by M. M. Kaye
But though he had been permitted to deliver Sir Louis' letter, he had not been allowed to return with a reply. Instead, like the previous messenger, he had been ordered to wait in one of the small ante-rooms while the Amir considered what answer he would send. And there he had waited all day.
Out on the plain near Ben-i-Hissar, the grass-cutters and their escort heard the sound of firing, and Kote-Daffadar Fatteh Mohammed, realizing where it came from and well aware of the hatred with which the Herati regiments and the city regarded the foreigners in the Bala Hissar, was uneasily certain that it spelled danger for the British Mission. Hastily rounding up the scattered foragers, he placed all but two of them in the charge of the four Afghan troopers, with instructions to take them at once to the care of the Commander of an Afghan regiment of horse, one Ibrahim Khan who had previously served with the Bengal Cavalry and whose present command was stationed near Ben-i-Hissar. The remaining two, with sowars Akbar Shah and Narain Singh, would return with him to the citadel immediately.
Riding at full gallop it did not take the five men long to come within sight of the south wall of the city and the roofs of the Residency, and the instant they did so any hopes they may have cherished died; for the roof-tops they had been forbidden to appear on for fear of offending the sensibilities of their neighbours were now alive with men, and that sight told them everything. They knew then that it was their own compound that was under attack, and they spurred towards it hoping to force a passage through the Shah Shahie Gate. But they were too late – the rabble was before them.
Half the city had heard the firing and seen the mutinous regiments running to their cantonments to fetch arms, and the rabble, grasping the situation, had wasted no time. Snatching up any available weapon they had rushed to join the attack on the hated interlopers, and their vanguard were already on the road ahead – racing for the same gate and led by a fakir who waved a green banner and urged them forward with frenzied screams. On their heels came others, many others: the scum of that ancient city, swarming out of every foul-smelling hovel, lane and alleyway, spurred on by the hope of loot and the lust for slaughter, and hastening to be in at the kill.
The Kote-Daffadar reined in savagely, realizing that any attempt to reach the gate first or to cut a path through that murderous horde would be tantamount to committing suicide, and that to seek refuge in the city would be equally fatal. Their best chance – if not their only one – would be to make for the fort commanded by the Amir's father-in-law, Yayhiha Khan; and snapping out a curt order he wrenched his horse round and rode off at a tangent across the plain, his four companions following behind him. But with their goal in sight they were overtaken by the four Afghan troopers, who having placed the grass-cutters in the care of Ibrahim Khan, had followed them with the intention of killing the Sikh sowar, Narain Singh, in which laudable task (for are not the Faithful instructed to slay Unbelievers?) they appeared to think that his four Mussulman comrades would be only too pleased to join. Disillusionment came swiftly…
The two grass-cutters were unarmed except for sickles – which can be wicked weapons in a fight – but the three Guides carried cavalry carbines that can be whipped in an instant from the leather buckets that hang from the saddle and levelled with one hand. ‘Come then, and take him,’ invited the Kote-Daffadar, the barrel of his weapon aimed at point-blank range at the breast of the spokesman, his finger taut on the trigger.
The Afghans looked at the three carbines and the two knife-edged sickles, and drew back, cursing and scowling, but unwilling to face such daunting odds. They had expected that their fellow-Mussulmans would at least stand aside even if they would not assist in killing the Sikh, and with the odds four to one in their favour would have had no hesitation in attacking a single man armed with a carbine, since he could only fire once and they would have been on him before he could reload. But now they were four against five, and the chances were that if they attempted to rush that group of determined men only one of them would live to get within striking distance, and what chance would that one, armed with a tulwar, have against three sabres and two sickles?
With a final burst of profanity they turned and made for the citadel and the eager hordes that were hurrying to join in the attack upon the Residency, leaving the Kote-Daffadar and his companions to ride on to the fort, where luck had been with them; for a sizable proportion of the garrison were Kazilbashis, men of the Kote-Daffadar and Akbar Shah's own tribe, who had escorted all five to safety in the Murad Khana – their own walled quarter of the city.
