chapel waifs clinging to their skirts; our own men, ragged and haggard, with their muskets cradled, taking up station along the convoy; the red coats and sullen faces of the mutineers who were to shepherd us across the maidan and down to the river ghat beyond the distant trees where the boats were waiting. The dawn air was heavy with mist and suspicion and hatred, as Wheeler, with Moore at his elbow as always, stood up on the rampart and reviewed the battered remnants of his command, strung out along the entrenchment, waiting listlessly for the word to move while all around was the confused babble of voices, orders being shouted, officers hurrying up and down, elephants squealing, the carts creaking, children crying, and the kites beginning to swoop down on the emptying barracks.

  Incidents and figures remain very clear — two civilians hauling down the tattered flag from the barrack roof, rolling it up carefully and bringing it to Wheeler, who stood absent-mindedly with it trailing from one hand while he shouted: "Sarn't Grady! Is the south entrenchment clear, Sarn't Grady?" A little boy with curly hair, laughing and shouting "Plop-plop!" as one of the elephants dropped its dung; his mother, a harassed young woman in a torn ball-gown (it had rosebuds embroidered, I recall) with a sleeping infant in her arms, slapped and shook him with her free hand, and then straightened her hair. A group of mutineers walking round the barracks, belabouring one of our native cooks who was limping along under a great load of pans. A British private, his uniform unrecognisable, being railed at by an old mem-sahib as he helped her into a cart, until she was settled, when she said, "Thank you, my good man, thank you very much," and began searching her reticule for a tip. Four mutineers were hurrying up and down the untidy convoy, calling out and searching, until they spotted Vibart and his family — and then they ran hallooing and calling "Colonel sahib! Mem-sahib!", and seized on the family's baggage, and one of them, beaming and chuckling, lifted Vibart's little lad on to his shoulders, piggy-back, while the others shouted and shoved and made room for Mrs Vibart in a wagon. Vibart was dumbfounded, and two of the mutineers were weeping as they took his hand and carried his gear — I saw another one at it, too, an old grizzled havildar of the 56th, standing on the entrenchment gazing down into the ruin of the barracks with tears running down his white beard; he was shaking his head in grief, and then he would look no more, but turned about and stared across the maidan, still crying.

  Most of the mutineers weren't so sentimental, though. One tried to snatch a musket from Whiting, and Whiting flung him off snarling and shouting: "You want it, do you? I'll give you its contents fast enough, you damned dog, if you don't take care!" The pandies fell back, growling and shaking their fists, and another gang of them stood and jeered while old Colonel Ewart was carried on a palki to his place in the line. "Is it not a fine parade, colonel sahib?" they were jeering. "Is it not well drawn up?" And they cackled and made mock of the drill, prancing up and down.

  I didn't like the look of this a bit, or of the menacing-looking crowd of pandies which was growing across the maidan. Promises or no promises, it don't take much to touch off a crowd like that, and I was relieved when Moore, who had hurried to the head of the column, shouted and blew his whistle, and the procession began to move, creaking slowly, away from the entrenchment, and out on to the plain. I was near the rear of the line, where Vibart had charge of the supply-wagons; behind us the pandies were already scavenging in the deserted barracks — by God, they were welcome to anything they could find.

  It was about a mile to the river, where the boats were, but we were so exhausted, and the convoy so haphazard and cumbersome, that it took us the best part of an hour to cross the maidan alone. It was a hellish trek, with the mutineers trying to drive us along, swearing and thrusting, and our fellows cursing 'em back, while wagons foundered, and one or two of the garrison collapsed and had to be loaded aboard, and the drivers thrashed at the beasts. Crowds of natives had come down from Cawnpore city to watch and jeer at us and get in the way; some of them, and the more hostile pandies, kept sneaking in close to shout taunts, or even to strike at us and try to steal our belongings. Something's going to crack in a moment, thinks I, and sure enough, just as we were trying to manhandle one of the store-wagons over a little white bridge at the far side of the maidan, where the trees began, there was a crackle of firing off to one side, and sudden shouting, and then more shots.

  The driver of my store-wagon tried to whip up in alarm, a wheel caught on the bridge, and I and two civilians were struggling to keep it steady when Whiting comes up at the run, cocking his musket and demanding to know what the row was. In the same moment one of our corporals came flying out of the wood, rolled clean under the wagon in front of us, and jumps up yelling:

  "Quick, sir — come quick! Them devils is murthering Colonel Ewart! They got 'im in the trees yonder, an' —"

  Whiting sprang forward with an oath, but quick as light one of the mutineers who'd been watching us at the bridge jumps in his way and flung his arm round him. For a moment I thought, oh God, now they're going to ambush us, and the corporal must have thought the same, for he whipped out his bayonet, but the mutineer holding Whiting was just trying to keep him back and shouting:

  "Nahin, sahib
, khabadar!*(*Take care!) If you go there, they will kill you! Let be, sahib! Go on — to the river!"

  Whiting swore, and struggled with him, but the mutineer — a big, black-moustached havildar with a Chillianwallah medal — threw him down and wrested his musket away. Whiting came up, furious, but the corporal under-stood, and grabbed his wrist.

  " 'E's right, sir! Them swine'll just sarf karot you, like they done the colonel! We got to git on to the river, like 'e says! Otherwise, maybe they'll do for everybody — the wimmen an' kids an' all, sir!"

  He was right, of course — I'd been through the same sort of retreat as this, back in Afghanistan, and you've got to allow for a few stray slaughters and turn a blind eye, or the next thing you know you'll have a battle on your hands. Even Whiting realised it, I think, for he wheeled on the havildar and says:

  "I must see. Will you come with me?"

  The fellow says, "Han, sahib", and they strode into the trees. It seemed a sensible time to be getting on down to the river, so I told the corporal I must inform Wheeler of what was happening, ordered him to see the store-wagon safely over the bridge, and jumped up on to the coping, running past the carts ahead, with their passengers demanding to know what was happening. I hurried on through the trees, and found myself looking down the slope to the Suttee Choura Ghat, and beyond it the broad, placid expanse of the Ganges.

  The slope was alive with people. The foremost wagons had reached the landing-stage, and our folk were already getting out and making their way to the water's edge, where a great line of thatched, clumsy-looking barges was anchored in the shallows. The wagons nearer me were splitting away from the convoy to get closer to the water, and everything was in confusion, with some people getting out and others sitting tight. Already the ground was littered with abandoned gear, the stretchers with the wounded were being unloaded just anywhere; groups of women and children were waiting, wondering which way to go, while their menfolk, red in the face and shouting, demanded to know what the orders for embarkation were. Someone was calling, "All ladies with small children are to go in numbers twelve to sixteen!" but no one knew which barges were which, and you couldn't hear yourself think above the elephants squealing and the babble of voices.