by V. A. Stuart
“They’re a foine sight, the Tips, are they not, sorr?” he asked unexpectedly. “Ah, will ye listen to them now . . . hark yez, me beauties, bark to Wanderer! Good bitch, Ranter . . . on, on, on! Sure, dere’s de ould dog-fox away up Cool-na-Cappogue from Killenaule Bottom and de whole pack streamin’ after him on a breast-high scent! Did ye ever see a foiner sight in all the world, Colonel, sorr, or hear any music the loike o’ that?”
His eyes had a faraway look in them, and Alex knew that he no longer saw the battered Moti Mahal Palace, no longer heard the crash of falling masonry or the thunder of the guns. Seamus Cullmane, long-serving private of Her Majesty’s 64th Regiment of Foot and one-time whipper-in to the Tipperary Hunt, was back with his “Gallant Tips” in the land that had bred him and, when his head fell back, he was smiling. His eyes were still open, but Alex had seen death too often not to recognize it now. He muttered a brief prayer, closed the staring, sightless eyes and, getting to his feet, called one of the orderlies over. In conditions like these, the living had to take precedence over the dead and empty doolies were at a premium, he was fully aware but, even so, he could not bring himself to remove Cullmane’s body from this one.
The evacuation of the wounded began half an hour later. Under the escort of 150 men—made up of walking wounded and a company of the 5th Fusiliers, commanded by Major Simmons—the long procession of laden doolies crossed the forty yards of exposed ground to Martin’s House without mishap.The rebel thirty-two-pounder on the opposite side of the river had not been put out of action but was being so fiercely engaged by the rear-guard’s howitzer that its gunners ignored the target presented by the doolies, and covering fire from the Moti Mahal protected them from all but a few random musket-balls.
It was, however, a different story when, after a brief halt, the slow-moving procession emerged from the sheltering walls of Martin’s garden enclosure. Throughout the time they had rested there, round shot from a second battery in the Badshah Bagh had been tearing through the scarred walls of the house itself and now this fire was concentrated on the train of wounded. It was at long range but, added to a savage fire of musketry from neighboring buildings, casualties began to mount. When they reached and started to cross the nullah, which was three feet deep in water, the thirty-two-pounder opened on them with grape and so many of the unfortunate doolie-bearers were cut down that the rear of the line was virtually slowed to a halt.
A number, as Alex had feared they would, yielded to panic. Deaf alike to the shouted orders of the escort and the pleas of the injured men they carried, the terrified natives ran blindly for cover across the rough, uneven ground, slithering and stumbling as they sought to avoid the bounding round shot.To their credit, few of them abandoned their heavy burdens and most headed in the direction they had been ordered to take, running a terrible gauntlet of fire before they gained their objective, to fling themselves down, spent and gasping, behind the outer wall of the Chutter Munzil garden. Some ran back to the comparative safety of the enclosure they had just left, from which they had to be driven at bayonet point by the escort, and Alex and his two sowars, endeavoring to curb the panic found themselves unhorsed as, for the third time, they galloped back to the nullah to be met by a hail of grape. Ghulam Rasul’s horse was the only one of the three to pick itself up, but it was seized by two wounded men, one of whom thrust the butt of his rifle into the daffadar’s face when he attempted to reclaim his mount.
On foot, sweating and shaken, they finally rejoined the rear of the train of wounded on the river side of the Chutter Munzil Palace, escorting two doolies, whose bearers had been induced to continue on their way by the threat of Alex’s revolver. Once out of the immediate danger of the enemy guns, order had been swiftly restored, and the head of the train was, Alex learned from a sergeant of the escort, already proceeding along the river bank toward the Residency, under the guidance of Bensley Thornhill. Wearily, his whole body aching from the fall he had taken, he set off after them, having given Ghulam Rasul permission to search for his stolen horse.
The worst, he told himself, was over; they were no longer under fire and the rest of the way to the Residency was under cover of the two palaces adjoining it, the Terhee Kothee and the Furhut Baksh, both of which were now in British hands. The doolie-bearers were chattering quite cheerfully among themselves, thankful to have survived their ordeal; they picked their way with care, and the poor sufferers, who had endured so much jolting agony during the panic rush across the open ground, were able, at last, to relax, confident that they would not again be flung down or abandoned.Alex paused to speak to one or two in passing, among them Lieutenant Arnold, who had led the Madras Fusiliers’ charge with splendid gallantry on the guns at the Char Bagh bridge the previous day.
