At the front of the column rode Hervey and Locke, the jemadar and two sowars riding point half a furlong ahead. Behind Hervey were six paired ranks of lancers, then the galloper gun, and then four more pairs. And at the rear was Johnson, his carbine primed and ready to fire at the slightest sign of riot (Selden had said that the sowars could be trusted, but Johnson was there to reinforce that trust). Hervey was content he could at least rely on his mount, for Jessye had more spring in her trot than he had felt in many weeks. How quickly she had regained her strength – faithful, honest mare! And he had his rifled carbine, the percussion-lock which had saved his life at Waterloo – probably the only one at the battle, and the only one in India, for sure.
They hardly spoke, for Locke had no idea how they might subdue Jhansikote’s sepoys, and Hervey was absorbed in that very question. He could find no practical help in what he had said earlier to the rajah, that nothing could be done without good and early intelligence, and that it was with artillery that war was made. All he had by way of intelligence was that there were two thousand armed, mutinous sepoys readying to march at dawn. As for artillery, his amounted to one galloper gun that could throw a four-pound shot perhaps a thousand yards. Bold action in all circumstances, demanded Peto’s thesis – the moral effect of surprise. Surprise, indeed, was the only thing they might have in this affair.
They made good progress to begin with, but the jemadar warned them that a mile or so before Jhansikote the road narrowed and passed through thick jungle. Here would be a picket, for certain. But the picket evidently was expecting no trouble since a fire gave away both its presence and disposition – fortified as it was by a tree felled across the road. Hervey’s troop stopped well short. Hervey himself dismounted and advanced cautiously until he could hear the fire crackling, peering through the darkness with his telescope – as much an aid at night to seeing near to as it was to seeing distantly by day. He could detect no-one his side of the tree. It was impossible to know how many were on the other, but he didn’t imagine there would be many, since all they would be expected to do was raise the alarm rather than fight any lengthy action. However, they were less than a mile from Jhansikote, and shots would carry that far, even muffled by the forest. He could not risk an assault head-on. Back he stalked to the troop to tell Locke and the jemadar that they would have to approach through the forest and take the picket from a flank with the sword.
The jemadar looked alarmed. ‘Sowars not like go in forest, sahib,’ he stammered.
He knew some English: that much would be useful. Hervey might have owned to a dislike for the forest too, but instead he spoke briskly in Urdu.
‘Sahib!’ snapped the jemadar when he was done, saluting and turning back to look for his dafadar.
‘What did you say to him?’ asked Locke.
‘I told him they would have more to fear from me than the jungle.’
Locke sighed. ‘They’re more likely to die with you, that’s for sure! Shall we go left or right?’
‘It seems the same to me. Shall we toss a rupee for it?’ he replied lightly.
‘For heaven’s sake, man!’
‘Very well. Which side is the moon?’
Locke glanced skywards. ‘The left.’
‘In that case we attack from the right,’ said Hervey.
Locke said nothing for a moment, and then he could conceal his puzzlement no longer. ‘Why then from the right?’
‘Because as Hindoos they will sleep facing the moon, and we shall therefore have the advantage of them.’
Locke could not but admire Hervey’s acquisition of such apt knowledge in the short time they had been in the country. ‘Very well, then,’ he whispered, ‘right it is!’
The jemadar returned with his sowars, leaving but five as horse-holders. The dafadar looked a good man, a Rajpoot thought Hervey – the high cheekbones and supreme confidence. Private Johnson came up, but Hervey said he was to stay to keep an eye on the horseholders. Johnson took Jessye from him and started for the rear, for once without protest, though the muttering beneath his breath was all that Hervey needed to be reassured that his groom had not lost any of his former spirit. The remainder drew their sabres silently, and then, in single file, they slipped into the forest.
The moon was still good to them. They were able to see the road – now little more than a track – and keep parallel with it as they edged cautiously through the unearthly darkness, Hervey leading. There was more undergrowth than where he had spent the earlier part of the day, for the road allowed in light, and with that came growth on the forest floor. It was not enough to slow their progress, however. Anxiety to keep silence was what checked them. That and the dread of what lurked in the blackness. He shivered at the thought of the hamadryads.
It took more than a half-hour to cover the three hundred yards to where the tree lay across the road. They had slowed to the snail’s pace as they neared it, for although the fire was an excellent beacon, and they were able to align themselves well, the undergrowth, the dead leaves on the forest floor especially, made for noise. Hervey stopped as he came level with the picket, only twenty yards into the jungle, and motioned half a dozen of the sowars to pass him so that he would be in the centre of the line as they broke from the forest edge. Five more minutes and they were ready. Something rustled on the ground not a yard in front. He froze, expecting any second to feel the creature’s strike, or to hear a sowar shriek – or the picket to sound alarm. But there was nothing. Only the heavy silence of the jungle. He waited a full five minutes more and then motioned the line to advance. His heart pounded so hard he swore he could hear it.
