The Passage to India

by Allan Mallinson

  In saying this he’d laughed. ‘Yet Helena’s a thousand miles nor’-east. How this place’d be the least bit useful’s beyond me. Winds and currents, Colonel Hervey: all wrong.’

  But, he said, Cloete and his men had gone at it with a will, and soon there were a hundred souls – women and children too – living on what had thitherto been an empty island. Then, just a year on, when London must have looked at a few charts (he’d laughed again), Cloete’s party was withdrawn – except for half a dozen families who’d asked to remain.

  When, therefore, the Pyramus hove to off the island’s only settlement, which clung to a tiny plateau at the north-west corner (Harewood said it was more a ledge), her passengers had been in keen anticipation of a walk ashore after so many weeks at sea. This, however, at first proved impossible, so treacherous were the waters. Instead, the ‘Governor’ – the corporal of artillery who’d elected to stay fifteen years ago – came out in a whaleboat.

  The next day, though, the wind had dropped appreciably, and although Captain Harewood was yet reluctant, he eventually consented to lowering a boat. That evening, Hervey would add to his long letter home:

  They looked very healthy and comfortable and cared not a jot for anything out of their island, and did not ask one question concerning anything outside their own little rock. The Captain gave the party which came out the first day a good supper and plenty of valuable presents, and everybody made up a parcel of clothes or some little oddments. They said what they most wanted was nails, as the wind had lately blown down their houses. They have fifty head of cattle and a hundred sheep; a little corn, twelve acres of potatoes, plenty of apples and pears, and I was curious to know whether old Corporal Glass, the ‘Governor’, was truly master, and whether the others minded him; but he said no one was master; that the men never quarrel, but the women do; that they have no laws nor rules, and are all very happy together; and that no one ever interferes with another.

  Old Glass does a great deal of extra work; he is schoolmaster to the children, and says many of his scholars can read the Bible ‘quite pretty’. He is also chaplain, — buries and christens, and reads the service every Sunday, ‘all according to the Church of England, Sir’. They had only Blair’s Sermons, which they have read every Sunday for the last ten years, ever since they have possessed them; but he said, very innocently, ‘We do not understand them yet: I suppose they are too good for us. Yet our faith is our strength.’ Of course they were well supplied with books before they left us.

  They make all their own clothes out of canvas given them by the passing whalers; they sew them with twine, and they looked very respectable: but they said it was not so easy to dress the ladies, and they were exceedingly glad of any old clothes we could rummage out for them. Their shoes are made of seal-skin: they put their feet into the skin while it is moist, and let it dry to the shape of the foot, and it turns out a very tidy shoe.

  At this, Kezia declared that she would like to visit with them if the sea permitted next day, which it did, though I confess I was fearful that it might suddenly change and we would be left marooned. I was much moved by her intrepidity, and also her generosity, for she gathered all the clothes she might, silks and all, to take to the ladies of the island, saying she could find more at the Cape and Madras and was sorry for several things she had left behind in England which would have been treasures to Mrs. Glass, especially worsted for knitting.

  She is so wholly restored that I cannot begin to say how delightful is this passage …

  They weighed anchor sharp the following morning. Pyramus gave the ‘Governor’ a salute of one gun and two rockets, which he returned by bonfire on the shore, and then beat north-east into the freshening trade.

  It was indeed a good time to be making the passage, for the southwest monsoon blew from October to April, which they’d now be able to pick up soon after the Cape. After Madeira they’d run fast south to seaward of the Cape Verdes, then west almost to the coast of Brazil to get the south-east trades on the beam and pick up the westerlies. Indiamen put in at Saint Helena homebound, said Captain Harewood, but rarely on the passage out; and Tristan the same. With these winds, he reckoned, a fortnight should see them in Table Bay.

  He reckoned accurately, too – and welcome it was. The winds had been fair, and Pyramus had run a hundred and fifty miles a day with sail to spare. The seas had been unfriendly, however – a constant rolling, day and night. Table Bay had come none too soon.