Severely wounded in both thighs, the Blue Caps’ officer was in appalling pain, but he was conscious and he gratefully accepted the cheroot that Alex took from his dwindling supply and carefully lit for him.
“I’ll be damned glad when this is over, sir,” he confessed, teeth clamped firmly on the butt of the cheroot. “I shall have to lose my right leg, I fear, but . . .” he grinned wryly, “anything will be better than lying in this infernal doolie, never knowing when the blasted bearers are going to fling me out of it!”
“Don’t you worry about them, sir,” a voice offered from the other side of the curtained litter. “I’ll see the bastards keep you on an even keel. They’ll get my boot up their backsides if they don’t!”
“Ryan, isn’t it?” Arnold asked, raising himself with difficulty on one elbow. “Private Ryan of B Company? Come round where I can see you, lad.”
“Very good, sir.” A bony-faced young Blue Cap stepped across to the open curtain. A bandage, improvised from his shirttail, was wound about his shaven head, on top of which his forage cap, with its pale blue sun-curtain, was incongruously perched. “Mr. Arnold’s my officer, sir,” he told Alex. “I’ll see after him.”
Alex left him with the injured Arnold. Despite his weariness. he found himself hurrying, dodging between the straggling line of doolies in an effort to catch up with Thornhill and the main body of the escort, who were now some distance ahead, moving too fast for the sweating doolie-bearers to keep pace with them. Thornhill, he knew, was anxious to deliver Harry Havelock safely back to his father but . . . filled with a vague uneasiness, he quickened his own pace. The uneasiness became acute anxiety when, reaching the passageway that led from the riverside path to the interior of the Chutter Munzil, he saw that the column had taken a sharp turn to the left. One which . . . he drew in his breath sharply. Dear heaven! Instead of keeping straight on and approaching the Bailey Guard gate of the Residency through the two adjoining palaces as he had planned, Bensley Thornhill was apparently leading them along the route that the relieving force had followed the previous evening.
Yesterday, in darkness, the whole area had been swarming with rebel troops, every loopholed house and rooftop had been alive with armed men. The Highlanders and the Sikhs had sustained their heaviest casualties of the day there and . . . Alex hesitated for a moment, striving to get his bearings and then, like a man waking from a nightmare, he started to run. But, as he opened his mouth to yell at the column to halt, he knew that it was too late. The nightmare became hideous reality as, from a short distance ahead, came the crackle of musketry, which grew to a continuous fusillade, the high-pitched whine of Enfield and Minié rifles sounding above the deeper thud of Brown Bess muskets. Instantly the column was thrown into confusion. Some of the doolies turned back, some were abandoned, while others, urged on by the threats of the walking wounded who accompanied them, continued on their disastrous way.
A mounted officer galloped past, with scant regard for any who blocked his path; he caught Alex a glancing blow, hurling him to the ground, the breath knocked out of his body. When he picked himself up, drawing agonized gulps of air into his lungs, he saw that the column was moving forward again, urged on by the mounted idiot who had knocked him down, the wretc
hed doolie-bearers cringing beneath the blows he aimed at them with the flat of his saber as he rode on . . . deaf and blind, it seemed, to the battle raging fifty yards ahead of him.
Alex cursed him in futile rage, but the line of doolies had come to a standstill by the time he regained his breath, and his order to them to retire was urgently repeated by the younger of the two surgeons who had accompanied the wounded from the Moti Mahal, and then by Bensley Thornhill himself. The young civilian staggered into the passageway, clutching a shattered arm, and the sight of him was enough for the waverers, who turned instantly to retrace their steps. An apothecary assisted Thornhill to an empty doolie, and he was borne swiftly away, the apothecary calling out, his voice harsh with shock, “There are thirty or forty poor devils still there! We’ve had to leave them—the bearers have deserted. For God’s sake, send help if you can!”
