A Call to Arms mh-4

by Allan Mallinson

  Armstrong and the surgeon arrived.

  ‘Ah, Ledley: bees or a snakebite? I can find no sign.’

  The surgeon made a tutting sound as he saw his patient. ‘How’s his pulse?’

  ‘It seemed weak, but I couldn’t tell for sure.’

  The surgeon took up French’s wrist, not troubling with a watch. ‘I’m not surprised. His hand’s so swollen it’s hard to find the pulse at all. Who saw the snake?’

  ‘I didn’t actually see it, sir,’ replied Mossop, his confidence only slightly diminished.

  ‘Then don’t speculate,’ said Ledley brusquely. ‘Worse than useless.’

  Corporal Mossop looked crestfallen.

  ‘Who saw the bees then?’

  ‘I did, sir.’

  Ledley turned to see his patient of a few days ago. ‘Those stitches can come out tomorrow, by the look of them. You saw these bees?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly see the bees, sir, just French flaying his hands about his head as if he were being attacked by ’em.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Ledley thoughtfully. ‘Not definitive, but good enough in the circumstances.’

  ‘Bee stings, then?’ asked Hervey, anxious for confirmation so that they could decide their course.

  ‘Near enough.’ By now the surgeon had had a close look at French’s face — plumped and red like a gourd on a scarecrow. ‘Not bees, though,’ said Ledley, shaking his head. ‘Hornets, jungle hornets. Brutish little devils by all accounts and the evidence before us.’

  Even Armstrong looked appalled at the transformation of the dragoon’s features by so small an agent and in so rapid a manner. Only the thick black curls gave away its owner. ‘Will he live, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the surgeon briskly. ‘If he lives the next quarter of an hour then he ought to be safe.’ He reached into his saddlebag. ‘Water, if you please.’

  Private Rudd unslung his canteen and handed it to the surgeon. Ledley poured a cupful into an enamelled bowl and added five drops of clear liquid from a glass phial. He lifted French’s head with one hand and put the bowl to his lips. ‘Drink this, my lad. All of it.’

  French, who had hitherto shown no sign of sentience, began at once to sip.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Hervey.

  ‘Digitalis. To stimulate the heart. That’s his greatest need at present.’

  Hervey took Armstrong to one side. ‘I’ll leave one man with him — Rudd — and a surgeon’s orderly, but even them we can scarcely spare.’

  Armstrong nodded. ‘But Rudd’s too good a man when we’re short already. The orderly ought to be able to mind him on his own. Why not make the woman stay an’ all?’

  If Dodds had not stolen away in the night like some— Hervey bit his lip and nodded. ‘You’re right. Just the orderly and the woman. And Boy Porrit. You’d better see to it, then. I’ll get the troop moving.’

  At the next halt, French’s misfortune was retailed through the ranks from the back of the column to the front, and by the time it reached the pointmen hornets were no longer the culprit but giant batlike creatures which tore at the flesh and sucked blood more voraciously than a dozen bull leeches. Hervey had to walk the length of the column again to allay the consternation. With some difficulty he managed also to inform the Skinner’s sowars of the affair, but they knew full well what had been the cause, and revealed that they had left powdered cow dung with the orderly, to be made into a paste and applied to the swollen parts. Hervey, whose respect for native medicine had been settled during his previous sojourn in India, hoped the orderly would not scruple to use it.

  At three o’clock, at the scouts’ bidding, they halted. Hervey went forward to see what had prompted them.

  ‘The cover’s changing, sir,’ said Serjeant Collins. ‘It’s getting thicker. It must mean we’re coming to the edge.’

  Hervey smiled thankfully to himself. There were but half a dozen men in the troop who would have drawn such an inference. He checked his map and his calculations. It was certainly possible.

  ‘And it’s been flat going for a full two hours,’ he said, pleased to be able to corroborate Collins’s observation.

  ‘I think I’d like to scout forward a little more, sir. Can the troop hold a while?’

