Nightrunners of Bengal

by John Masters

  By heaven it was hot, and no longer still. The night pulsed insistently. A reddish light wavered on the lawn . . .

  . . . and the wavering of the walls. As to the shock of cold water his mind sprang up and the muscles at the corners of his eyes contracted. He stared intently across the room, then up at the ceiling cloth. On the ceiling, on the walls, on the floor, the unsteady light had a crimson tinge. Waves of red, pale and dark, moved across the bed and the hump of Joanna’s body. The solid substance of the room crawled. For a moment longer he lay tensed, watching the broad bands writhe and coil. The moon had gone; crimson patterns were traced in a black sky.

  He jumped out of bed, struggled into boots and trousers, and ran on to the verandah, a white shirt in his hand.

  Outside, beyond the bulk of the peepul trees at the edge of the garden, men ran in the dust of the road. The throbbing separated out and he heard the distinct sounds: bare feet--pad-pad in the dust; boots--a heavier thud-thud-thud; metal--the clink and clash of steel on stone and steel on steel; horses’ hoofs--running. They knew where they were going, running steadily through the murk, and made no other sound. No one shouted or coughed or called. The smell of burning tingled sudden and acrid in his nostrils.

  Above intervening bungalows and trees the roof of the 88th’s mess stood up in square silhouette against the shaking sky. Something beyond was on fire, in the direction of the courthouse and gaol.

  The tautness in him relaxed. Everyone knew what to do about a fire, and he wondered how he had not heard the bugles and trumpets blowing the fire alarm. The 88th’s quarter guard stood across the Pike opposite the court building. He must go; better go on foot; a horse would only be a nuisance at a fire. He ran back into the bedroom and shook Joanna. The watch on the bedside table showed half-past three--in the morning of Sunday. May 10, 1857. Joanna stirred heavily and sat up, mumbling, “Wha-what is it?”

  “There’s a big fire--the court, I think. I’ll have to go.”

  “Are we safe here? Why d’you have go?”

  “Yes, quite safe, and I’m Garrison Captain this week, you know that.”

  She spoke petulantly, still half asleep. “Well, hurry’n come back. Don’t li’ being lef ‘lone here at ni’--all these blacks. An’ if Robin wakes, he’ll be fr’n’d.”

  He snapped, “Pull the curtains in Robin’s room. Wake Ayah and tell her what’s happening. I must run.”

  At the door he glanced back, to see her face a shiny dark pink in the fireglow. He knew she wouldn’t get out of bed. As he went she rubbed her eyes, frowned, and settled back on the pillow with a sigh.

  Tongues of flame licked up from behind the mess and into the sky, and the bougainvillaea on his verandah was bathed in thin fire. The crackle and mutter echoed from wall and tree. He heard men’s voices for the first time, shouting faint and far from every part of the cantonment and the city. To his right the hoofs of galloping horses rang metallic on the Deccan Pike. A scorching wind from the plains rattled the leaves and shook the flowers and blew on the back of his neck. The wind, the men, the horses, rushed in towards the fire.

  The runners in the road had raised a dust so dense that he could not see more than five yards. They were mostly troopers of the 60th Light Cavalry, on foot, but some were men of the 88th B.N.I, and a few were of his own regiment. He wondered briefly how they came to be running this way --to the south--for the 13th’s lines were down the Pike and beyond the fire. They all ran with tunics buttoned and shakos straight on their heads. They came out of the haze, the light glistened red-black on the sweat of their faces, and they were gone. They ran with knees lifted high, and they all carried weapons--rifles and bayonets, pistols, sabres, carbines. They did not turn their heads to look at him, but the starting eyeballs swivelled towards him and quickly away again. To right and left the officers’ bungalows lay quiet, each in its small estate of trees and lawns. In some a light burned or a shadow moved across a screen.

  The three buildings of the court group formed a hollow square on the other side of the Pike from the 88th’s quarter guard. The court building itself was parallel to the Pike and set well back from it; the other two wings jutted forward at right angles from the ends of the court--the clerks’ offices on the south, the gaol on the north. The offices were on fire from end to end. Flames rippled up the walls and whooshed through the skeletal roof. Ladders of sparks climbed into the sky. The smoke pillared and rolled slowly to the north. The air smelled sweet with the fragrance of wormeaten rafters and musty files. These were the Commissioner’s records burning, the distilled labour of many men over many years, all the words that dead farmers had spoken, all the plans that dead officials had made.