  Hervey met old friends again, not least Colonel Harry Smith (and his wife), who told him there’d be more trouble with the Xhosa ere long, which made him envious, for the Cape colony was a fine place for campaigning. Hervey and Kezia hired horses each day and rode quite alone. The country was not so pretty as Madeira, perhaps, but they went by way of some fine views, as he best remembered, and Kezia was charmed by the white sand covered with flowers, which she said were those of the English hothouse, growing wild. They went to the English church on the Sunday, and then to the Cloete estates, where Kezia played a little. The following day they rode on Table Mountain, and in an hour more would have made the top had not the ‘Table-cloth’ descended. Hervey had then taken Kezia’s reins to pick their way back, until they cleared the mist and, once more into the sunshine, they made a picnic by a stream.

  And as they returned to their quarters in the Castle of Good Hope – such a heartening name – he was half-minded to cast aside all ambition and obligation and stay in this place, build a house, sow ‘English hothouse’ flowers; and plant cabbages.

  In two days more, however, duty called him back to the Pyramus, and he turned his face to the east – yet this time with a wife at his side. As the tug steamed clear of Green Point and the wind began to fill the mains’l, Kezia slipped an arm through his. ‘To a Calm Sea, and a Prosperous Voyage,’ she whispered, leaning her head on his shoulder.

  But as Hervey had supposed, a truly prosperous voyage could not come of a calm sea. The run to Madras was certainly prosperous – a succession of gales, often contrary, and a chopping sea pitching and tossing all aboard every which way. And Captain Harewood, whenever asked what prospect of change, would simply answer, ‘There seems a fresh hand at the bellows.’ But there were sudden calms too, when least expected, so that the captain concluded there’d been a hurricane somewhere which had ‘upset all the winds’. Several of the passengers grew tired of one another and squabbled a little for amusement, as the captain said was always the case after rounding the Cape. Not, of course, that sea and weather discomposed the advance party of the 6th Light Dragoons, although Corporal Johnson sailed close to the wind one morning with an ensign of the Company’s army whom he thought was getting above himself; and Serjeant Acton almost came to blows with one of the mates who objected to his practice with the sabre; and Allegra’s governess spoke her mind to some ladies who’d joined at the Cape and made disapproving remarks about her calisthenic exercises (they were poor specimens of their sex, she told them).

  Two months was indeed a long time in a chopping sea. At the Cape, Hervey had wished they’d been bound for Fort William, for it was the northern presidency that had so beguiled him, but not long out he’d been glad to think their ordeal would end at Fort St George. In the event, however, once they’d broached the Bay of Bengal, the wind came offshore and they were able to beat up the coast of Coromandel so close that the scent of the land ran with them, part dust, part spice, and all tranquillity – Paradise, whether lost or regained …

  As when to them who sail

  Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past

  Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow

  Sabean odours from the spicey shore

  Of Araby the blest, with such delay

  Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league

  Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.

  And then came the best of days for landing – no surf to speak of. In England he’d several times bathed in a worse sea, and now thought his warning
earlier to Kezia had been ill-judged, although how they would get ashore the Broadwood did not bear thinking.

  That the Madras surf should as a rule be so formidable was curious. He’d seen Masoolah boats here as nearly as possible upset by waves that looked nothing – as the time when Jessye had seemed to falter, and he’d slipped from the boat to swim alongside her (at Corunna he’d seen strong horses drown in their panic). She’d settled at once, but he was not as fast through the water, and so a little abashed he’d had to grab hold of her mane. Once settled to the rhythm, though, they’d both enjoyed it – more, for sure, than the times they’d swum the half-frozen rivers of Spain – and in no time were amid the breakers, where Jessye had found her footing and he’d been able to get astride, and on to the strand to the acclamation of natives and sahibs alike.

  Fifteen years – more – it had been. Kezia smiled; she wished he were bringing his charger now, to swim ashore as colonel of the coming regiment, for there was, she said, nothing he could not do.