  ‘I think I’ll gamble on a bivouac, Sar’nt Collins,’ said Hervey, sensing they might make contact with the Burmans sooner rather than later. But how he wished the Chakma were with him, for it was now that their intimate knowledge would be of most use. To stumble on outposts, or make camp too close, would be the devil of a thing after all they had been through. He turned to his trumpeter. ‘Storrs, my compliments to Mr Seton Canning, and we’ll bivouac where they stand now. I shall go forward with Serjeant Collins to spy things out. Have the pointmen sent up to join Corporal Ashbolt here as picket, and have the daffadar reassemble the guns.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said Storrs, closing his notebook.

  Hervey laid down his carbine and pistol. ‘And yours too,’ he said to Collins and Stent. ‘If we come upon an outpost we shall have to carry it with steel. One shot and it might be the death of us all.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. IMMEDIATE ACTION

  Later

  ‘It’s a fine-balanced thing, Sar’nt-Major, but I think it best to attack at first light. The camp had the look of receiving troops at any minute, but they’re not likely to be marching in during the night, so there’s nothing to lose in that respect.’ Hervey sipped gratefully at the hot sweet tea which Johnson had waiting for him. He took out his watch again: they had been gone for the best part of two hours, and there were but two more until darkness.

  Armstrong relit his pipe, sat back on the fallen tree which served as the troop orderly room, and put his heel on a tiny scorpion emerging from under a dead leaf. ‘About half a mile, you say, sir? We could just about do it before dark. At least we’d have the night to burn the boats.’

  Hervey was conscious of going against every cavalry precept. ‘We couldn’t be sure they’d not march in once we began the fight, though. No matter how afeard they were of moving about the jungle by night, if they heard the sound of a fight they’d surely make for it? You would!’

  ‘Ay, and it’s as well never to suppose the enemy’s any less canny.’

  ‘Just so. In daylight we surely have a better chance of holding them off, if only to make good our escape.’

  ‘Ay, you’re right, sir. How many do you reckon there are there now?’

  ‘Three hundred, perhaps four. Most of those are bargees, but there are lines laid out for a thousand more, and I reckon the boats will carry twice that number.’

  Armstrong did not so much look dismayed at the numbers as incredulous. ‘And they would assemble that many men in the forest and paddle ’em all that way to Chittagong? What a business when they could be on the place from the sea with not a fraction of the trouble.’

  Hervey had rehearsed the same doubts with Somervile. ‘They couldn’t do it unnoticed, though, and if there were one frigate in sight then they’d be blown from out of the water. No, Sar’nt-Major, I think this is a deuced clever plan, and I think we have come on it not a day too soon.’

  Armstrong took his pipe from his mouth and looked at the bowl in despair. He hoped the troop’s powder was drier than his tobacco. ‘Just so I’m sure, which side of the river do we come out of the forest on?’

  Hervey smiled to himself: Armstrong the world-weary NCO, resigned to whatever his officer had embroiled him in! ‘The Avan side, Sar’nt-Major — just as we’d always intended.’

  ‘No more wet feet, then?’

  ‘I can’t promise that, but there is a bridge.’

  Armstrong was not inclined to dispute it further. ‘And so how shall we go at them?’

  Hervey had yet to finish writing his orders. ‘The whole assembly area is open grass and planting, nothing that I could see above four feet high, and firm going. It’s not rice planting or the like.’ He cleared the ground of leaves in front of where they sat, an
d took up a stick to make a sketch in the earth, drawing two lines like the letter X. ‘Here’s the river,’ he began, pointing to the line which ran right to left. ‘It’s not much more than a chain across, two dozen yards at most, and no deeper than an elephant’s ears.’

  Armstrong raised an eyebrow. ‘Are there many of them?’

  ‘I’m coming to that. But no, half a dozen. And I should say the water’s no less sluggish than where we crossed.’ He now pointed to the other line in the earth. ‘This, I surmise, is the white elephant’s road. It’s certainly running in the right direction. There is north,’ he added, bisecting the right quadrant’s angle. ‘We are here.’ He pointed to where the line representing the river would project, explaining that it turned south-west not far below the assembly area. ‘And here,’ he pointed to where the lines intersected, ‘there’s a bridge of sorts. I couldn’t get a good look, but all I saw on it were men on their feet, so I’ve no idea if it will take the weight of a horse, let alone a bullock cart — or a galloper gun.’ Armstrong nodded silently.

