Bugles at Dawn

by Charles Whiting

  Somehow he held on and with the last of his strength climbed up into the lip of the hole and slumped there like a sack, staring at the silver snake of the River Burra far below...

  Two hundred miles to the south at Musulipatan at that very same moment Georgina Lanham squatted in the middle of her father’s changing room, directly under the punkah. She had removed her dress. Now clad in her silken shift, which clung to her every contour with perspiration, she moaned, ‘Oh, but Papa, Rodney is so fat — and a terrible bore! All he talks about is Prinny’ — she mimicked his accent cruelly — ‘and the regiment. Those damned toy soldiers of his!’ She mopped her glistening face with a lace handkerchief, while the Collector, clad in his dressing gown, watched her from his chair. Ever since she had come back from England, he told himself, trying not to look at her breasts straining at the thin material of her shift, she had become more and more outrageous. The sooner she was married, the better for everyone concerned, including himself.

  ‘Rodney is a very rich and well-connected young man,’ he lectured her. ‘Count yourself very lucky that this war with the Mahrattas has brought a man of his calibre to India.’

  ‘The war!’ she snorted. ‘This boring war — that’s all men talk about, especially those who have stayed behind here, while the others have gone to fight.’ She sighed and dabbed her handkerchief with cologne. ‘When will the really amusing men come back?’ Her question was rhetorical, but the Collector thought she required an answer.

  With mock solemnity, he said, ‘Major Rathbone is definitely dead. A gallant officer, dying at the head of his squadron like that! And that other young fellow, Lieutenant Bold.’ He flashed her a look, but she didn’t respond to the name. ‘He has been long considered dead by Lord Hastings’ staff, Georgina.’

  Her expression remained petulant and bored. The Collector frowned. Her mother had looked like that often before she had become the evil-tempered, lazy shrew who had been — fortunately — carried off by fever. Women in India, who had nothing better to do but flirt and gossip, often became like that, taking out their unreasoning rages on their long-suffering husbands and servants. ‘Georgina, the time for you to get wed has arrived. If Rodney asks me for your hand in marriage, then I think it is your duty to accept, do you hear? The Colonel is rich and is in society with absolutely the best connections.’ He lowered his voice in case the servants were still up and listening. He did not want gup in the bazaar on the morrow. ‘What matters it that he is fat and a bore, Georgina? You will be in England and in the finest society. There will be opportunities to meet ...’ he hesitated, wondering how to put it, ‘well, to meet other — er — people!’

  For a few moments Georgina thought of Rathbone and Bold, and compared them with Rodney. She knew instinctively he would be no good in bed, all panting and puffing and no performance. But her father was right. There would be ‘other people’. She yawned, those dead young men already slipping back into the furthest recesses of her mind, and said lazily, ‘I suppose you’re right, Papa’ ...

  And on that dark cliff face John Bold sweated for his life.

  FIVE

  Twice they had passed rooms occupied by their enemies. But with their feet bare, they had glided by noiselessly and unobserved. Once a dark shape had shot out in front of them, magnified enormously by the light of a pitch torch fixed in a bracket high on the wall. But whoever it was, he had not noticed them. A moment later they had heard the hiss of water rattling into an empty pot and Jones had grinned.

  Now they were almost out of the upper fort and John was still amazed at how easy it had been so far. The huge place, which housed the Ranee herself, seemed virtually unguarded. He could only surmise that some of the Ranee’s troops had been sent to the border to prepare for Hastings’ invasion. He prayed that whatever cavalry she had under the command of Nom de Dieu’s Frenchmen had gone too. For once they had a boat, only cavalry could stop them.

  Sergeant Jones stopped abruptly. To their immediate front a guard was lounging, and there was no mistaking the outline of the long musket which he had cradled to his chest. For a moment John was mesmerized. The man had his back to them, but if he had his forefinger crooked around the trigger and they attacked him, it would go off and the alarm would be sounded.

  Then Jones picked up a pebble. Carefully, like a bowlsman in the newfangled game of cricket, he measured the distance to the lounging guard, and lobbed the pebble forward, as the bowlsman did with the wooden ball.