  The fire in the court was not so far advanced, but its windows glowed like tigers’ eyes and smoke streamed out under the eaves. The gaol was untouched, and the firelight from the other buildings played over its bleak walls and barred windows; the prisoners must have been taken out already.

  Here, west of the fire, Rodney saw the whole scene clearly. It reminded him of a pageant setting, torchlit and complete with excited spectators. For the sepoys were doing nothing to put the fire out, and many were not looking towards it. They surged together in thick eddies on the Pike and gabbled under their breaths. He swore when he noticed that here too they all had arms. No one had brought axe, pick, shovel, or crowbar--the tools they were supposed to carry to a fire. Some fool of a bugler must have blown the Alarm instead of the Fire Alarm; that had happened before, three years ago, and he grinned momentarily at the memory: eight hundred excited sepoys, armed to the teeth, gathered uselessly round a burning hayrick. They never allowed Bugler Birendra Nath to forget it, and still nicknamed him the Alarum-wallah.

  The lamps on the verandah of the 88th’s quarter guard were pinpricks of yellow light, diminished by the fire glare. The sepoys of the guard clustered in a loose group, armed and accoutred, and looked down at the crowd. The sentries stood passively at ease on their posts, one at each end, bayonets fixed. The jemadar in command walked back and forth, fingering his sword knot. A few other British Officers had come and were shouting orders, each one trying to get a grip on the part of the crowd nearest him. Nothing happened.

  A hoarse bellowing drew Rodney’s attention and he tried to see between and over the shakos. He saw a mottled face and unbuttoned scarlet tunic surging through the haze up the Pike. Below, the waler rolled its eyes, flung back its head, and fought to be free of the bit. The mutter in the crowd died to a shuffling whisper, and the fire crackled louder.

  Bulstrode forced the horse on and called out to men of his 88th by name. Again Rodney smiled, for this was a familiar and dearly popular scene with officers and sepoys alike--the Curry Colonel exploding in purple apoplexy.

  “Govindu Ram, get those men back behind the Pike and await orders. Rudra, take twenty and fetch buckets. Pyari Lall, form a cordon. Owl’s pizzle! No! Out there! Where the devil’s Mr. Dellamain? This is his fire.”

  He fixed his bloodshot eyes on Captain Bell. “Bell, order the quarter-guard bugler to sound the Stand Fast. Why hasn’t that pig’s arse of a jemadar had it done already?”

  Men coagulated into groups under Native Officers and N.C.O.’s, but at once eddied back into the still-swelling mob. Order appeared in one place and vanished in another. Rodney had never seen sepoys behave so stupidly. They turned their heads this way and that, as if looking for somebody, their faces shone in the irregular glare, and were dark and frightened. They had become strangers, Hottentots, and there was no way of making contact with them. The last shreds of Colonel Bulstrode’s temper broke. He trumpeted like a bull elephant and lashed their shoulders with his riding crop. Rodney pushed savagely at the men nearest him and yelled at them to get back across the Pike. It was useless, and for the first time in his life he struck a sepoy. He hit him in the face with his fist and the man did not notice, any more than the others noticed Bulstrode’s whip.

  There was something eerie about them--about the fire too. He looked at
the court, by this time ablaze and drumming from end to end, and wondered suddenly if it could be arson. The smoke drifted away and laid a black canopy over cantonments, its under-surface crimson-lined.

  He turned as another English voice shouted something from behind him, and saw Geoffrey Hatton-Dunn forcing slowly through the mob on a polo pony. Geoffrey swayed in the saddle as he came, and his hair fell in wet streaks across his forehead. A dirty dark blotch stained his shirt, and his monocle swung free on the end of its ribbon. He was babbling words, but Rodney could not make any sense of them. The sea of shakos nodded; above it the white shirt --stained at the back too--drew closer to Bulstrode’s scarlet tunic.

  Twenty yards away, the left-hand sentry of the quarter guard lifted his rifle. Every man of the crowd, the men with the scared and roving eyes, saw the movement--everyone except Hatton-Dunn and the bellowing colonel.