  Hervey then made marks either side of the line representing the river, below the intersection. ‘This is where the barges are, pulled up on the banks either side, and most of them on logs so they can be launched the more easily. The elephants seem to be used for hauling them out of the water, but their work looked done for the most part.’

  ‘A pity they’re on both sides,’ said Armstrong.

  ‘Just so. We can’t avoid a crossing. Now, the Burman fighting men are all in tented lines here,’ added Hervey, pointing to the northern quadrant. ‘So they’re all on our side of the river. They must be our immediate objective, for if they get under arms there’ll be the very devil of a fight.’

  ‘We should attack in darkness, then,’ said Armstrong without hesitation.

  ‘You’re right. But how might we ever keep the troop in hand? We both have the memory of that beach at Brighton.’

  Indeed they did. Yet Armstrong would still have reckoned it the only course … except for one thing. ‘We have the guns, of course, this time.’

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Hervey, with a faint smile. ‘A whiff of grape: I don’t see why it shouldn’t work for us. And I shall want you to have command of those guns. I shall want you to have them play wherever there’s need of them without my even having to think of it.’

  Armstrong had not a moment’s doubt.

  ‘All the Burmans who surrender are to be driven across the bridge and held there by Corporal Ashbolt, like Horatius.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Cornet Vanneck will take half a dozen men to picket the road where it debouches from the forest, and the rest of us will set about destroying the barges. Also the bridge, and then we’ll withdraw the way we came.’

  ‘Sounds easy enough.’

  Hervey smiled wryly. ‘It is easy. Until the first shot.’

  Armstrong raised his eyebrows. ‘Ay, always: first shot and bets are off. How much kindling did you see, by the way?’

  They had brought four gallons of lamp oil with them, enough for a pint to each barge, but each would need packing with combustibles to guarantee a good blaze. ‘There’s a fair amount of tentage, and a good stack of hay,’ replied Hervey confidently. ‘And the oars.’ He had already decided to fire the barges off the water rather than risk having them recovered if they sank only partially burned.

  Private Johnson came up and, ever wary of Armstrong, saluted. ‘Leave to speak, sir. There’s some snap ready when tha’s a mind.’

  ‘Thank you, Johnson,’ said Hervey, throwing aside the stick and wiping his hands on his overalls. ‘Five minutes more.’

  Armstrong resumed his questions, taking out his notebook. ‘What time do you want reveille then?’

  ‘Four o’clock. That will give us two hours of darkness to get close. We should move off sharp at five.’

  ‘And—’

  There was a terrible squealing from the middle of the tethering line, made worse by the surrounding silence. Hervey sprang up. ‘Christ! They’ll hear that a mile off,’ he rasped, reaching for his carbine.

  Armstrong was already on his feet. They hurried to the noise.

  ‘Broken like a dry stick,’ said Corporal Ashbolt, crouching by the trooper’s foreleg.

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘No, sir. Stent’s.’

  The horse, one of the Marwaris, stood silent now, sweating heavily, her cannon bone hanging limply. The kicker had already been slipped from the tether line and taken away.

  ‘That other were being proper riggish,’ cursed Stent, just come up. ‘I should have kept mine apart.’

  Hervey thought it pointless to agree or otherwise. ‘Where’s the farrier?’

  ‘Here, sir,’ came the reply from an equally sweating Farrier Brennan. ‘I was at the back, tightenin’ them Skinner’s shoes.’

  ‘This one to despatch, then, I’m afraid,’ said Hervey, shaking his head.

  ‘Not with the pistol though, sir?’

  ‘Good God, no! Silent work, if you please, Brennan.’

  A dragoon was sent to fetch the farrier’s axe. Meanwhile, they unslipped the horses either side of the doomed trooper to make space, not an easy job at the best of times. Hervey did not know whether Brennan had despatched an animal in this way before, but he did not think it the time to ask. Instead, without a word, but with a great deal of care, they pulled the little mare onto her side. She kept her head up, though, and Stent put his knee on her withers to discourage her from trying to rise. ‘Bring her a couple of pecks of oats please, Corporal,’ he said, stroking the mare’s neck.