But there was no help to be sent; all the men remaining in his immediate vicinity were walking wounded. Alex took his Adams from its holster and stumbled on, waving back a sergeant of the 90th with a bandaged head who attempted to join him. Breathless and spent, the blood pounding in his head, he entered the courtyard where, some seventeen hours before, Brigadier General James Neill had been killed by a sniper’s bullet only a few yards from him. The courtyard—an oblong square lined on each side by sheds and godowns, with a tall, arched gateway at its western end—was, as it had been the previous evening, seething with white-robed rebels. There were doolies scattered about the square and in the street beyond; a few, protected by the escort, could be seen dimly through the dust and smoke, fleeing for their lives in the direction of the Residency, but the majority had been abandoned, their bearers either killed or in hiding.
Apart from a handful of stragglers, the main body of the escort appeared to have fought their way out of the square; within its confines, Alex saw, a terrible slaughter had already taken place. Mutilated corpses lay everywhere, the first to meet his horrified gaze that of the mounted officer who had ridden him down, decapitated and stretched beside his fallen horse. From their loopholed buildings, enemy riflemen and musketeers were pouring a merciless rain of fire onto those who still resisted, and beneath the arched gateway, where half a dozen doolies had been abandoned, a party of dismounted cavalry sowars were hacking at the helpless occupants with their sabers. Their hideous task completed, they started to cross the square toward him, seeking fresh victims, and Alex, sickened by their callousness, took careful aim with his pistol and shot their leader through the head. His action brought him to the notice of some of the hidden riflemen. The ground about him was spattered with bullets, but miraculously he was unhit and he ran for cover, finding it in the doorway of a godown, from where he again opened fire on the sowars, who retreated before his onslaught. A wounded subaltern of the 78th waved to him from a doolie and, his pistol empty, he covered the thirty feet that separated them and dragged the young officer into another doorway, where they crouched, side by side, to be joined by a number of others. Among them Alex recognized the 90th’s surgeon, Dr. Home, whose distress at the brutal butchery of the wounded men he had cared for so devotedly in the Moti Mahal was written in every line of his shocked white face.
Together, supporting several wounded and covered by the accurate fire of two bearded privates of the escort, the small party worked their way around one side of the square, dodging behind doorways and into sheds, until they gained the shelter of a brick house to the right of the gateway. A swift search satisfied Alex that it was empty and, when Surgeon Home pleaded that for the sake of the wounded they should remain there and defend themselves until relieved, he readily gave his assent. Encumbered by men who could barely walk without assistance, it would be madness, he knew, to attempt to reach the Residency by the route the main body of the escort had taken and, with the square now swarming with rebels, their retreat to the river was effectively cut off. Aside from other considerations, in the abandoned doolies on the opposite side of the gateway, there were a number of wounded whose pitiful cries and moans indicated that they were still alive and, for as long as they could hold their commandeered house, they could afford these men a measure of protection by shooting down any rebel who attempted to approach them.
CHAPTER TWO
HAVING REACHED the decision to remain where they were, Alex took stock of their position. The house was strongly built and windowless, with one door leading into the square—the one by which they had entered—and a second, which had been plastered up, apparently leading into a room or courtyard backing onto a street, which ran parallel to one side of the square.A stone pillar, conveniently situated a few feet behind the main doorway, had already been utilized by a private of the 5th Fusiliers as cover and, from behind it, he was firing steadily and with deadly effect on any rebel who came within his sights.
A quick count of heads revealed the fact that there were fourteen of them in the dirty, airless room—Surgeon Home, two other officers who were both wounded, ten soldiers, of whom three were wounded, and himself. Alex set the unwounded men to collecting planks and other lumber, with which to barricade the doorway and provide cover for at least one other rifleman and two loaders and, telling them all to check their ammunition as soon as the barricade was completed, he ducked down behind the pillar.
“You’re a good shot, lad,” he told the Fusilier approvingly. “What’s your name?”
The man did not take his eyes from the square outside.
“McManus. sir,” he answered, in a strong Lowland Scottish accent. He added, with conscious pride, “Ah’m the champion shot o’ ma regiment, sir . . . and I canna hardly miss wi’ this rifle.” He slapped the butt of his Enfield affectionately.
