by V. A. Stuart
Andrew Becher answered him.The staff officer had been loading rifles some distance behind the barricade but now, Alex saw, he had dragged himself up to it and was lying beside Cameron, an Enfield to his shoulder, with Ryan loading for both of them.
“Ryan’s vision is troubling him, Colonel,” he offered in explanation. “So I’ve taken his place. Have a care, won’t you?”
“I will,” Alex assured him. “Ready, Hollowell?”
“Aye, sir.” Hollowell plied his rifle butt briskly, opening a gap large enough to admit them both.They dived through it together and reached the door side by side. It opened onto a street that appeared to be deserted but, as Alex stepped cautiously forward, he saw that it had been the scene of fierce fighting. A number of British soldiers lay dead, the nearest only a few yards from him—some Highlanders and Sikhs, killed as they had battled their way to the Residency the previous night, and one small group of five or six men of the escort who had died defending two doolies containing wounded. All, without exception, were headless and hideously mutilated . . . He drew in his breath sharply. The battle-hardened Hollowell, following the direction of his gaze, turned his head away, retching and then, recovering himself, gave vent to a stream of outraged invective.
“Get the door shut,” Alex ordered. “It’s loopholed, so we’ll be able to keep them at a distance. Jump to it, lad!”
“Aye, sir.” A disciplined product of a fine regiment, he did as he was told, but, when the door was slammed shut and a stout wooden bar in place behind it, he said in a shocked voice, “My God, sir—how they must hate us tae serve our dead in sic’ a fashion!”
Remembering Cawnpore and the massacre of the women and children, as well as of the fighting men, Alex could only incline his head in wordless assent. But there had been no hatred, he thought bitterly, until evil men—men like the Nana, rabble-rousers like the Moulvi of Fyzabad and thousands of unknown priests and fakirs had stirred it up, so that they might turn it to their own advantage. They were playing for high stakes, all of them—the old King of Delhi, the Begum of Oudh, the Nana, who believed that a kingdom was his for the taking. They had called for a holy war, fanning the smoldering embers of both real and imagined grievances and fears until they had burst into flames—flames that now threatened to consume all of India.There had been warnings, of course, but British officialdom, grown complacent and parsimonious after a hundred years of successful and profitable rule over an alien land, had ignored the warnings or—as General Hewitt had done in Meerut five months ago— had met them with acts of provocative severity, which had served only to breed hatred and an ever-growing mistrust.
The kind of hatred that had manifested itself in the street outside and . . . Alex’s throat was suddenly tight. Dear God, the kind of hatred that would be released, to vent itself upon the unfortunate wounded, lying in their abandoned doolies in the square, and upon themselves, if they allowed the rebels to defeat them . . .
He left Hollowell to stand guard at the loopholed door and slowly, his feet dragging with the effort it was now taking him to move at all, he returned to acquaint the other defenders with the news of what they had found. There was a brief lull and, in the uncanny silence—broken only by the roar of cannonfire in the distance—they listened to what he had to say, their faces betraying varying degrees of uneasiness and anger.
“I think,” Surgeon Home said practically, “that you had better allow me to dress that leg of yours, Colonel Sheridan. It’s more than a scratch, judging by the way you are limping, and it will feel better if I can remove the ball before the muscles stiffen.”
Alex submitted to having his leg examined. It proved to be a flesh wound, not unduly severe, but the spent bullet had lodged in his calf and, once the pain caused by its removal had subsided, it did indeed feel a good deal better. The other wounded men were considerably worse off than he was; Swanson, perhaps fortunately, was still unconscious, the two wounded men of the escort intermittently so, and poor young Arnold, despite his valiant stoicism, was moaning with the agony of his shattered and horribly swollen legs, the cries wrung from him whenever he attempted to move. Webb squatted beside him, his injured arm secured to his body by his belt, doing what little could he done to ease his suffering, and Captain Becher, finally compelled to relinquish his place at the barricade to Ryan, was lying with his eyes closed in an attempt to recoup his strength.