  It struck the ground to the immediate front of the guard. As Jones had anticipated, the man bent down to see what it was, using his musket as a support. Jones dived forward. The two of them slammed to the ground. The native opened his mouth to scream a warning but Jones didn’t give him the chance. His clubbed right fist came down with all his strength on the back of the man’s thin neck. He went out like a light, the scream stifled.

  A minute later they were outside, John armed with the ancient musket, Jones with the sentry’s sword. Silently, like grey ghosts in the night they made their way down the slope to the lower fort, slinking in the shadows, darting swiftly through patches of moonlight, hearts thumping madly, bodies tense for the first shot, the first cry of alarm. But none came. The whole of Burrapore had seemingly gone to sleep.

  They entered a kind of tunnel, an ancient, covered structure which in time of siege would protect the defenders moving from one fort to the other. It dripped with moisture, the floor treacherous and slippery. More than once they heard the horrid scurrying of fleeing rats.

  The escape plan John had formulated was straightforward. He and Jones would first release the sowars, half of whom would be sent direct to the river to secure a boat. The rest would help to free and evacuate the women and children.

  To the immediate left of the entrance to the lower fort, there was an area of dead ground, both inside and outside the defensive wall. With a bit of luck, if fate smiled kindly upon them, the first group of sowars would be over the wall and away undetected. The real danger would come when getting the women and children over the wall. Even as he hurried through the slimy tunnel John worried at this difficulty. Then he had it. The diversion. Hastily, he told Jones what he wanted the first party of sowars to do once they’d secured a boat.

  Jones nodded his understanding and hissed, ‘It’ll be risky, sir. But it’s the only thing we can do. I’ll do my best, sir,’ he added loyally.

  ‘I know you will, Sergeant Jones,’ John said warmly. ‘You have always done so. In our adversity, I could not have wished for a better subordinate — and friend!’

  Thankful for the cover of darkness, Jones blushed.

  Moments later the tunnel ended. They crouched in the shadows, eyeing the entrance to the lower fort. Two flambeaux flickered fitfully by the unguarded door.

  John tugged the end of his nose in a mixture of irritation and disbelief. It was all too easy. Here were half a hundred prisoners or more, on whom the Ranee of Burrapore was pinning her hopes of coercing Lord Hastings into doing her will — and they were unguarded! It hardly seemed possible. But as he tensed there, ear cocked to catch even the slightest sound, he could hear nothing. Perhaps the Indians in their usual sloppy careless way were really all sleeping?

  Anyway, asleep or not, there was no time to waste. He nudged Sergeant Jones, who nodded and indicated the door with his sword.

  They stole forward into the light. Nothing stirred, although they were in full view of any observer now. John crouched, match-lock at the ready, as Jones swung open the great door carefully.

  It squeaked rustily and John’s hands on the ancient weapon broke out into a sweat. God, he thought, everyone in Burrapore must hear the damned sound!

  No one did.

  Jones went in first and found nothing save the stench of unwashed bodies, animal droppings and ancient cruelties. Cautiously John followed the crouched sergeant and closed the door behind him, praying that it would not squeak so much. It did.

  To either side now in the dim light were set
small barred doors, one every few feet or so. They were the doors of cells in which, John guessed, a man could neither stand up nor stretch. The prisoner would be condemned to crouch in the tight box in a way that some Irish Paddy might keep a pig for fattening, not allowing it to move more than was necessary. But each cell as they crept by was empty. The sowars were elsewhere.

  They passed a bamboo chair, bench and European-style desk. They, too, were unattended, but someone, perhaps the guards, had occupied them recently, for there was a half-eaten chappati on the desk and when Jones touched it, it was still warm. They weren’t all alone in the cell block after all.

  They pressed on deeper into the building, and from the increasing stench it was obvious that they were close to a large number of unwashed humanity. Now they could hear the occasional muffled cough — the sort of cough John remembered from school when the cougher is afraid of making too much noise in case he brought trouble on himself. Once they heard a soft fart.

  He paused and whispered in Jones’ ear, ‘It’s them, I’m sure.’

