by V. A. Stuart
“We want to blow up those guns if we can,” John Moore reminded them. “But if we can’t, then they must be well and truly spiked. Kill any Pandies you see, we can’t take prisoners. Mr Delafosse’s party will go in first to deal with sentries and gunners … with the bayonet, Henry, if you possibly can. Don’t use firearms unless you must. They keep a pretty poor look-out, but we don’t want to alert them prematurely. As soon as the job’s done, I’ll give you a “tally-ho bike” … and then it’s back to the entrenchment as fast as you know how, except for the rearguard. If any man’s hit, he should try to get back under his own steam and if he can’t, then the rearguard will pick him up. If they come after us in any number, both advance and rear parties will cover our withdrawal. If not, leave it to Colonel Sheridan’s party. Understood? Right, Henry, off you go—and good luck!”
Delafosse and Godfrey Wheeler, who were leading the advance party, slipped over the parapet with scarcely a sound. The moon was obscured and they vanished swiftly from sight. Alex and Francis Whiting, the rearguard commanders, led their men into position and crouched behind the wall, listening intently. There was no sound, save for the men’s heavy breathing and the occasional cry of a sentry from the other side of the entrenchment. Ashe’s gunners stood to their worn-out nine-pounders, ready to give covering fire should it be required, all of them peering anxiously into the semi-darkness.
The advance party had, seemingly, met with neither challenge nor opposition and Moore, clasping a sponge-staff, vaulted on to the top of the parapet and down into the ditch below, his men at his heels. Alex and his party followed, well spread out on either side of them. They covered the seven hundred yards of flat, shell-scarred ground at a rapid jog-trot, guided by the red glow of the enemy’s cooking fires, and reached their objective without being challenged. The trenches were empty and the first gun, an 18-pounder, was surrounded by dead golandazes—proof that the advance party had done its work well.
John Moore’s men wasted no time in preparing to put it out of action. A double charge of powder and a wad, rammed well down, and then the gun muzzle plugged and depressed, and a lighted fuse left smouldering at the touch-hole … they ran on, to serve the next in the same manner. Both burst with a dull roar and, as the spiking party headed for the 24-pounders, mounted on top of a steep bank, Alex and his rearguard divided, to take post to left and right of the slope.
The noise of the explosion aroused several sleeping sentries but, realising that they were outnumbered, they let off their muskets without pausing to take aim and fled in panic, making no attempt to protect their threatened battery. The camp was alerted, however, and about sixty or seventy infantry sepoys came pouring out of a building on the left, which was evidently their mess house. Delafosse’s men fired a telling volley into them from the top of the bank and Alex, with a wildly yelling Corporal Henegan bidding fair to outstrip him, led a bayonet charge into them before they could form ranks.
“No bleeding guts, sir!” Henegan shouted, flashing him a grin as the rebels made a concerted rush for the shelter they had so recently left. He impaled a white-clad sepoy on his bayonet and dexterously withdrew it, swearing horribly when the second of his intended victims eluded him and ran screaming to safety. “Yellow-livered swine! They c’n shoot down women and little children but they never could stand and face our bayonets, none of ’em. Shall we clear the bastards out of there, sir? Why should they fill their perishing bellies when we can’t?”
Bugles were sounding the alarm now in the old Dragoon Barracks to the north, where the 1st Native Infantry were quartered and in the Foot Artillery Barracks on River Road, and lights were flickering through the trees as, from the riding school and the Cavalry Lines, the hitherto silent guns woke to life once more, to send a storm of shot into the entrenchment. They had been taken by surprise and, for the moment, all was confusion in the enemy camp but this would not last for long, Alex was aware, and he shook his head regretfully to Henegan’s suggestion. The raid had been planned as a swift sally, for the sole purpose of disabling the battery in the New Cantonment and John Moore’s party, once they had achieved what they had set out to do, would be preparing to withdraw. His orders were to cover them as they retired and pick up wounded.