  And Hervey smiled too, for with Kezia’s arm in his there was nothing he mightn’t hazard. He pointed out the great fort of St George, where Robert Clive had begun his service, a beginning that had taken him to Plassey and immortality. Its massive walls enclosed buildings of such grace and proportion, he said, that Wren himself might have been here (the spire of St Mary’s Church, standing proud of the fort, looked like any in the square mile of the City of London). And soon they could make out the palazzos along the shore, colonnaded, perfectly white, bespeaking a dignified wealth, a confident power – a mile and more of them. How strange he recalled it that first time: he’d expected a more ‘native’ picture – the jungle encroaching; domes and towers; ‘Cholamandalam’ – the realm of the ancient Cholas, which the Portuguese had turned into the dreamlike Coromandel. But this wasn’t native India; this was John Company’s India – the best of all possible worlds.

  The coast of Coromandel was indeed highly favoured, for it lay in the shadow of the Western Ghats, the hills – mountains – which from January to October barred the south-west monsoons, so that far less rain fell here than in the rest of India, though in October, when for three months the monsoons came from the east, there were fearful hurricanes. Then, he said, it would be best to take a house in the interior.

  Yet that would depend upon the Rajah of Coorg …

  Coromandel! What a scene was the Madras Roads: Indiamen, boats of every size and shape, catamarans – three logs lashed together each morning, untied and left to dry when they came in again at evening – with crouching crew (three, two or sometimes just one), paddles digging at the water. Kezia was enchanted; as was Allegra too.

  Then the big Masoolah boats were alongside – shallow draught, a dozen boatmen all singing a queer kind of howl to keep time with the oars, half naked. First Allegra and then Kezia edged cautiously along the gangplank, and into Hervey’s arms. Kezia hesitated only momentarily, for she stepped not just for herself.

  How did she know it; by what annunciation? If only the good Dr Milne had been with them, for the Pyramus’s ‘experienced surgeon’ had not looked a man much practised in such matters. But she knew. She knew because it had been thus with Allegra; it was not the ‘chopping sea’ that made her sick each morning, or the change of air that made the months pass without curse.

  And she knew in her heart the moment of the passionate conception.

  * * *

  ‘BLOWN TO KINGDOM come, they were, Colonel – or to wherever it is these ’eathens go. I never saw anything its like. Nothing left of the four of ’em but scraps for the vultures ’n’ jackals.’

  The riding-master recounted the proceedings perfectly dispassionately, neither approving nor disapproving, merely in awe of the Company’s powers of summary justice. Hanging – or, exceptionally, where the exigencies of a campaign required, a firing party – was the usual means of execution. But here the Mughals had begun the practice of fastening a condemned man to the muzzle of a cannon so as to strike holy fear into an adversary, for to be blown apart was to be denied the necessary funeral rites, and thus for believers – Hindoo and Mohammedan alike – the punishment extended beyond death.

  ‘Heads flying straight in the air, arms left and right … and legs – what were left of ’em – just falling where they’d stood; and everything else just blown away altogether, not a vestige to be seen.’

  ‘Yes, RM, I saw it once in Bengal. An unwholesome sight,’ said Hervey, running his hands along the flank of yet another rough, trying to take in the measure of the remount party’s work in the two months it had been here – and not greatly inclined to hear the riding-master’s account of explosive dismemberment.

  ‘And not a murmur in the ranks. They took it like good soldiers; I’ll say that for ’em, Colonel. Mind, there were guns trained on ’em too, and the Thirteenth were ranked behind with their sabres drawn. Fine thing of a Christmas Eve.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Hervey was trying hard to be congenial. Kewley had come to the Sixth full of the gospel of St John’s Wood and delight in his new commission after twenty years in the ranks of the 7th Hussars. The Seventh stood only next in seniority in the line, but they might as well have been double-figured foot for the way they did things, and Kewley had yet to get the measure of his new regiment. He was able, of that there was no doubt, but not a man given to contemplation.

  ‘How did you find the Thirteenth – their horses? All Deccanis?’

  ‘Almost all of them, Colonel. Grand little things, but you’ll know that.’