“Then we’re fortunate to have you, McManus,” Alex said. “Can you keep it up until we can get the door barricaded, if I detail a man to load for you? We’ve several spare rifles.”
“Aye, for as long as ye like, sir,” Fusilier McManus asserted. His finger curled about the trigger of the Enfield, and he grinned his satisfaction as one of the dismounted sowars emitted a shrill scream and fell, as if pole-axed, in the dust of the square some twenty yards in front of him. With the speed and skill of long practice, he slid a fresh cartridge into the barrel of the rifle and rammed it home, returning the weapon smoothly to his shoulder, the percussion cap—held in readiness between his teeth—clipped into position above the nipple with thumb and forefinger. “I c’n hold the black bastards off, sir. They’ll no’ gang past me I promise ye.”
Satisfied that he could more than fulfill his promise, Alex detailed one of the less severely wounded men to load for him and went to squat down beside the surgeon, who had his case of instruments out and was searching in it for a fresh bandage. A handy-looking Colt revolver lay among the scattered instruments and Dr. Home said wryly, “I can use that in our defense if you require me to, Colonel Sheridan. But at the present moment, I think I’ll be of more use if I carry on with my professional duties. I’m afraid poor Swanson is in a bad way. I took two musket-balls out of him yesterday, and now he’s been shot again.”
“Swanson?” Alex questioned.
“Yes, Lieutenant Swanson of the 78th. The officer you rescued from the abandoned doolie ...a very gallant young man.” The surgeon sighed. “I’ve given him some laudanum, but that’s all I can do. His arm ought to come off—the elbow is shattered and both bones in the forearm are broken. It’s similar to the wound young Havelock sustained, but this wasn’t as bad and—”
“Dear God!” Alex put in, thinking pityingly of the old General, who had endured so much in addition to the anxiety for his son. “Where is Harry Havelock, do you know? He’s not out there, is he?” He gestured to the square.To his intense relief, Dr. Home shook his head.
“Two or three of the doolies got away, including Havelock’s. The man who was with him, a private of the 78th, drove the bearers in front of him at bayonet point.There were two of them in the doolie, Captain Havelock and another 78th man.They were in front, with the main body
of the escort . . . please God they’ll all be in the Residency by this time.” He found the dressing for which he had been searching and, shaking the dust from it, repeated his sigh. “I was with them and I suppose I could have gone with them. But Colonel Campbell put me in charge of all the wounded, I—I felt it was my duty to stay until help can be sent to us. Mr.Thornhill went back to warn the others—he took the wrong turning and led us into an ambush. Poor fellow, he did his best to put matters right, but then he was hit, so I sent Dr. Bradshaw and my apothecary to make sure that the rest of the doolies turned back. They did turn back, didn’t they?” Alex nodded and the surgeon asked in a low voice, “Colonel Sheridan, help will be sent to us, will it not?”
“I am sure it will, Doctor, once our plight is known,” Alex answered reassuringly, only half believing it himself. He left the surgeon to his ministrations and went across to where the second wounded officer was lying, his head pillowed on a folded tunic. He appeared to have been shot in both legs, but he opened his eyes at Alex’s approach and introduced himself as Andrew Becher, a captain in the 41st Native Infantry, serving on General Outram’s staff.
“I owe my life to that brave fellow there,” he pointed to a small, wiry Highlander, who had gone to the support of Fusilier McManus in the doorway, “Private Hollowell of Her Majesty’s 78th. What a splendid regiment they are—Her Majesty can well be proud of them! Hollowell brought me here on his back— small though he is, he ran fifty yards with me. Had he not done so, I should have been hacked to death by those fiends of Irregular Cavalry sowars, when my doolie-bearers dumped me in the middle of the square and legged it for cover. But if you could assist me . . . thank you very much, sir.” With Alex’s aid he propped himself up against the wall behind him and went on gravely, “I imagine we may have to stay here for a while and I’d like to make myself useful, if I can. Permit me to reload your revolver for you, Colonel Sheridan, as proof of my willingness to help. I don’t suppose you find it too easy with one hand . . . although I saw you charge with the Volunteer Cavalry the day before yesterday and you seemed to manage remarkably well with a saber.”