“No,” he said, hearing the shout of “tally-ho bike” which had been the agreed signal to begin the withdrawal. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Henegan, but it’s time for us to leave.” He raised his voice. “Rearguard, rally on me! That’s it, boys … tally-ho bike!”
The men fanned out, taking up their prearranged positions and Francis Whiting said, a pleased note in his voice as he ducked down beside Alex, “They did it, by God—they knocked out four guns! Henry’s on his way back now, I’ve just seen him. Two men slightly wounded, he says, but we needn’t worry about them— they’ll make it back with the advance party. Godfrey Wheeler was hit in the arm but he says it was a spent musket-ball and he’s all right. Not bad, eh? We certainly caught the swine napping … Henry said that all the sentries were asleep.”
“They’ve woken up now,” Alex observed dryly. “I’ve never heard so many bugle calls coming from so many different directions! Keep your eye on that mess hall, Sergeant Maywood. If a sepoy shows his face in the doorway, let him have it.”
A few desultory shots were coming from windows on the near side of the building but none of the occupants ventured outside it and Corporal Henegan, his finger on the trigger of his Minié, gave vent to a few choice oaths as he waited, squinting along his sights with barely controlled impatience.
A voice called “tally-ho bike!” from the darkness and John Moore’s small party slithered down the slope and passed through the rearguard, shadowy figures in the dim light, dragging two boxes with them.
“A few items we’ve been short of lately, such as percussion caps and shell-cases,” Moore explained, answering Alex’s unspoken question. “And some nine-pounder cartridges, as a small token of my esteem for Georgie Ashe!” He grinned, completely in his element and in high good humour, like a boy released from school, the shocks and setbacks of the past ten days forgotten in the excitement of the moment. “I killed a fellow back there with my sponge-staff—he took a pot-shot at me and I just spotted him in time. God, Alex, it’s good to hit back at them, isn’t it, instead of cowering behind a mud wall being slowly roasted to death! I feel like a new man.”
He looked like one, too, Alex thought, and echoed his grin. Quite apart from its tactical success, this raid had been a tonic to them all and, after last night’s disaster, a much needed boost to morale, as he had hoped it would be.
“My chaps enjoyed their bayonet charge,” he said, remembering Henegan. “Are you ready to withdraw now, John?”
Moore nodded. “The proverbial hornet’s nest is about to erupt, alas, so we’ll have to. Give us a couple of minutes, if you will, and then fall back. Oh, by the way, we left a little surprise firework display for the bastards—a slow-match set to blow up a couple of their ammunition dumps in approximately seven or eight minutes from now. We thought it might provide a useful distraction, should any pluck up enough courage to come after us.”
“They won’t,” Francis Whiting asserted. “Cowardly devils! We’ve got about fifty or sixty of them penned up in there”—he pointed to the mess house—“and there’s hardly been a cheep out of them.”
“Fifty or sixty, you say?” Moore frowned. “They might recover their nerve when we pull out and we can’t afford casualties. I think perhaps I should—”
“Rearguard’s privilege, John,” Alex put in, guessing his intention. “If you have the means to clear them out, oblige me, please. You mentioned shells and—”
Moore laughed. “Help yourself,” he invited. “There are a couple in my pouch. Best home-made variety … matches, too, if you need them.” He divested himself of the pouch and straightened up. “Right, then, I’ll be on my way. Retire as soon as you’re ready. We’ll be watching for you.”
He was gone and Alex picked up the p
ouch, listening to the subdued hum of voices coming from the mess house and to the still distant crackle of musketry. They had time, he thought—not much, but enough. The advancing infantry were firing at shadows, in no hurry to reach the scene of action … he issued crisp orders and, as his party obediently prepared to retire, Francis Whiting held out his hand for the pouch.
“My job, I think, Colonel.”
“I think not, Francis. Able-bodied officers can’t be spared, least of all trained gun commanders. But”—Alex gave him the box of lucifers—“oblige me by lighting the fuses. I have just the man for this job—Henegan!”
Corporal Henegan was beside him, eyes gleaming in his blackened face and his rifle already slung. He took the first of the crudely made missiles from Whiting and blew on its smouldering fuse.
