He wasn’t mad, I’d decided; he was just an ordinary little man suddenly at war. I’ve seen it scores of times. He had reason, too; I, who had been at Meerut and Jhansi, was the last to deny that. His followers were the same; while the Sikhs threw lines over the branches, they sat and stared their hatred at the prisoners; I glanced along and noted the bright eyes, the clenched teeth, the tongues moistening the lips, and thought to myself, you’ve taken right smartly to nigger-killing, my boys. Well, good luck to you; you’ll make the pandies sorry they ever broke ranks before you’re done.
They didn’t look sorry at the moment, mind, just sullen as the Sikhs knotted the ropes round their necks – except for one of them, a fat scoundrel in a dhoti who shrieked and struggled and blubbered and even broke free for a moment and flung himself grovelling before Rowbotham until they dragged him back again. He collapsed in the dust, beating the earth with his hands and feet while the others stood resigned; Cheeseman says:
“Shall we put ’em on horses, sir – makes it quicker?”
“No!” cries Rowbotham. “How often must I tell you – I do not wish to make it quicker for these … these villains! They are being hanged as a punishment, Mr Cheeseman – it is not my design to make it easy for them! Let them suffer – and the longer the better! Will it atone for the atrocities they have wrought? No, not if they were flayed alive! You hear that, you rascals?” He shook his fist at them. “You know now the price of mutiny and murder – in a moment you shall pay it, and you may thank whatever false God you worship that you obtain a merciful death – you who did not scruple to torture and defile the innocent!” He was raving by now, with both hands in the air, and then he noticed again the dead fellow lying in the road, and roared to the Sikhs to string him up as well, so that they should all hang together as a token of justice. While they were manhandling the corpse he rode along behind the prisoners, examining each knot jealously, and then, so help me, he whipped off his hat and began to pray aloud, beseeching a Merciful God, as he put it, to witness what just retribution they were meting out in His name, and putting in a word for the condemned, although he managed to convey that a few thousand years in hell wouldn’t do them any harm.
Then he solemnly told the Sikhs to haul away, and they tailed on the ropes and swung the pandies into the air, the fat one screeching horribly. He wasn’t a mutineer, I was certain, but it probably wouldn’t have been tactful to mention that just then. The others gasped and thrashed about, clutching at their halters – now I saw why they hadn’t tied their hands, for three of them managed to clutch the ropes and haul themselves up, while the others choked and turned blue and presently hung there, twitching and swaying gently in the sunlight. Everyone was craning to watch the struggles of the three who had got their hands on the ropes, pulling themselves up to take the choking strain off their necks; they kicked and screamed now, swinging wildly to and fro; you could see their muscles quivering with the appalling strain.
“Five to one on the Rajput,” says O’Toole, fumbling in his pockets.
“Gammon,” says another. “He’s no stayer; I’ll give evens on the little ’un – less weight to support, you see.”
“Neither of ’em’s fit to swing alongside that artillery havildar we caught near Barthana,” says a third. “Remember, the one old J.K. found hiding under the old woman’s charpoy. I thought he’d hang on forever – how long was it, Cheese?”
“Six and a half minutes,” says Cheeseman. He had his foot cocked up on his saddle and was scribbling in a notebook. “That’s eighty-six, by the way, with today’s batch –” he nodded towards the struggling figures. “Counting the three shot last night, but not the ones we killed in the Mainpuri road ambush. Should knock up our century by tomorrow night, with luck.”
“I say, that’s not bad – hollo, O’Toole, there goes your Rajput! Bad luck, old son – five chips, what? Told you my bantam was the form horse, didn’t I?”
“Here – he’ll be loose in a moment, though! Look!” O’Toole pointed to the small sepoy, who had managed to pull himself well up his rope, getting his elbow in the bight of it, and was tugging at the noose with his other hand. One of the Sikhs sprang up to haul at his ankles, but Rowbotham barked an order and then, drawing his revolver, took careful aim and shot the sepoy through the body. The man jerked convulsively and then fell, his head snapping back as the rope tightened; someone laughed and sang out “Shame!” while another huzzaed, and then they all had their pistols out, banging away at the hanging figures which twitched and swung under the impact of the bullets.
