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 — and, 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 m
eant 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.
They were more solid affairs than the barrackblocks, brick-built, with tiled roofs. Nevertheless, the galloper gun’s roundshot managed to dislodge many of the tiles, though it could make no impression on the doors. ‘Jemadar sahib,’ called Hervey, ‘we must get through the roof.’
The notion of climbing to the roof now seemed no more impetuous to the jemadar than anything else he had found the courage to do that night, and he answered Hervey’s imperative with equal eagerness.
The troop dafadar had rallied the rest of the sowars by the gun, keeping half mounted and half ready with their carbines. Hervey thought it unwise yet to take the assault deeper into the cantonment, for he could have little control once they were in more confined quarters. In any event, burning thatch had blown aloft from the barrack-house and set other roofs alight. He was well satisfied with the confusion as he and the jemadar now climbed through the smashed tiling into the eaves of the armoury. Private Johnson had detached himself from the fray, as so often in the past. His speciality was progging — with nothing express in mind, but with the happy knack of recognizing the potential in any removable device, solid or liquid. A building near the magazine, equally strongly built, looked promising. It had double doors, like a barn. Indeed, it looked as if it were just that. The doors were secured only by a padlock, and padlocks had never proved more than a fleeting hindrance to his work. A hoof-pick became a lock-pick, and in no time the doors were swinging open to reveal the spoils.
The stench sent him reeling, and before he was recovered a press of sepoys loomed. He drew his sabre — a magnificent gesture of defiance in the face of scores of mutineers. But it checked their egress nonetheless, and for what seemed an age Johnson stood with his sword arm extended, holding at bay what he now supposed to be a whole company. At length, one of them stepped forward and bowed, making namaste. Johnson sensed a trick. Then another did the same, and another, and then more shuffled out, all silently making namaste. Private Johnson saw he had a company of sepoys his prisoner, but what he might do with them was not so obvious. Would they return to their quarters with as much docility as they had emerged? He took a step forward and gestured with his sabre for them to go back inside, but the leader bowed once more, held out his hands and spoke with sufficient entreaty in his voice for Johnson to know that something was not as he supposed. Why, after all, had there been a padlock on the outside? Was this the guardhouse? Were they defaulters? Surely not so many? He cursed them roundly for having no English.
The same instinct for the potential in any booty now told him that these sepoys might be of use to his officer, for they appeared to have no weapons and seemed willing to obey his gestured commands — except, that is, to return to their stinking confines. ‘Coom on, then,’ he bellowed in his most stentorian Sheffield. They did. They formed fours and marched in step behind him out onto the maidan and towards where Locke and the gun stood steady as a Waterloo square. ‘Mr Locke, sir, I think these men want to be us friends,’ he called.
The dafadar shot to attention and brought his tulwar to the carry. ‘Subedar sahib!’ he snapped.
The sepoy who had been first to make namaste returned the salute with his hand. He said something unintelligible to either Locke or Johnson, but the dafadar relaxed and sloped his sword.
Locke was quick enough to surmise these were no ordinary mutineers, but he swung the gun round at them nevertheless. The column gasped, and the sepoys began to waver, but their leader calmly made namaste again. ‘We are your prisoners, sahib; we are innocent of any offence,’ he protested in Urdu.
‘Go and get Captain Hervey from that building yonder,’ said Locke, indicating the roofless armoury.
Johnson doubled across the maidan just as the armoury doors flew open to reveal Hervey and the jemadar about to torch a mound of kindling. ‘Sir,’ he shouted, quick to the mark, ‘there’s some ’Indoos as can use them muskets on our side!’ pointing out the piled arms.
Hervey looked unconvinced, or at least puzzled.
‘Sir,’ insisted Johnson, ‘’ave found some prisoners! I don’t know what they’re saying but they seems to want to fight for us.’
The jemadar pushed past him, looked towards the gun and began nodding his head vigorously. It was so, he assured him. ‘They are Rajpoots, sahib! The rajah has one company from Mewar. Rajpoots would not have mutinied like the others!’
There was no time for Hervey to make sense of this difference of loyalties, only to exploit it. Neither was there time for any lengthy interrogation: he must either trust and arm them or fire the armoury at once — and, in any case, he could have no exact idea how many weapons were already in the hands of the mutineers.
‘Very well, Jemadar sahib, call them; let’s arm them and stand our ground in the maidan!’ He spoke, without thinking, in English, but the jemadar knew his thoughts by now, confident at last they could prevail.
The Rajpoots numbered a little short of sixty. At first they had looked a rabble, easily held at bay by Johnson’s sabre. But as soon as they had muskets in their hands they were transformed. They were tall, proud sepoys again, even without uniform (for none was clothed above the waist). Their subedar barked a series of commands, and from this unpromising mass of half-bare disorder three ranks of soldierly-looking musketeers formed before Hervey’s eyes. A company of Jessope’s own Coldstreamers could hardly have had a profounder effect at that moment. He nodded approvingly to the subedar and indicated the direction from which at any minute he expected the mutineers to come like a great wave. The subedar barked more orders — Left-form at the halt! The three ranks pivoted half-left with speed and precision, and now Hervey too believed that winning was no longer dependent on an act of God. Locke took the gun off to a flank, supported by half a dozen sowars, to be able to sweep the maidan with enfilading fire. The armoury blazed, though they had been unable to make any impression on the magazine. But for the time being they commanded its approaches.
Hervey himself stood, dismounted, with carbine and sabre
, at last with a moment to contemplate their position. He soon wished he had not, for the odds against them were, perhaps, a little short of thirty to one.
They did not have long to wait. They heard the wave before they saw it: howling, shrieking, wailing — chilling the blood quicker than the drumfire at Waterloo. And when the wave came, it was more fearsome than anything he had seen. Hundreds upon hundreds of sepoys, like the wildest beasts of the jungle. Not in any order, like a regular wave, but as a great foaming breaker about to pound upon a beach. The old feeling clasped at his vitals — the mix of paralysing fear and energizing thrill that came when life or reputation faced extinction. He had never faced an assault dismounted before, never had to wait at the halt rather than drive forward to meet it. His throat dried like parchment, and he swallowed rapidly to slake it sufficiently to give the order. Locke discharged the galloper gun as the wave rolled over the maidan. He had double-shotted it, and the two four-pound iron balls scythed through the mass of sepoys with brutal destruction. The great human wave had no knowledge of the gun, though. They heard its report, even in their lust to be about the little force by the gates, and they could hear the screaming and see the limbless and disembowelled. But none seemed to see the cause. Was it a part of their madness? Did any in that primitive swarm have any consciousness? The flames from the buildings dazzled them rather than lit their way, yet they slowed not a bit. Then came a flash like lightning in the face of the wave, and another loud report which for the moment overcame the animal clamour. And more men were writhing in agony. Then the same again as the Rajpoots’ middle rank discharged its volley, and then the same once more from the rear rank. There were dead and dying mutineers where, only seconds before, their leaders would have promised them the blood of the intruders. Locke’s gun thundered again and yet more roundshot felled lines of men in ghastly disorder. Then came the bugle, and the jemadar charged with his dozen lancers into the dazed mass, for whom now there was no hope of resistance, only flight or death.
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