Ash, watching from his window, had glimpsed the five tiny figures, dwarfed by distance and trailing a white cloud of dust as they rode back at a gallop from Ben-i-Hissar, and guessed who they were. But he did not know why they had turned aside until he saw the first of the riff-raff from the city come pouring in from beyond the stables to his right, because the window-bars were set too close to allow him to lean out, so he could not see the Arsenal – or the Kulla-Fi-Arangi either: that empty enclosure on which Wally had hoped to build forage-sheds and servants' quarters so that he could prevent it being used as a way of entering the compound or, in the event of hostilities, occupied by an enemy.
66
Wally had been speaking to the sepoys on the barrack roof when the city budmarshes arrived to join the insurgents, and he had seen a number of mutineers, encouraged by these reinforcements, begin to run forward under cover of the fire from the Arsenal towards the Kulla-Fi-Arangi, from where – if they were allowed to occupy it – they would soon be able to make two thirds of the compound untenable. They would have to be dislodged and there was only one way to do it.
Making for the steps that led down in the thickness of the outer wall he pelted down them, raced across the lane into the Residency courtyard, and up to the Envoy's office where he found Cavagnari and William: the Envoy, with his head bandaged, firing through a slit made by breaking out a slat of the shutter, while his orderly acted as loader, taking the empty rifle and handing him a loaded one as fast as he fired, as methodically as though they had been on a duck shoot.
William was kneeling at one of the windows that faced inwards across the courtyard and returning the fire of a group of men on the roof of a house overlooking the barracks, and the room itself was littered with spent shells and full of the reek of black powder.
‘Sir,’ said Wally breathlessly, ‘they are trying to occupy that Kulla enclosure up on the left, and if they get a foothold there we're done. I believe we could drive them out if we made a charge, only we'll have to do it quickly. If William-’
But Cavagnari had tossed aside the rifle and was already half-way across the room. ‘Come on, William.’ He snatched up his sword and revolver and was down the stairs and shouting for Rosie, who was tending a wounded man. ‘Come on, Kelly, leave that fellow. We've got to chase those bastards out. No, not a rifle, your revolver. And a sword, man – a sword.’
Wally, racing ahead of him, collected Jemadar Mehtab Singh and twenty-five men, and explaining the position briefly, watched the sowars stack their carbines and draw their sabres while the sepoys fixed bayonets and two men ran to open the doors in the archway at the far end of the barrack courtyard. ‘Now we will show those sons of perdition how the Guides fight,’ said Wally joyously. ‘Argi, bhaian. Pah Makhe – Guides ki-jai!’*
Ash saw them stream across the lane and into the barracks, where the canvas awnings hid them from his view until they burst out through the archway and into the open, the four Englishmen, Wally leading, running ahead with the Guides racing behind them – the sepoys charging with the bayonet and the sowars with sabre and pistol.
They tore cheering across the bullet-swept compound, the sunlight flashing on their blades; and through all the din and tumult of shouting and rifle fire he could hear Wally singing at the top of his voice: ‘… “And hearts are brave again and arms are strong, Alleluia! – All-e-lu-ia!” ’
‘A day for singing hymns,’ thought Ash, remembering. ‘Oh God – a day for s
inging hymns…’
Two of the Guides fell before they reached the Cavalry lines, one of them pitching forward on his face as he ran, and recovering almost instantly, rolling aside to avoid being trodden on and limping painfully away to the shelter of the stables; the other checking, to sink slowly to his knees and topple sideways and lie still. The rest swerved to avoid his body and ran on out of Ash's range of view, and he heard the firing stop abruptly and realized that both the enemy and the sepoys on the barracks had been forced to hold their fire for fear of killing their own men.
He did not see the attacking party reach their objective. But Nakshband Khan had done so, for the waste ground of the Kulla-Fi-Arangi lay directly in view of the house where he had taken refuge, and the Sirdar, peering from an upper window of that house, saw them vault over the low mud wall that enclosed it, and charging up the slope, drive the enemy before them: ‘The Afghans running like sheep before wolves, said the Sirdar, describing it later.