“Take that, you bastard!” “There – that’s for little Jane! And that – and that!” “How d’ye like it now, you black pig of a mutineer? I wish you had fifty lives to blow away!” “Die, damn you – and roast in hell!” “That’s for Johnson – that’s for Mrs Fox – that, that, and that for the Prices!” They wheeled their mounts under the corpses, which were running with blood now, blasting at them point-blank.
“Too bloody good for ’em!” cries the white-bearded chap in the straw hat, as he fumbled feverishly to reload. “The colonel’s right – we ought to be flaying ’em alive, after what they’ve done! Take that, you devil! Or burning the brutes. I say, J.K., why ain’t we burnin’ ’em?”
They banged away, until Rowbotham called a halt, and their frenzy died down; the smoking pistols were put away, and the column fell in, with the flies buzzing thickly over the eight growing pools of blood beneath the bodies. I wasn’t surprised to see the riders suddenly quiet now, their excitement all spent; they sat heavy in their saddles, breathing deeply, while Cheeseman checked their dressing. It’s the usual way, with civilians suddenly plunged into war and given the chance to kill; for the first time, after years spent pushing pens and counting pennies, they’re suddenly free of all restraint, away from wives and families and responsibility, and able to indulge their animal instincts. They go a little crazy after a while, and if you can convince ’em they’re doing the Lord’s work, they soon start enjoying it. There’s nothing like a spirit of righteous retribution for kindling cruelty in a decent, kindly, God-fearing man – I, who am not one, and have never needed any virtuous excuse for my bestial indulgences, can tell you that. Now, having let off steam, they were sated, and some a little shocked at themselves, just as if they’d been whoring for the first time – which, of course, was something they’d never have dreamed of doing, proper little Christians that they were. If you ask me what I think of what I’d just witnessed – well, personally, I’d have backed O’Toole’s Rajput, and lost my money.
However, now that the bloody assizes was over, and Rowbotham and his merry men were ready to take the road again, I was able to get back to the business in hand, which was getting myself safely into Cawnpore. Fortunately they were headed that way themselves, since two weeks spent slaughtering pandies in the countryside had exhausted their forage and ammunition (the way they shot up corpses, I wasn’t surprised). But when, as we rode along, I questioned Rowbotham about how the land lay, and what the cannonading to the north signified, I was most disagreeably surprised by his answer; it couldn’t have been much worse news.
Cawnpore was under siege, right enough, and had been for two weeks. It seemed that Wheeler, unlike most commanders, had seen the trouble coming; he didn’t trust his sepoys a damned inch, and as soon as he heard of the Meerut rising he’d prepared a big new fortification in barracks on the eastern edge of Cawnpore city, with entrenchments and guns, so that if his four native regiments mutinied he could get inside it with every British civilian and loyal rifle in the place. He knew that the city itself, a great straggling place along the Ganges, was indefensible, and that he couldn’t have hoped to secure the great numbers of white civilians, women and children and all, unless he packed them into his new stronghold, which was by the racecourse, and had a good level field of fire all round.
So when the pandies did mutiny, there he was, all prepared, and for a fortnight he’d been giving them their bellyful, in spite of
the fact that the mutineers had been reinforced by the local native prince, Nana Dondu Pant Sahib, who’d turned traitor at the last minute. Rowbotham hadn’t the least doubt that the place would hold; rumours had reached him that help was already on its way, from Lucknow, forty miles to the north, and from Allahabad, which lay farther off, east along the Ganges.