  Indeed he did. The Maharattas’ cavalry had out-marched the Company’s many a time in the late wars – sixty miles in a day for weeks, even months, on end – and their horses had impressed him at Chintal. Since then, he’d learned, the Nizam had brought hundreds of Arabians to put to his native Deccan stock, so that now a Deccani remount had all the good points of the Arab – fine limbs, broad forehead, and docility – but without its thin skin, or its irritability when roughly handled (and the feet were generally better too). Besides endurance they also had a turn of speed: the commissary at Fort St George had told him a Deccani at the Guindy course had recently won over a straight half-mile in just 58 seconds – and that it would jump four feet carrying the same ten stone.

  ‘Well, you did service by getting fifty of them, and I look forward to seeing them. But these Australians – New South Walers you call them? – they’re truly admirable. I’d no notion. What a prodigious journey to make.’

  The veterinary surgeon appeared, looking anxious. ‘I beg pardon, Colonel. I only just got word you were in the lines. One of the governor’s mares is foaling and—’

  Hervey returned the awkward salute and smiled encouragingly. ‘No need of explanation, Mr Gaskoin. A foaling mare takes precedence.’

  It had taken some time to warm to the veterinarian, whose manners and appearance were not those of a gentleman, though this was only to be expected, for the occupation was not one that commended itself to a gentleman; except that of late years the Sixth had been fortunate in having men who had acquired the attributes (and even, at times, the appearance) of gentlemen. Thomas Gaskoin, on the other hand, had the air of the ostler’s yard, or the corn-market, and looked more like an old-fashioned farrier than a modern practitioner of the ‘science’ imparted at the college in Camden. Yet Gaskoin had gained high marks there, and in all practical respects was as good a veterinarian as those who’d gone before. In some ways, indeed, he was in advance of their thinking. It was rather that he’d been slow to comprehend the practice – the prejudice – of the regiment. And yet, he’d been one of the first to declare for India – and Hervey was conscious of it.

  ‘I was saying that these New South Walers are truly admirable.’

  ‘Truly admirable, Colonel, yes. The cavalry board here wouldn’t take those the Bengal studs were sending them, so they looked south instead. The trouble is, as I understand it – begging your leave, Colonel – horses bred here are small under the knee and deficient of b
one and substance.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, Mr Gaskoin, though the Marwari’s a fine animal. Some defect in the breeding regimen perhaps?’

  ‘Colonel Watercain’s of the mind that it’s vain to suppose an English blood can be reared in India – not one of equal bone and sinew as at home, that is. Or go well in crosses. There aren’t the nutritious grasses. You can’t grow lucerne in these climes. So any stud’ll see a deterioration.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Hervey hadn’t known the Veterinary Surgeon-General’s opinion on the matter.

  ‘Ah, I should say, Colonel, that I took the liberty of going to see him before we left.’

  ‘Most commendable, Mr Gaskoin.’ It was indeed. He just wished he could find Gaskoin more to his liking, for there was daily evidence of his attentiveness.

  ‘Thank you, Colonel. Colonel Watercain gave it as his opinion that horses should be entire and at least half-bred, and up to seventeen stone, though I myself thought fifteen was enough for our dragoons, not being big men, and riding light as you have them.’

  ‘Generally so, yes.’

  ‘But these Australians all ride bigger than they look. They’ll certainly carry seventeen. They’re all four-to seven-year-olds, shipped last summer, and all broken, though the RM’s men have still got work to do.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but they are indeed uncommon fine looking. Three hundred, you say?’

  ‘Aye, Colonel – and ten to be precise. Six hundred rupees a head.’

  ‘Admirable. Three months – once they’re here – and the regiment’ll be ready for the field. If the saddler and farriers look sharp, that is. I congratulate you, Mr Gaskoin, and you, RM – for both the Deccanis and these. The commissary told me you insisted on trying every one of the five hundred at the depot.’

  It was their job to, but a job well done nevertheless (and the Duke of Wellington had once said he should himself have given more praise …).