  On the high verandah the sepoys of the guard watched their comrade. He held the rifle in the aim a moment, steadied the sights, and squeezed the trigger. His shoulder jerked back to the kick of discharge. The glare of the fire swallowed the orange flash. The powder smoke puffed back from the muzzle. A new blotch, lower and more central on the shirt, spread out across Geoffrey’s stomach. His long body sagged forward on to the pony’s withers, and his fair hair tangled in its mane. The sentry reloaded with quick calm movements. Rodney watched dully; the new cartridges --very efficient. The sentry aimed, steadied the sights, and squeezed the trigger. Rodney’s legs would not move; no one could move; the men in the line of fire did not move.

  Geoffrey fell head first into the crowd. Rodney saw his face as it went down. It tried to speak in death, but could not. The pony danced and screamed, and a hundred hands clawed up. They were dragging Geoffrey down--no, no, they were breaking the body’s fall. He shook his head violently, and his heart pounded. The sepoys’ mouths opened wide and stayed open, showing red inside down their throats. The crowd wail caught up and drowned the separate screams.

  A vivid flash on the gaol roof forced his attention to it; that had taken fire at last. In the light from the burning offices opposite he saw faces pressed to the bars, and arms writhing through. The convicts had not been released after all. He turned back.

  Colonel Bulstrode swung the waler on its haunches. He snatched up a cavalry sabre from the crowd, leaned forward, and rode at the sentry. Rodney found his head nodding in agreement. All this was detailed in orders; everyone knew what to do. George Bulstrode knew, and was doing it.

  When an armed native soldier runs amok, he will immediately be shot or cut down, without parley, lest others should suffer from his madness.

  The jemadar and those armed men on guard duty knew the orders too. But the mere presence of lunacy seemed to deprive the sanest Indian of his sense. It was infectious; beneath their stolid surfaces some of the others up there might be as overwrought as the sentry.

  Bulstrode hurled the waler up the steps by main force. His bald head shone, and the muscles were knotted in his neck. The madman held his rifle up in both hands and did not try to defend himself. He cried, “Remember Mangal Pande! Remember! Remember!”

  Bulstrode whirled back, the sabre-arm rigid. The seams burst at the back of his scarlet coat. The horse stumbled on the top step, and twenty stone smashed down behind the steel. Bulstrode followed the blade through, diving to the stone flags with a crash that shook the building. The sword’s edge struck where the sentry’s neck jutted from his high collar. His cries choked out in a whistling shriek. His head jumped off and up and out and twenty feet over the crowd. A fountain of blood spouted from his neck. The rifle clattered, the knees gave, the trunk folded and rolled over and over down the long steps.

  Who was Mangal Pande? Rodney knew he’d heard the name recently--the sepoy of the 34th in Barrackpore who ran amok and murdered an officer, the case that was supposed to be something to do with the greased cartridges. And this poor devil of a sentry, brooding over it, had gone mad too. The guard here was behaving almost as badly as the 34th’s guard that day, and there were two sepoys in the cells for refusing to accept their percussion caps. He looked anxiously about him and wished he could collect a bunch of his own 13th; then he’d be ready for whatever happened.

  Bulstrode grabbed a pillar, dragged himself upright, and glared at the jemadar. The murmur in the crowd grew louder, the men swaying this way and that like tall crops in the wind. It was scalding hot, about 130 here in front of the fire. The fire--now suddenly it sprang to life. Flames poured through the gaol roof and roared up into the sky. All together, the convicts shrieked; Rodney remembered the writhing hands. He braced himself, shoved desperately through the crowd, and ran forward.

  The heat from the fire beat at him, scorched his face, and charred his whiskers and eyebrows. The air burned in his lungs, and the smart of it wrinkled his eyes. He ran on, knowing that other men had joined him and ran blindly beside him with hands on his shoulders. He knew too that they were green-jacketed sepoys of the 13th who drove with him into the flames. He glanced quickly at them: Ramdass and Harisingh, the inseparables.

  He searched along the wall for the keys. Sparks volleyed among the rafters, flame burst in his face, smoke choked him. He found the key ring on a nail near the far end, and knife-hurt hot to the touch. He jabbed key after key into the door of the cell nearest the court while Ramdass and Harisingh fought with the rusty bolts. At last a key fitted; the three leaned coughing against the door. It swung open, and five half-naked men stumbled out. Rodney ran on burning feet to the next cell, found the key quicker this time-- four more convicts. Then the next . . .