The sepoy sentry at the tree, seeing them rush in, had only a second’s horror before the dafadar’s tulwar cut his head clean from his shoulders. After that it was easy. Simply a business of despatching the remainder in their sleep – eleven in all. Not one let out so much as a cry. It was a brisk, bloody business, over in less than a minute.
As they searched the dead, Hervey looked into the faces of the men who had just slaughtered their fellows. Whatever he saw he could not fathom, but one thing at least – they were more determined faces than before. Even the jemadar looked more resolute. ‘Good work!’ said Hervey. ‘Well done, Jemadar sahib; well done!’
The jemadar’s self-esteem grew visibly. It was good work: swift death to the enemy and no blood of their own shed.
‘More men are flattered into courage than are bullied out of cowardice,’ said Hervey to Locke as they sheathed their swords.
Locke seemed pensive. ‘Hervey, you said they would be sleeping with their faces to the moon. They were sleeping the other way.’
Hervey smiled. ‘I don’t play brag, my dear Locke; perhaps I should! How in heaven’s name was I to know which way they would be sleeping?’ He turned to the jemadar: ‘And now we must get that gun over this tree, Jemadar sahib!’
Locke was still shaking his head even as Hervey gave the orders for the gun-dafadar.
The jemadar assembled his NCOs, and there were words, increasingly heated, none of which Hervey could understand. In their haste to be away, the dafadar had not brought the tools to disassemble the piece and lift it – barrel, trail and wheels.
‘Jesus, nothing’s easy!’ swore Locke. ‘We could build a ramp and then haul it over, I suppose.’
‘It would take too long,’ said Hervey. ‘Jemadar sahib, the dafadar will have to jump with the gun.’
The jemadar relayed the instruction but the dafadar replied with much shaking of the head. ‘He says the horse does not jump, sahib.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Hervey. ‘All horses jump – perfectly naturally!’
‘I do not think the dafadar will be able to do so, sahib,’ he replied sceptically.
Hervey sighed. ‘Very well, let me try.’
Locke voiced his disquiet too, but what was the alternative, said Hervey. ‘We can’t take all night building a ramp. The worst that can happen is that we’ll end up with the horse and gun straddling the tre
e, and then we shall just have to cut it from between the shafts.’ He chose not to speak of the ruinous crash they might have at any point of the leap. ‘There is at least plenty of moon!’
He walked up to the gun-horse defiantly. ‘He pulls to the left always, sahib,’ said the dafadar, helping Hervey to shorten the stirrup leathers when he had mounted.
That was more the pity, thought Hervey, for he would need his right arm to drive the horse at the tree with the flat of his sword. All he could do was put him at his fence with so much speed that he would have no time to think about running out. The animal was a big country-bred; Hervey thought it strange the dafadar had never jumped him. Was it really possible that he could not jump?
‘Does tha want me to give thee a lead, sir?’ chirped Johnson out of the gloom.
That was exactly what Hervey was about to ask the jemadar to do. But Johnson he could wholly rely on. And Jessye – the ‘covert-hack’ so much derided by his fellow officers when he had first joined the Sixth. ‘Take her, then,’ he said. ‘Keep me close up behind, but we’ve got to hit the tree at a pace!’
A minute or so later they were ready, and he signalled the off. Johnson put Jessye into a canter in a few strides and Hervey was surprised by how the gunhorse was able to match her. He didn’t need his sword until they were a dozen strides from the tree, and even then it looked unnecessary, for the gelding was chasing Jessye strongly. The teak barrier was plain to see in the moonlight – that much was a mercy – and Jessye cleared it easily. Hervey gave the gun-horse its head and slapped its quarters with the flat of his sword for all he was worth, feeling the beginning of a pull to the left.
He jumped. He jumped big! Hervey felt the gun lift behind him, praying that the shafts wouldn’t break with the strain. The gun-horse landed square but on its off-fore, throwing Hervey’s balance and almost tipping him out of the saddle. But he recovered just quickly enough to get both legs firm on as the gun bounced hard on the ground, the horse stumbling perilously for several strides, needing every bit of Hervey’s leg to pick him up. It was a full fifty yards before he was able to bring him to the halt.