“Left-hand window,” Alex told him. “I’ll take the right—now!” They ran forward together, both bent low, and separated, Henegan going left-handed. Shots whined above their heads, as watchers in the mess house saw them coming and fired an ill-aimed, hurried volley. Alex reached his objective a second or so before the corporal and, rising to his full height, lobbed the hissing grenade in through the open window, turned and ran back. The blast from two successive explosions knocked him flat and, when Henegan crawled over to him, the whole building was ablaze. About ten or eleven sepoys made their escape by the door and a few more by the rear windows but they were unarmed, running in blind panic from the flames as, Alex thought, the women and children had run from the barrack hospital the previous night. He left his pistol in its holster, making no attempt to fire on the terrified fugitives, and waited for Henegan to tell him that they had no guts. To his surprise, the man was silent and turning to look at him, he saw that his face was contorted with pain.
“Where are you hit, Henegan?” he asked.
“In the … lungs, sir. In the … bleeding lungs.”
“We’ll get you back,” Alex promised. “We’ll—” he broke off, glimpsing the ghastly wound. The ball must have entered Henegan’s chest at point-blank range to have done such hideous damage; the poor devil was spewing up blood with every breath— there was not the smallest chance of getting him back to the entrenchment alive.
“I’m … done for,” Henegan gasped, guessing his thoughts. “Aren’t I, sir?” He did not wait for an answer, aware of what it would be, but summoned a lopsided smile. “It was … worth it, to take … some of those blasted … black sods … with me. Don’t you … wait, Colonel sir. Leg it … back while … you’ve got the … chance. The lads … Captain Whiting … they won’t go without you. No sense in us all … and you’ve … a wife, sir.”
The rearguard, under Francis Whiting, had obeyed his order to retire but, Alex saw by the light of the burning mess house, they had not gone far. They were going through the correct drill-book motions, the front rank covering the rear rank’s withdrawal and then reversing the process but they were not under fire and they were moving with a deliberate lack of urgency … obviously waiting for him, as Henegan had suggested. He cursed them silently. Devil take it, he could not leave Henegan to the mercy of the rebels! The poor fellow might take some time to die and if they got their hands on him, the consequences did not bear thinking about.
“No,” he said tersely. “I’m taking you in. Give me your hand, lad, so that I can get you on to my back. Come on, I—” the thunderous crash of an explosion swallowed up his words, as the first of John Moore’s promised firework displays lit up the night sky behind them. It was followed, almost simultaneously, by a second and more powerful explosion, which tore at Alex’s eardrums, momentarily deafening him. A shower of shell fragments, splintered timber from gun carriages and munitions tumbrils and shapeless particles of metal from the guns themselves hurtled into the air, briefly illuminated by the red glow of the ignited powder. This faded and a dense cloud of black smoke billowed skywards, to hang like some harbinger of doom over the scene of devastation it had left in its wake. It was, no doubt, more spectacular than effective but seen from the entrenchment it would certainly raise the flagging spirits of the defenders … and those guns, at least, would never fire on them again.
“Holy Mother of God!” Henegan was suddenly on his feet, eluding Alex’s groping hand, the rifle unslung and held across his chest. He ran forward, his long bayonet gleaming dully in the glow of the burning mess house as, with practised skill, he thrust it into the ranks of an unseen and wholly imaginary foe. “Come on, boys!” he shouted. “At ’em with the bayonet! Never could stand up to us when we charged ’em, not even the sods of Sikhs! Never could …” the hoarse voice hiccoughed into silence and Corporal Henegan fell forward, clutching at his chest. When Alex reached and turned him over, he was dead, blood-flecked lips parted and an expression of savage joy on his grimy, stubble-darkened face.