  The axe was brought a minute or two later. By then, Farrier Brennan had cut away the mane just behind the poll to expose the occipital depression, where the axe’s spear-point could most easily penetrate and sever the cervical cord. Shepherd Stent gave his mare a handful of oats, and pulled one of her ears fondly.

  ‘Hold ’er ’ead steady,’ said Brennan, raising the axe.

  Stent crouched with his knees either side of her muzzle as she ground the oats in her mouth. Brennan swung the axe down — powerful, confident. The mare squealed then grunted, lashing out with her legs, though the shepherd held on. Brennan put his foot to her neck to get enough purchase to pull out the axe. There was remarkably little blood.

  ‘Again?’ said Hervey, anxious.

  The mare’s eyes were wide and her legs were still kicking.

  ‘No, sir,’ replied Brennan.

  Stent would not let her go. ‘Mick?’

  ‘No,’ said Brennan simply.

  And in a few seconds more she was motionless.

  Stent closed the mare’s eyes and got up. ‘Thanks, Mick.’

  Hervey saw the look, too — the first sign of emotion he had detected in the shepherd.

  ‘I’ve butchered a good many sheep, Mick, but I couldn’t have done that.’

  Brennan looked satisfied rather than pleased with his skill. ‘I’ve not had to do that since Corunna. But you didn’t flinch when I swung the axe, mind, Shep.’

  ‘Well done, Farrier,’ said Hervey. ‘We could not have afforded the noise otherwise. Right, Private Stent, take one of the led horses.’

  ‘And look sharp, bonny lad,’ added Armstrong, with just enough of a bark to put an end to the condoling. ‘I’ve stood-to the front section, sir,’ he added.

  Hervey nodded. ‘We’ll just have to wait, then. Perhaps one more beast calling in the jungle won’t raise the alarm. But a gun at the point would be prudent. I think I’ll go forward to the pickets to see how strong it carried to them.’

  ‘I’ll do that, sir,’ said Armstrong. ‘You have something to eat and then give them orders out.’

  ‘Yes, Geordie, you’re right. Thank you.’

  After stand-down, when it was dark, Hervey went round the troop and spoke to every man, the sowars too. Not of things of any moment, just a few words — whatever seemed appropriate, if only whether they knew the password. Sometimes it was a thought ab
out home, sometimes about India. It did not matter, just as long as he spoke to each man and thereby assured them of his own peace of mind about the morning; as Seton Canning put it to Cornet Vanneck, ‘a little touch of Hervey in the night’. Every man knew that their captain had found the Burmans without the aid of the Chakma guides, and most of them knew in their hearts that they themselves would have given up long before. They liked their captain’s determination; it made it so much the harder to do anything but follow him.

  When he was done, Hervey found his way to the place where his groom had laid his blanket, and sat down tired yet content.

  ‘I’ve kept thi snap warm, Cap’n ’Ervey, sir, but it’ll be nowt like it were.’

  ‘Johnson, I could eat …’ He almost said ‘a horse’, but it was not the thing. ‘I could eat that wretched bird I saw Spreadbury plucking last night!’

  Johnson sensed rather than saw Hervey’s frown. ‘They didn’t eat it in the end. They chucked it away.’

  ‘It tasted so bad?’

  ‘They found a length o’ snake in its gizzard.’

  Hervey could have retched. ‘I’ve just discovered I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Tha’ll be all right, sir. It’s ’taties and beef. But it’s a bit of a squash. I’ll make a fresh mashin’ o’ tea.’

  That was what Hervey would prize above all, now. More so even than the whisky in his spare canteen.

  He slept well. Checking the picket he left to Seton Canning and the serjeant-major. That was their job. His now was to rest, to find the sleep that had eluded him these past three days.

  Just before four o’clock Johnson’s hand shook his shoulder, as it had more times than had Henrietta’s. But as Hervey took the enamelled cup — he could see the steam rising even in the darkness — he thought of her. And it was the first time since Chittagong that the thought had been more than momentary. What made him hold it now he did not know, but he puzzled over her absence from his mind for so many days. And he did not know whether to be discouraged or the very opposite.