  Jones had raised his head and was sniffing the warm air like a game dog. ‘Natives, sir,’ he hissed. ‘Can smell ‘em. No mistaking that niggah smell.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To our front.’ Jones gripped the curved sword more firmly and they turned a corner cautiously. To their front was a room lit by flickering pitch torches and there, around a rough table in the centre, were a good half dozen guards, some dozing with their heads slumped on the uneven boards, others half awake, stolidly chewing on betel nut, pausing only to spit a lazy stream of red juice on to the already filthy floor.

  John knew immediately that they could not outwit the guards. They’d have to fight, and their only chance of success was to take them by surprise. Hastily he whispered his orders and Jones nodded, the gleam of battle in his eyes. Under his breath, as he raised the matchlock and took aim, John started to count off three seconds.

  ‘THREE!’ In that same instant, John fired. A blast of fire. Gunpowder. A tremendous deafening echo in the tight confines of that underground chamber, and as Jones leapt forward, the nearest guard was lifted from his perch by the impact of the close-range ball and slammed against the wall to crumple like a broken doll.

  A cry of rage. The alarmed chatter of the awakened sowars. Jones’ sword hissed savagely. A guard trying to rise from the bench reeled back screaming, trying frantically to hold the two halves of his face together, as the bright blood seeped through his fingers.

  John darted in, swinging the matchlock like a club. A guard reeled back spitting out his teeth. Another swung his sword. John countered just in time. The killing blow belted against the butt of the matchlock. The impact nearly knocked the weapon out of his hands. But he recovered more quickly than the swordsman. He upturned the matchlock and smashed the butt cruelly into the swordsman’s chin and the man howled with pain and staggered back like some drunken dancer doing a complicated paso doble.

  At John’s shoulder Sergeant Jones, slashing his sabre to left and right with crazed energy, cursing fluently, his face streaming with great beads of sweat, flung the key neatly through the bars of the cell, directly into the outstretched hands of the gleeful, half-naked sowars. Next instant he parried a great swing by one of the guards and diving in underneath his sword, cried as if at a fencing academy, ‘Have that, sir!’ The point sliced right into the guard’s belly. His entrails fell out like a steaming grey snake.

  Now the sowars were fumbling madly with the key, while the guards, their surprise overcome now, were steadily pushing the two assailants back against the opposite wall. In the flickering blood-red light their swords flashed silver time and time again as they dealt out wild slashes and swipes, raising sparks on Jones’ sword as he parried them and cutting chunks of wood from the butt of John’s matchlock. But the pressure was mounting, a desperate John knew, and time was running out. Sooner or later the noise of this wild scuffle would penetrate to the outside and then the fat would be in the fire. Fervently he wished the sowars would get that damned door open and come to their aid. The two of them couldn’t hold off the guards much longer, damnit!

  He slipped on a patch of blood and went down on one knee. Opposite, a guard, face pocked and bearded, yelled in triumph and raised his two-handed sword high above his head. His intention was all too clear — to cleave John’s skull in two!

  That wasn’t to be.

  With a great roar the half-starved sowars burst out of the cell, surging forward, fists and arms flailing. The guards, screaming and shrieking for mercy, which didn’t come, disappeared beneath a pile of skinny, half-naked bodies. Feet stamped down hard on upturned faces. Cruel fingers gouged out eyes. Hands sought and found throats to stifle the lives of those who had tormented them savagely over long hard months of imprisonment.

  Minutes later it was all over. The floor was strewn with broken bodies as the jubilant prisoners grabbed the weapons available from those lifeless figures and began to form up into two groups under the command of their two white superiors. The final stage of the break-out was coming ...

  ‘Jhanto!’ — one pubic hair — the sowar cursed softly as he slipped in the water and fell to his knees.

  ‘Yoti!’ Jones cursed back, more to please the sowars, who enjoyed such sexual banter, than because he was angry. ‘Do you want to wake up the whole garrison?’

  They had secured the boat by now, a dhow, which was also equipped with oars. It was small, but they would all fit into it. Besides it was not too big for them to handle. Now all that was to be done, Jones told himself, was to plant the diversion and hope it would work long enough for Lieutenant Bold and the other sowars to get the women and children over the wall and dead ground and down to the Burra.