Whatever else the rebels had done, they had not defeated Henegan, Alex thought, picking up the Minié and slinging it awkwardly over his right shoulder. True, they had killed him but he had died like the good soldier he was, taking quite a few of the enemy with him, as he himself had claimed—which, in these circumstances, was all any soldier could hope to achieve. He would not have to watch the sun rise tomorrow, would not have to— how had John Moore put it? He would not have to cower behind a mud wall, being slowly roasted to death; neither would he have to watch his wife suffer nor bury his first-born in a nameless grave, scooped out of contaminated ground with his bare hands. Henegan had given his life in defence of the Cawnpore entrenchment but he had been spared these torments; perhaps, of the two of them, he was the more fortunate.
Alex left him and rejoined the rearguard. They came under some random musketry fire from infantry, but the range was too great for this to be accurate. The infantry, for all their frantic bugle calls, made no attempt to attack them and the cavalry did not appear, although from the gun and mortar batteries to north and south of the entrenchment, the rebel gunners kept up a rapid and vengeful cannonade for what remained of the night.
“Does this not prove that we could fight our way out?” Francis Whiting asked bitterly, as he and Alex returned to their posts behind the parapet. “If we had only two companies—two trained companies of fit British soldiers—I swear we could reach Lucknow, even burdened by the women and children. If we made the attempt now—as we stand, without waiting for help that may or may not come—I’m beginning to think it would be preferable to staying here.”
“We should be compelled to leave the sick and wounded behind,” Alex reminded him. “If we were to have the slightest chance of reaching Lucknow.”
“But most of them will die in any case, if we’re not relieved soon,” Whiting argued. “Damn it, Alex, we shall all of us rot here! We’re getting weaker with every day that passes and more of us are being wounded or falling sick. This infernal place is virtually indefensible now and if the rains come before help reaches us, we shan’t only lack food and ammunition—we’ll have no blasted mud wall to defend, it’ll be washed away! Our only hope is to break out at once, in my view, but I suppose the general won’t hear of it.” He sighed in frustration. “Pray God his messenger manages to get to Lucknow and Lawrence sends us two companies of the 32nd … although frankly, I don’t think he’s in a position to send us even one.”
“There’s Neill—”
“Yes, but when? With the road to Allahabad swarming with mutineers and the river heavily guarded, it’s impossible to get word out to him, to tell him the straits we’re in. He’ll take his time, mopping up as he goes—in addition to which, he’ll have a battle on his hands before he can get to us, won’t he?”
“Yes,” Alex had to concede, “I fear so.” He knew of the unsuccessful efforts which had been made to send an appeal for help to Allahabad. One man—George Kempland’s servant, Joseph Fulow, assisted by some loyal sepoys—had made the attempt by river, but he had been caught and murdered, perhaps betrayed by the men who had accompanied him, no one could be sure. Blenman, a Eurasian drummer, who had tried to
get through by road, had returned after a few hours, with the information that all roads were closed and patrolled by cavalry and that no native, whatever his rank or calling, was permitted to leave Cawnpore without a written pass, signed by the Nana Sahib. A number of others, native servants or Eurasian Christians, had left the entrenchment—some escaping without permission, others sent by the garrison to bring back information—but few had come back. Those who had spoke of the impossibility of eluding the Nana’s vigilance and of the tortures inflicted on any who were caught.
Several officers, including himself, had at various times, volunteered to try to make contact with Neill’s column; the general—probably rightly—had refused to give his consent. They had no horses; on foot and alone, no European would stand a chance of eluding the rebel patrols, for the Nana’s men were proving all too expert at penetrating disguises. Had he still had his orderly, Partap Singh, or Daffadar Ghulam Rasul, Alex reflected, he might have stood an even chance of getting through in their company but … he had sent them both to Lucknow, before the siege began.
“As I said,” Francis Whiting went on despondently, “tonight’s sally has proved that the rebels won’t stand up to us if we carry our attack to them. I honestly believe that we’ll all be done for if we stay here much longer, Alex.”
“The alternative is unthinkable,” Alex said regretfully. “And you know it, as well as I do. We cannot abandon the wounded … and we can’t fight our way to Lucknow—fifty miles, Francis —with women and children in our midst, half of whom would have to be carried after a few miles.”
“Then Lawrence is our only hope.”