  Behind them the roof of the court building collapsed and sent a flat sea of flame roaring over them. For a second it bathed them, but they were at the last cell. No key fitted its door, but they beat insanely on the wood with their hands. The faces inside pressed against the grille and yowled. Ramdass put his rifle to the lock and blew it in. A score of tattered scarecrows fell out--murderers and dacoits, still manacled and dragging leg irons.

  Out on the cool-seeming Pike, Rodney staggered into a Native Officer of cavalry, and recognized Pir Baksh. He gasped an order to collect the convicts again and guard them. Pir Baksh saluted and did nothing. Rodney’s head swam. He croaked angrily, repeating the order. No one was listening to him. Jemadar Pir Baksh and all the men around stared down the Pike towards the 88th’s quarter guard.

  The beams of court and gaol exploded like volleys of cannon shot. The wind backed sharply and hurled a torrent of sparks and whole burning splinters of wood across the Pike. The bright shower flew over the crowd to settle on the roofs of the quarter guard and of the magazines and storehouses behind it. Not for thirty seconds could Rodney hear, under the other noises, the bang and rattle of rifle fire.

  All the 88th were firing--the sepoys in the crowd and the sepoys on the guardroom verandah. Their scarlet coats stood out among the dark green of the 13th and the french grey of the 60th. He saw a naik shoot Colonel Bulstrode in the back. A spatter of shots struck Cornet Jimmy Waugh, and he knelt down and died. A scarlet octopus of arms pulled Max Bell off the verandah. The arms rose and fell, the bayonets flashed. Others fired in the air; all shouted an incoherent, crazy chant.

  “Remember Mangal Pande! Mangal Pande! This is the night of the raw flesh. . . . Kill! The guns are coming. Kill them all! Kill or be hanged! Remember!”

  He was right; the 88th had mutinied. He saw that nearly everyone round him wore the 13th’s rifle green. His collar rasped his raw neck, but he shouted with relief. He called out to them by name.

  “Manlall, Badri Narain, Thaman, Vishnu. To me! To me! The Eighty-eighth have mutinied. Thirteenth, to me!”

  He thanked God they had brought their rifles after all. The fighting passion, like a river of fire, burned out his pain and weariness. His fierce pride of regiment sent him shouting and exalted above them--pride in the memories, pride of the stubborn shared endurance of Chillianwallah, pride of the meteor charges, side by side, into the icy
dawns of the Punjab, pride of the men who followed him into the fire.

  Together, in equal and matchless loyalty, they had for a hundred years rolled like a flood over all enemies.

  “Thirteenth Rifles, to me, to me!”

  Their faces turned slowly towards him; they were the faces of strangers, lost and blind-eyed. Their lips moved and their fingers twitched on the triggers.

  Beside him Alan Torrance whispered under his breath, “They’ve gone mad. Lord Jesus, they’ve all gone mad.”

  The green strangers pressed closer. An inch from his ear, a rifle exploded. The ball smashed into Torrance’s appalled face, blew off his nose, and ploughed up between his eyes, into his forehead, and out at the top of his head. The Byronic boy squirmed gobbling in the dust, and spouted blood and brains. The strangers closed in. Feet stamped, bayonets searched, the sounds faded. Insanely they tried to kill it, but they could not altogether stop its whimpering.

  Rodney’s heart turned over and swelled and burst. His pride drained out in a sweeping groan and left him empty. He was sweating cold, and sick. That was Sepoy Shyamsingh there, his face twisted and his eyeballs glistening-- Shyamoo the quiet peasant, Shyamoo with the farmer’s dry humour, Shyamoo, who snarled like a dog and thrust his bayonet into Alan’s bowels.

  Rodney felt no fear for himself. In that second there was no room for anything but disgrace. He stood among them and sank into a slimy lake of shame. All that he was had failed. The English in India had failed England; the Bengal Army had failed its faith, his regiment its glory; he had failed these men; they, who were a part of him, had failed themselves.

  Robin. All the women and children alone in their bungalows. Joanna. He knew what Geoffrey Hatton-Dunn had tried to say. He lifted up his arms and in disgrace and shame and horror cried out in English, his voice breaking, “Stop it! In the name of God, stop it!”