This was all very well, but we were going to have to run the gauntlet to get inside, as I pointed out; wouldn’t it be better to skirt the place and make for Lucknow, which by all accounts was still free from mutiny? He wouldn’t have that, though; his troops needed supplies badly, and in the uncertain state of the country he must make for the nearest British garrison. Besides, he anticipated no difficulty about getting in; his Sikhs had already scouted the pandy besiegers, and while they were in great strength there was no order about their lines, and plenty of places to slip through. He’d even got a message in to Wheeler, giving him a time and signal for our arrival, so that we could win to the entrenchment without any danger of being mistaken for the enemy.
For a sawbones he was a most complete little bandolero, I’ll say that for him, but what he said gave me the blue fits straight off. Plainly, I’d jumped from the Jhansi frying-pan into the Cawnpore fire, but what the devil could I do about it? From what Rowbotham said, there wasn’t a safe bolt-hole between Agra and Allahabad; no one knew how many garrisons were still holding, and those that were couldn’t offer any safer refuge than Cawnpore; I daren’t try a run for Lucknow with Ilderim (God knew what state it might be in when we got there). A rapid, fearful calculation convinced me that there wasn’t a better bet than to stick with this little madman, and pray to God he knew what he was doing. After all, Wheeler was a good man – I’d known him in the Sikh war – and Rowbotham was positive he’d hold out easily and be relieved before long.
“And that will be the end of this wicked, abominable insurrection,” says he, when we made camp that night ten miles closer to Cawnpore, with the distant northern sky lighting to the flashes of gunfire, rumbling away unceasingly. “We know that our people are already investing Delhi, and must soon break down the rebel defences and pull that unclean creature who calls himself King off his traitor’s throne – that will be to root out the mischief at its heart. Then, when Lawrence moves south from Lucknow, and our other forces push up the river, this nest of rebels about Cawnpore will be trapped; destroy them, and the thing is done. Then it will only remain to restore order, and visit a merited punishment upon these scoundrels; they must be taught such a lesson as will never be forgotten – aye, if we have to destroy them by tens of thousands –” he was away again on that fine, rising bray which reminded me of the hangings that afternoon; his troopers, round the camp-fire, growled enthusiastically “– hundreds of thousands, even. Nothing less will serve if this foulness is to be crushed once for all. Mercy will be folly – it will be construed as mere weakness.”
This sermon provoked a happy little discussion on whether, when all the mutineers had been rounded up, they should be blown from guns, or hanged, or shot. Some favoured burning alive, and others flogging to death; the chap in the straw hat was strong for crucifixion, I remember, but another fellow thought that would be blasphemous. They got quite heated about it – and before you throw up your hands in pious horror, remember that many of them had seen their own families butchered in the kind of circumstances I’d witnessed myself at Meerut, and were thirsting to pay the pandies back with interest, which was reasonable enough. Also, they were convinced that if they didn’t make a dreadful example, it would lead to more outbreaks, and the slaughter of every white person in India – the fear of that, and the knowledge of the kind of wantonly cruel foe they were up against, hardened them as nothing else could have done.
It was all one to me, I may say; I was too anxious about coming safe into Cawnpore to worry about how they disposed of the mutineers – it seemed a trifle premature to me. They were the rummest lot, though; when they’d tired of devising means of execution they got into a great argument about whether hacking and carrying should be allowed in football, and as I was an old Rugby boy my support was naturally enlisted by the hackers – it must have been the strangest sight, when I come to think of it, me in my garb of hairy Pathan with poshteen and puggaree, maintaining that if you did away with scrimmaging you’d be ruining the manliest game there was (not that I’d go near a scrimmage if you paid me), and the white-bearded wallah, with the blood splashes still on his coat, denouncing the handling game as a barbarism. Most of the others joined in, on one side or the other, but there were some who sat apart brooding, reading their Bibles, sharpening their weapons, or just muttering to themselves; it wasn’t a canny company, and I can get the shivers thinking about them now.
They could soldier, though; how Rowbotham had licked them into shape in less than a month (and where he’d got the genius from) beat me altogether, but you never saw anything more workmanlike than the way they disposed their march next day, with flank riders and scouts, a twenty-pound forage bag behind each saddle, all their gear and arms padded with cloth so that they didn’t jingle, and even leather night-shoes for the horses slung on their cruppers. Pencherjevsky’s Cossacks and Custer’s scalp-hunters couldn’t have made a braver show than that motley gang of clerks and counter-jumpers that followed Rowbotham to Cawnpore.