The cessation of the enemy attacks came as a relief to all of them, but, with inaction came also the awareness that they were parched with thirst, exhausted, and in mortal danger.The fit men had earlier relinquished their water bottles to Surgeon Home, to be shared among the wounded, and although he had been sparing with them, only a single, half-filled canteen remained, and eyes constantly went to it with a longing that could not be assuaged and was the more poignant because none of them voiced it.
One of the men, a short, dark-haired private of Her Majesty’s 84th named Roddy, who had obeyed every order he was given efficiently but without speaking to any of the others, unexpectedly broke his self-imposed silence. Sinking to his knees beside the unconscious Swanson, he crossed himself and started to pray aloud. His accent was the lilting one of Southern Ireland, his prayer simple and, perhaps on this account, oddly moving. The wounded officer, seeming to hear him from the depths of unconsciousness, roused himself to murmur a faint “Amen” and two of the others—Ryan and the slightly wounded Blue Cap who had helped to load for him—followed his example.
Sensing their mood, Alex asked quietly if they would all like to join in prayer and, receiving their assent, he led them in a low-voiced recital of the Lord’s Prayer, rising to stand between the two rooms, so that Hollowell might add his voice to theirs. Reminded of the torn and bloodstained prayer book he had found outside the Bibigarh—the House of Women—in Cawnpore, in which passages from the Litany had been heavily underlined by one of the Nana’s unhappy victims, he quoted several of the passages, ending with the one that had most deeply impressed him.
“That it may please Thee to strengthen such as do stand; and to comfort and help the weak-hearted; and to raise up them that fall; and finally to beat down Satan under our feet . . .That it may please Thee to succor, help and comfort all that are in danger, necessity, and tribulation ...”
McManus led the response, head bowed over his rifle.
“We beseech Thee tae hear us, good Lord.”
“That it may please Thee to have mercy upon all men; to forgive our enemies . . . and turn their hearts . . .”
Now they all joined in, those to whom the words were unfamiliar echoing the responses of the others, their faces grave but less tense and anxious than they had been a few minutes before. The crack of Cameron’s rifle brought their brief respite to an end and there was a shout of warning from Hollowell, followed by the ominous rumble of wheels in the street to the rear of their refuge. Alex joined the Highlander at his loopholed vantage point, with Roddy close on his heels.
“I fancy they’re bringing up a gun, sir,” Hollowell said, without looking round. “’Twill be a’ up wi’ us if they do and . . .” he swore. “Hell, sir, ’tis no’ a gun, ’tis a . . .” he broke off, lost for words, and Alex, peering anxiously through one of the loopholes, saw that some white-robed natives were engaged in pushing what appeared to be a screen on wheels down the street toward them. Roddy, crouching behind a loophole to the left of the door, took careful aim with his Minié, but his bullet, striking the center of the wood and metal contraption, failed to penetrate its surface and Hollowell, swiftly reloading, fared no better with his two testing shots, both fired at close range.
Protected by their screen, a considerable body of rebels came forward, with the evident intention of placing the screen against the loopholed door and firing from behind it into the room so recently occupied by the defenders. They would be unable to survive such tactics for long, Alex knew, and he called urgently to Hollowell and Roddy to evacuate the room, taking with them any timber they could find, with which to r
epair the plastered door they had broken through earlier.
Aided by Surgeon Home and the slightly wounded Blue Cap, Murphy, they contrived to set up a second barricade, but it was hurriedly put together and by no means as bulletproof as the rebels’ screen, which—before they had quite finished their task— was wheeled up to the rear door and jammed there, thus cutting off their bolt-hole. From behind it, sepoys and townsfolk armed with matchlocks poured successive volleys into the room they had vacated, screaming threats and abuse.Although the shots were ill aimed, in so confined a space they were effective and spent musket-balls penetrated the pile of planks and lumber, to ricochet like angry hornets about the heads of the defenders.
McManus was hit in the back of the neck and had to leave his post to have the bleeding staunched; a ricocheting bullet drove a furrow across the top of Alex’s scarred right cheek and Andrew Becher, attempting to drag himself to the pillar in order to load for Ryan, was struck painfully in the lower jaw and—unable to make himself heard—lay bleeding for several minutes before Surgeon Home noticed his predicament and crawled across to his aid.