But Ash had seen them come back, walking now, for they brought three wounded men with them, but moving swiftly and confidently like soldiers who have acquitted themselves well and won a victory, though all of them must have known that it could only be a temporary one.
The sowar who had been the first to fall had managed to drag himself back to the barracks with a broken leg, but the second man was dead, and two of his comrades stopped to retrieve his weapon and carry the body into a near-by godown before following the others into the barracks where Wally waited under the arch, his stained sabre in his hand, to see them all safely in before the doors were closed behind them and they returned to the Residency.
The firing that had ceased during the attack on the Kulla-Fi-Arangi broke out again with renewed fury as Kelly hurried back to the wounded, while Cavagnari reeled into the dining-room and called for a glass of water: and when it came remembered that, war or no war, the Mohammedans who had fought with him were keeping the Ramadan fast, and put it down untouched. Jenkyns, the civilian, who had no such scruples, drank thirstily, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand said hoarsely: ‘What were our losses, Wally?’
‘One dead and four wounded – two of them not too badly. Paras Ram's leg is smashed, but he says that if the Doctor-Sahib will put a splint on it and prop him up at a window, he can still shoot.’
‘That's the spirit,’ approved William. ‘We got off pretty lightly when you think of the damage we must have done. We must have killed at least a dozen, and wounded twice as many more when they were scrambling to get back through the entrance or over the far wall. It was like shooting at a row of haystacks. That ought to hold them for a time.’
‘With luck, about fifteen minutes,’ observed Wally.
‘Fif—? But good lord, can't you post a few of your sepoys there to hold it?’
‘With around five hundred rifles and muskets able to draw a bead on them from three different directions, and not a shred of cover? Not a chance, I'm afraid.’
‘Then for God's sake what are we going to do? We can't afford to let them get dug in there.’
‘As soon as they try it we make another sortie and chase them out again. And when they come back, we do so again – and if necessary, again. It's our only hope, and who knows, if we make it expensive enough for them they may get tired of it before we do.’
Wally grinned at him and hurried away, and William said bitterly: ‘You'd almost think he was enjoying it. Do you suppose he doesn't realize -?’
‘He realizes all right,’ said Cavagnari sombrely, ‘probably better than any of us. England will lose a first-rate soldier in that boy. Listen to him now -he's cracking jokes with those men out there. Amal Din tells me that the Guides would do anything that Hamilton-Sahib asked of them, because they know that he would never ask them to do anything that he would not do himself. A good boy and a born leader of men. It's a pity… Ah well, I'd better get back to my loophole.’
He dragged himself from the chair he had slumped into on his return, and stood clutching the back of it, and William said anxiously: ‘Are you sure you are all right, sir? Oughtn't you to lie down?’
Cavagnari gave a crack of laughter. ‘My dear boy! At a time like this? If a jawan with a smashed leg is prepared to sit at a window to take pot shots at the enemy provided someone props him up first, I can surely do the same when all I have suffered is a slight crease in my head.’ He turned away, and followed by William went back up the stairs to take over the positions that had been occupied during their absence by two of the Escort who had been keeping up a steady fire on the mutineers around the Arsenal, and who now moved up to the roof to join a group of the Guides who were firing at the enemy-held house-tops to the north of the compound.
Another and larger group on the roof of the Mess House opposite had turned their attention to the buildings that lay immediately behind the Residency, and Wally, running up to see how they were getting on and to take stock of the situation, saw from that vantage point that his recent estimate of fifteen minutes had erred on the side of generosity. The mutineers were already creeping back again into the Kulla-Fi-Arangi, and there was nothing for it but to launch a second sortie and clear them out again.
Pelting back down the stairs he collected a fresh party of Guides, snatched Rosie away from setting Paras Ram's shattered leg – apologizing in the same breath to the wounded man and assuring him that he would not keep the Doctor-Sahib long – and turned and ran across the courtyard and up the Envoy's staircase to fetch William and Cavagnari. But the sight of the older man's face made him change his mind.