The acclamation that followed was too loud for his liking, but Hervey was pleased enough with his success to let it pass. The dafadar proffered his embarrassed apologies but Hervey made light of it. ‘Only serve your gun bravely when the time comes,’ he replied – and the NCO returned a look that assured him that on that, at least, he could count.
The remainder now led their horses into the forest, round the tree, and remounted the other side. Hervey decided they must now walk rather than trot, for he could not risk the noise as they neared the objective. Nevertheless, it was not many minutes before they were at the forest edge a quarter of a mile from the walls of Jhansikote. They dismounted once more, and Hervey, Locke and the jemadar went forward. The moon seemed even stronger now, but there was concealment enough in the shadow-pools at the foot of the trees, and Hervey could soon see the white walls of the cantonment with perfect clarity through his telescope. They brought to mind the chalk cliffs that had welcomed him home, and the Sixth, two years before – and looked every bit as daunting to scale. Between the forest edge and the walls there was nothing: no scrub for cover, no nullah along which they might crawl. And this nothing was bathed in moonlight so bright that even a crouching figure would throw a shadow for any sharp-eyed sentry to see. Hervey was growing more dismayed, for the moon was still high and could not possibly set before dawn. ‘How might a frigate take on a first-rate? For that’s how it seems to me!’ he whispered to Locke.
Locke grimaced: it was unthinkable. ‘She would have to lay alongside her before the big ship’s guns were run out, that’s for sure. And I dare say she would have to board her before she could beat to quarters. But what ship-of-the-line would allow any other to do that? We need a ruse de guerre!’
‘Just so,’ sighed Hervey, trying hard, but in vain, to think by what subterfuge they could cross the ground unseen, let alone gain the walls. He peered through his telescope for some clue.
A minute or more later and he saw what first he had failed to. The merest glow, from a sentry’s fire at the foot of the walls, revealed it. He had located the great gates easily enough in his first sweep of the field glass – immense teak barricades solid enough to withstand a whole battery of galloper guns. They stood out in the solid whiteness of the walls – Nelson-style – like the gunports of a man-of-war. And he had supposed them closed. Why, indeed, would they not be? Yet, why should they be? After all, the mutineers had a picket out, and the only troops loyal to the rajah were days away across the Godavari. He cursed himself for not seeing before. As he peered ever more intently through his telescope his heart began to race, for as his eyes became accustomed to the pools of darkness, and he gained a more accurate sense of perspective, he saw that the sentry’s fire was inside the gates! He snapped his ’scope closed excitedly.
‘What is it?’ said Locke.
‘The gates are open: they are wide open!’ he replied, smiling broadly.
Locke was not immediately reassured that they were delivered of their difficulty. ‘And your plan, therefore?’
‘To attack – at once!’
‘You mean . . . to ride straight at the gates?’
‘Just so! Through the gates!’ said Hervey without hesitating.
‘Ride straight into the cantonment?’
‘Yes.’
Locke paused a moment, in case he had missed some obvious key to victory. ‘And when we are inside – what then?’
‘We fight.’
Locke made himself pause again, certain that some vital element had escaped his understanding. Soon he realized it had not. ‘Hervey, that’s beyond a forlorn hope. It’s suicide!’
Hervey smiled again. ‘Racker! Wollt du ewig leben?’
Locke began to laugh, and had to cover his mouth lest the noise carry. ‘Matthew Hervey, it is you who is the rascal! Frederick the Great indeed! He was cursing a whole regiment of guards – as well you know! You mean us to gallop into their lines and just fight?’
‘That’s what a boarding party would do, is it not? It would clamber aboard and fight. It wouldn’t have a plan!’
Henry Locke had to agree it was so.
‘Well then, I wish you to take charge of the gun. I’ll have the jemadar with me; he is not the stoutest of hearts but I believe he would wish to be one, and that in my experience is often good enough. The dafadar’s a good man, and there is Johnson.’
‘What have we to fear then?’ replied Locke, clapping Hervey on the shoulder.
‘And we shall have surprise,’ he added with uncommon assurance.
It did not take long for the jemadar to relay the orders, for there were few to relay. They consisted, in essence, of galloping straight for the gates (the risk that they might be swung shut at their approach meant speed took precedence over stealth). Then they would bring the gun into action against the armoury and magazine, and fire the barrack-houses. ‘We shall have to fight for our lives, Jemadar sahib,’ Hervey had warned, and the jemadar’s face had been filled with dread. Yet he spoke firmly to his men, referring several times to Hervey as ‘son of Wellesley-sahib’, and that they were about to relive the great deeds of Assaye. At the close of the peroration the dafadar raised a clenched fist and swore a chilling oath (there was no mistaking the meaning), and the sowars likewise.