After about half an hour, the attackers unexpectedly desisted in their efforts but, almost at once, the pad of bare feet on the roof succeeded the volleys of musketry, and plaster came raining down from the ceiling as roof tiles were torn off or smashed and patches of blue sky began to appear overhead. The four men guarding the door into the square emptied their rifles in a burst of fury at any target they could glimpse through the shattered roof, but they fired too quickly and even McManus admitted to having missed the fellow he had fired at.
“The bloody swine are nae showing theirselves!” he complained wrathfully.
“Go back to your post, lad,” Alex told him. “They may be trying to distract our attention, to enable them to get to the wounded in the doolies when we’re staring up at the ceiling. Cameron, Ryan—watch to your front, my boys. Hollowell and Roddy, you keep under cover and try to pick them off if they show themselves on the roof. Dr. Home, we may have to move the wounded. Can you . . .” He broke off as, through one of the gaping holes in the roof, a bundle of lighted straw descended, propelled from a safe distance by a cavalryman’s lance. It was followed by another and another and, although they managed to stamp out some of the smoking bundles, the room was soon filled with clouds of suffocating smoke and, in a far corner of the room, a pile of tinder-dry lumber swiftly caught fire and started to burn.Without water to douse the flames, they spread at alarming speed and, impeding each other in their efforts to extinguish the blaze, the men staggered drunkenly about, coughing and retching. Soon the smoke was so thick that it was impossible to see across the square to the doolies, and Alex, stumbling to the door, saw—or imagined he saw—several sowars, with drawn sabers, leave the shelter of the gatehouse and move stealthily toward the rear of the abandoned doolies.
McManus and Cameron, in response to his shout, joined him in the doorway and at the mere sight of their leveled rifles, most of the sowars retreated, screeching obscenities. Two of them had reached the doolies, however, and were crouching down behind them, half-hidden by the curtains and presenting a difficult target. Alex moved to his right, his vision clearing, and the Adams in his hand, but at that moment a wounded officer threw himself out of one of the doolies, emptied his pistol into the nearer of the crouching cavalry troopers and—seemingly unaware of the presence of his compatriots, less than twenty yards from him— made a frantic dash for the far end of the square. Instantly the rebels posted in the surrounding sheds and buildings opened up on him and the dusty ground about him was spattered with musket-balls, but somehow, miraculously, he eluded them and disappeared from sight behind a row of godowns that formed the opposite side of the square.
No shots had come from that side, Alex noticed, which suggested that the godowns were unoccupied. He turned and reentered the smoke-filled room of the house they had defended for so long, to be met by Surgeon Home, who told him urgently, “For God’s sake, Colonel, we must get the wounded out of here! The fire’s taken hold—they’ll be burned to death or suffocated if we don’t.”
There was no time to reconnoiter the godowns—they would have to take a chance on their being empty. Alex gestured to them and the surgeon nodded, drawing great gulps of air into his tortured lungs.
“There’s another door at the back of the room—it’s much nearer. If you’ll cover us, we’ll take the wounded out that way.”
“Right, Doctor,” Alex acknowledged. “As quickly as you can, then.”
It took the combined efforts of the unwounded men to effect the evacuation. The rebels did not attempt to rush them—had they done so, they would almost certainly have succeeded in wiping out the entire party. Instead, they fired from cover, and the unfortunate Swanson was hit again in the chest, as Hollowell and Cameron dragged him painfully between them across the intervening space to the godowns. Dr. Home’s discovery of the second door into the square proved providential; it, too, had been plastered over, but breaking through the plaster took only seconds and, their movements screened by the smoke and flames, the first four men got across unscathed, with Arnold and Becher. Poor Murphy, gallantly insisting that he could make his way unaided, took a musket-ball in the thigh, and Ryan was hit in the shoulder as he endeavored to go to his assistance. Alex brought him in on his back, half-carrying, half-dragging him and the poor fellow was unconscious when they gained the cover of the nearest godown.