  He detailed two men to guard the boat while the rest hastened to gather the bhoosa, chopped straw and cattle fodder, which lay in great piles near the dhow.

  ‘Enough,’ he commanded sotto voce, when each trooper had a great armful of bone-dry stuff. ‘Chalo ... ’

  Bent low, they hastened forward to where the entrance of the lower fort was outlined a stark black against the faint silver of the moon. Here and there an anxious, tense Jones glimpsed the head and shoulders of a silent sentry between the crenellations of the battlements. He prayed that no one would spot his troopers before they got into position.

  Now like hurrying ghosts, the sowars spread the straw and fodder before the great oaken gate, glancing up constantly to see if they had been spotted. But they hadn’t. Twenty feet above them the sentries paced their beat, apparently completely unaware of the frantic activity below.

  Five minutes later all was ready. The sowars stole back to where Jones was waiting with his matchlock, trying to work out where Lieutenant Bold might be with the women. Suddenly, startlingly, there came the hoot of an English barn owl.

  It was the signal! The rescue had reached the wall. It was now or never. Jones raised the matchlock, aimed at the centre base of the gate where his troopers had piled a great heap of bhoosa, and prayed as he pulled the trigger.

  The darkness was split by a slash of scarlet flame. The ancient weapon slammed against Jones’ shoulder, and from above a startled voice cried, ‘Khon hy?’ The red-hot musket ball sliced into the fodder, hit the gate and dropped back into the pile, which started to glow immediately. The sowars cheered. Already the first greedy little blue flames were beginning to lick upwards.

  ‘Yih Angrezi hy?’ another angry-startled voice demanded from above, as dark faces under turbans peered down at the flames.

  ‘Of course, we’re damned English!’ Jones cried angrily, ramming home another charge, hoping that Bold was now heaving the women and nippers over the wall. ‘When I give the order,’ he commanded at the top of his voice, as if leading a whole battalion to the assault, ‘open fire ... Fire!’

  He squeezed off a shot at a sentry poised above the gate, clearly outlined by the leaping flames. The man screamed, flung up his arms as if climbing an invisible ladder, the
n disappeared backwards into the courtyard.

  That did it. In an instant all was confusion along the wall overlooking the great gate. Sentries ran back and forth crying in panic, ‘The English attack ... sound the alarm ... the English attack!’ A wild fire fight broke out. Scarlet flame stabbed the darkness on all sides. Musket balls hissed through the night, as the whole length of the gate was engulfed by flames. Somewhere a bugle blared. There came the sound of running feet — many running feet. Jones knew he could not wait any longer. Firing one last shot, he yelled above the angry snap-and-crackle of the small arms battle, ‘Charge!!...’ and with a cheeky grin on his wizened face, indicated that his men should run not forward but back — for the river.

  SIX

  Much later, three months after those dramatic events in Central India, in fact, the Old Thunderer would report in its issue of 6 September 1816:

  As our Troops were crossing an Arm of the River Sipra, the Enemy’s left was brought forward in anticipation of an attack and a destructive fire of grape and shell was opened upon the British. Encouraged, however, by the gallant example of Sir John Malcolm and Lieutenant-Colonel McGregor Murray, the Royal Scots rushed forward in the face of this tremendous fire and the Village and the Batteries were carried at the point of the Bayonet. The enemy’s artillerymen were resolute and stood their ground until they were finally bayoneted.

  While the British were victorious at this point, the enemy’s Right was overpowered and his Centre gave way upon the appearance of Sepoy Brigade ascending confidently from the margin of the Sipra. While the Rest of his troops occupying a position where their camp stood also fled on the gradual advance of the British forces, who came on firing, with a Cloud of smoke rolling before them. In taking the guns the Royals had Lieutenant McCleod killed and Lieutenants McGregor and Campbell wounded. Their other losses were only Forty men.

  The remnants of Holkar’s forces fled to Ramporra, a large Walled town in the heart of the Province of Malwa, one of the innumerable places called after Ram, the Hindoo demigod. In the pursuit which was continued along both banks of the Sipra by Sir John Campbell and Captain Grant immense Booty was taken, including many elephants and hundreds of camels.