Locke reported the gun primed, with a wad to keep the charge in place as they galloped; it would take but seconds to load the bagged grape, he said, adhering strictly to the naval term. ‘I’ll take at least a dozen of the murderous heathens with that first round – and we have nineteen more, and ten roundshot!’
Hervey, himself buoyed by the audacity, drew his sabre. He had already loaded both carbine and pistol, but it was with steel he expected they would first come to close quarters with the mutineers. When he had sheathed that same sword after Waterloo, he had somehow imagined that he might never again draw it on the battlefield – a
nd, for sure, never in so distant a place. It had accounted for many men, had never let him down; Sheffield steel and always kept sharp. Before Waterloo they had all sharpened both edges, fearing that the cuirasses of the French heavies could only be run through with the point. He hadn’t liked it since it spoiled the sabre’s balance, and more than one trooper cut his horse’s ears, or even his own arm, recovering it from a slice. He had let the concave edge of his blunt as soon as he could; he had no doubts he could run his point through any mutineer this morning. In any case, pointing was what a lancer did. A light dragoon fought with cut and slice. He smiled to himself: his first time in action with the lance on his side. But he didn’t care to calculate the odds on being able to give an account of it later.
Johnson brought Jessye up. Hervey rubbed the little mare’s muzzle with the palm of his hand, blew into her nose – as he had done every time before mounting since he had first backed her a dozen or so years before – then sprang into the saddle with sword still in hand. The troop formed in column of twos, the galloper gun in the middle, and the jemadar, with his trumpeter, took post just to Hervey’s rear. Johnson closed to his side on his Arab (still napping as much as on the approach march), and for once Hervey did not order him to the rear, for he knew he would protest loudly – and ultimately disobey. He looked over his shoulder one more time, and then waved his sword aloft: ‘Charge!’ he shouted.
And the lieutenant of Marines said quietly, ‘Here goes the last of the Lockes of Locke-hall.’
They burst from the forest edge like jack snipe. Jessye was at full stretch within a dozen yards. The noise, as hooves and the gun wheels pounded across the hardbaked ground, seemed that of a whole squadron. Hervey fixed his eyes on the gates, expecting any moment to see them swung closed, and urged his little command forward with every word of Urdu he could recall. Still there was no sign of alarm at the walls. He glanced back: the jemadar was but five lengths behind, with the rest of the column close on his heels. Johnson was wrestling with the Arab mare intent on carting him off to a flank. At two hundred yards they could see clearly through the gates, but pounding hooves meant they could not hear the shouting. At a hundred they saw the picket running to the opening – then flashes, ragged shots. Seconds later Jessye flew through the gate arch, Hervey stretching low along her neck as the picket parted before him. Johnson and the jemadar raced likewise between the still-open gates, pushing the two wings of the picket closer to the walls. But the sowars behind had lowered their lances and took the sepoys effortlessly by the point as they galloped through. Those behind found quarry too, and tossed them here and there like bags of flour, fearful screams echoing in the gate arch and the inner walls. Hervey could see others on the walls, running – but away from the gates, not towards. Locke dashed through with the galloper gun, springing from the saddle to help the dafadar and his loader bring it into action. In less than half a minute he had the grape loaded and tamped, but to his dismay there was no rush of mutineers against which to discharge it. ‘Come on,’ he shouted to the NCO, ‘wheel it over there!’ pointing to the nearest barrack-house, a long, low wooden structure with a thatch roof. They strained every muscle to pull it the thirty yards to the corner of the building, swinging the trail round to aim obliquely along its front, point-blank. Locke seized the portfire from a sowar and put it to the touch-hole. The gun went off with a terrific roar, made all the greater by echoing from the walls. The devastation astonished them: the whole of the front – doors, slatted windows, joists, everything – was stove in, and bits of burning wadding set light to the thatch. Sepoys began tumbling out, yelling, screaming, to be caught in another enfilade by Locke’s gun, reloaded with impressive address. Sowars cantered about the maidan, taking sepoy after hapless sepoy on the point of the lance. Scarcely a shot was fired in return, and none with any aim or success. But Hervey knew well enough this was but the crust with which they were engaged: there were hundreds – perhaps twenty hundred – mutineers in the lines beyond, and these must soon rally. He ran across to Locke. ‘There’s the armoury and the magazine,’ he shouted, pointing to where the jemadar had told him.
The Nizam's Daughters Page 25