Wally had lost none of his old admiration for his Chief, but he was a soldier first and foremost, and he had no intention of jeopardizing his men unnecessarily. He needed William, but he refused point-blank to allow Cavagnari to accompany them: ‘No, I'm sorry, sir, but any fool can see you ain't fit and I can't take the risk,’ said Wally brutally. ‘If you collapsed we'd only have to stop and pick you up, and that could mean throwing away the lives of several valuable men. Besides, it wouldn't do 'em any good to see you fall. Come on, William, we haven't got all day…’
Ash and Nakshband Khan, together with several hundred of the enemy, witnessed that second sortie, and seeing that only three of the four Sahibs took part in it, drew their own conclusions. The enemy, being convinced that one of the Sahibs had been slain, were greatly heartened, while Ash and the Sirdar (who had noted the bandage about Cavagnari's head and realized that he had been wounded) were correspondingly dismayed, because they knew that if he were to die it could have a serious effect on the spirits of the beleaguered garrison.
Once again the firing had of necessity slackened off, and once again the waste ground had been cleared. But this time at the cost of two lives and another four men wounded, two of them severely.
‘We can't go on like this, Wally,’ gasped Rosie, wiping the sweat out of his eyes as he directed the stretcher-bearers to carry the injured men into the rooms that he had set aside as hospital wards. ‘Do you realize that as well as these we've already had over a dozen men killed and God knows how many wounded?’
‘ I know. But then we've accounted for at least ten of their men to every one of ours – if that's any comfort to you.’
‘It's none at all – when I'm knowing that those divils out there outnumber us by twenty to one, and that as soon as the lot that left for their cantonments get back here, it'll be nearer fifty or a hundred to one… Accha, Rahman Baksh, mai aunga (all right, I'm coming) – Look, Wally, isn't it time we tried another letter to that scutt of an Amir?… Accha, accha. Abbi arter (I'm coming now).’
The doctor hurried away, and Wally handed his sabre to his bearer Pir Buksh, and taking the Havildar with him went over to the barracks to see how things were with the sepoys who were firing from the shelter of the parapets, and if anything could be done to improve the defences of that building against the mass attack that would surely come if the Amir failed to send help. There had still been no reply to the letter that had been taken o
ut by the chupprassi Ghulam Nabi, and now Sir Louis wrote another and sent it by the hand of one of the Mohammedan servants, who volunteered to see if he could not get through by way of the temporarily cleared Kulla-Fi-Arangi, and from there through the King's Garden.
‘Keep to the south side of the barracks and seek what cover you can between there and the stables, instructed Sir Louis. ‘The jawans will distract the enemy with rapid fire until you reach the wall. God be with you.’
William sent an orderly to find Wally and tell him what was planned, and to ask for covering fire. And presently the messenger slipped away to the accompaniment of a barrage of shots, and having run the gauntlet of the open stretch of compound between the barracks and the near wall of the Kulla-Fi-Arangi, scrambled over it… to be seen no more.
Somewhere between that low mud wall and the palace, the fate that Allah is believed to tie about the neck of all His creatures may have lain in wait for him; or perhaps he had friends or relatives in Kabul or elsewhere in Afghanistan, and decided to take refuge with them in preference to carrying out an appallingly hazardous mission. All that is certain is that his message never reached the palace, and that he himself vanished as completely as though he had been no more than a grain of sand on the autumn wind.
In the barracks Wally and Havildar Hassan, assisted by half-a-dozen sepoys, several syces and some of the Residency servants, had been barricading the doorless stairways that led up in the thickness of the wall on either side of the archway to the long strips of roof that surrounded the canvas-covered central courtyard. This would leave them with only a single stair – case – the one at the far end near the door that gave on the Residency lane – but at least, in the event of a mass attack from the front, the men on the roof would not have to worry about the enemy storming up from below when or if Wally's makeshift outer door went down.