Leaving the surgeon to do what little he could for the newly inflicted casualties, Alex made a swift reconnaissance.The godown was, in reality, an arched shed with loopholed walls and a narrow passageway at the rear which led to an open courtyard. It was considerably more spacious than their previous refuge but, being built of wood and sun-dried mud in the usual Indian style, it offered less protection and would, he realized, have to be guarded both front and rear in case the rebels launched another attack on them. A number of corpses lay scattered about the interior and in the passageway—some were sepoys, evidently killed in the first attempt to ambush the main body of the escort, and about half a dozen were doolie-bearers, who must have sought shelter there, only to be shot down as they entered the front of the building.
Already in the oppressive heat, the place had the stench of death, and swarms of flies added to the defenders’ discomfort, but, beyond moving the bodies from their immediate vicinity, there was little they could do to make it more habitable. Poor Swanson was dying, the surgeon reported and, including himself, there were now only seven men capable of using arms, with three more wounded but capable of standing sentry.
Alex posted them as best he could and, desperately anxious as to the fate of those still lying in the abandoned doolies on the south side of the square, inched his way to the entrance of the godown, with Hollowell, in the hope that no harm had yet befallen the helpless occupants. It was a vain hope, he knew. In their first refuge, they had been near enough to pick off any rebels who attempted to approach the doolies but now, with the width of the square between them and clouds of smoke billowing across it to obscure their view, their chances of doing so were slight. He took a few paces to the side of the godown and was met by so vicious a hail of musketry that he was compelled to fling himself flat and crawl back to safety, gasping and covered with dust.
Hollowell helped him to his feet. “I doubt the swine will hae the nerve tae gang near them yet, sir,” he offered consolingly.
“No, but they will, Hollowell. Devil take them, they will— it’s only a question of time. And I don’t see how we can stop them . . . we’d be shot to pieces if we tried to rush them from here. With only six of us, there’s nothing we can do—I wish to heaven there were!”
Close to despair at the realization of their utter helplessness, Alex found himself praying silently that the men in the abandoned doolies might die of their injuries rather than fall alive into the rebels’ hands. Deprived of medical care and water, given time most of them probably would die but . . . It took a great e
ffort of will to turn his back on the square and go again into the filthy, fly-infested godown, but he made the effort and, for a while at least, it seemed as if his despairing prayer had been answered.
The firing petered out and finally ceased and, although they strained their ears anxiously, they could hear nothing to indicate any fresh activity on the enemy’s part.The cries and groans they had listened to with such distress earlier in the day no longer reached them, and the exhausted men in the godown thankfully took advantage of the respite.They were parched and hungry, as well as tired, their spirits at their lowest ebb. Several of the wounded moaned and screamed in delirium; the others squatted down on the littered floor to get what rest they could, the sentries leaned on their rifles to hold themselves upright, red-rimmed eyes drooping with fatigue. Alex, conscious of an almost overwhelming desire for sleep, forced himself to resist it by making a check of their ammunition. Even when the contents of the wounded men’s pouches were divided among the five fit riflemen, their supply was dangerously low and he had to warn them to conserve it, firing only to ward off attack.
“We need water very badly, Colonel Sheridan,” Dr. Home said, looking up from the task of reloading his Colt, “if any of the wounded are to survive. Or indeed,” he added wryly, “if any of us are.”
Reminded once again of Cawnpore, Alex expelled his breath in a rasping sigh. “I don’t know where we’re to get it from, Doctor,” he answered regretfully, “But it will be dark in an hour or so and then Colonel Campbell’s rear-guard will surely . . .” A terrible, high-pitched shriek of agony sent him stumbling toward the front of the godown.
By the time he reached it, pandemonium had broken out on the far side of the square, the shouts and cries of the wretched survivors in the doolies mingled with the crackle of flames, as burning torches were flung into their midst, setting the curtains alight. Sabers glinted in the glow of the flames; emboldened by the success of their attempt at fire raising, a mob of sepoys and sowars hurled themselves into the drifting smoke, hacking and bayoneting, their yells of triumph as they went about their butchery rising above the terrible, heart-rending screams of their dying victims.