We were coming in from the east, and since the pandy army was all concentrated close to Wheeler’s stronghold and in the city itself, we got within two or three miles before Rowbotham said we must lie up in a wood and wait for dark. Before then, by the way, we’d pounced on an outlying pandy picket in a grove and killed two of them, taking three more prisoner: they were strung up on the spot. Two more stragglers were caught farther on, and since there wasn’t a tree handy Rowbotham and the Sikh rissaldar cut their heads off. The Sikh settled his man with one swipe, but Rowbotham took three; he wasn’t much with a sabre. (Ninety-three not out, as Cheeseman put it.)
We lay up in the stuffy, sweltering heat of the wood all afternoon, listening to the incessant thunder of the cannonading; one consolation was the regular crash of the artillery salvoes, which indicated that Wheeler’s gunners were making good practice, and must still be well stocked with powder and shot. Even after nightfall they still kept cracking away, and one of the Sikhs, who had wormed his way up to within a quarter-mile of the entrenchment, reported that he had heard Wheeler’s sentries singing out “All’s well!” regular as clockwork.
About two in the morning Rowbotham called us together and gave his orders. “There is a clear way to the Allahabad road,” says he, “but before we reach it we must bear right to come in behind the rebel gun positions, no more than half a mile from the entrenchment. At precisely four o’clock I shall fire a rocket, on which we shall burst out of cover and ride for the entrenchment at our uttermost speed; the sentries, having seen our rocket, will pass us through. The word is ‘Britannia’. Now, remember, for your lives, that our goal lies to the left of the church, so keep that tower always to your right front. Our rush will take us past the racecourse and across the cricket pitch –”
“Oh, I say!” says someone. “Mind the wicket, though.”
“– and then we must put our horses to the entrenchment bank, which is four feet high. Now, God bless us all, and let us meet again within the lines or in Heaven.”
That’s just the kind of pious reminder of mortality I like, I must say; while the rest of ’em were shaking hands in the dark I was carefully instructing Ilderim that at all costs he must stick by my shoulder. I was in my normal state of chattering funk, and my spirits weren’t raised as we were filing out of the wood and I heard someone whisper:
“I say, Jinks, what’s the time?”
“Ten past three,” says Jinks, “on the bright summer morning of June the twenty-second – and let’s hope to God we see the twenty-third.”
June twenty-third; I knew that date – and suddenly I was back in the big panelled room at Balmoral, and Pam was saying “… the Raj w
ill come to an end a hundred years after the battle of Plassey … next June twenty-third.” By George, there was an omen for you! And now all round was the gloom, and the soft pad of the walking horses, and the reins sweating in my palms as we advanced interminably, my eyes glued to the faint dark shape of the rider ahead; there was a mutter of voices as we halted, and then we waited in the stifling dark between two rows of ruined houses – five minutes, ten, fifteen, and then a voice called “Ready, all!” There was the flare of a match, a curse, then a brighter glare, and suddenly a rush of sparks and an orange rocket shot up into the purple night sky, weaving like a comet, and as it burst to a chorus of cries and yells from far ahead Rowbotham shouts “Advance!” and we dug in our heels and fairly shot forward in a thundering mass.
There was a clear space ahead, and then a grove of trees, and beyond more level ground with dim shapes moving. As we bore down on them I realised that they must be pandies; we were charging the rear of their positions, and it was just light enough to make out the guns parked at intervals. There were shrieks of alarm and a crackle of shots, and then we were past, swerving between the gun-pits; there were horsemen ahead and either side and Ilderim crouched low in the saddle at my elbow. He yelled something and pointed right, and I saw an irregular tumbled outline which must be the church; to its left, directly ahead, little sparks of light were flashing in the distance – the entrenchment defenders were firing to cover us.
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