by M. M. Kaye
Their position was already precarious enough without that, and Rosie had erred in imagining that Wally did not realize the extent of the casualties that the garrison had suffered. Wally not only knew, but had been mentally crossing them off one by one and re-arranging the disposition of his little force, carefully husbanding his resources and doing everything he could to avoid risking the life of a single man unnecessarily, or allowing their morale to sink. His own was still high, for the sight of a familiar blue and white jar had told him that Ash was somewhere around, and he felt confident that Ash would not be idle.
Ash could be relied on to see that the Amir was informed of the parlous plight of the British Mission, even if every minister and high official in the entire Afghan Government was bent on concealing it. He would manage it somehow, and help would come. It was only a question of holding out long enough and not allowing themselves to be overrun… ‘Shabash, Hamzulla! Ab mazbut hai… That should fox the hosts of Midian,’ said Wally. ‘Now if we can -’
He stopped, listening to a new sound: a deep, slowly gathering roar that he had been aware of for the past few minutes as a distant background to the tumult raging beyond the north-western limits of the compound, but that now, unmistakably, was coming nearer. Not ‘Dam-i-charya’ this time, but ‘Ya-charya' – the war-cry of the Suni sect of Moslems, rolling towards him with ever-increasing speed and growing louder, nearer and fiercer until even the solid barrack walls seemed to shake to the rhythmic thunder of that rabble-rousing battle cry –
‘It is the troops from the cantonments,’ said Wally. ‘Bar the doors and get back into the Residency, all of you. Tell Jemadar Jiwand Singh to choose his men and be ready for another sortie. We may have to clear them out of that waste ground again.’ He turned and made for the stair at the far end of the barrack courtyard, and leaping up it ran forward along the roof above the Mohammedan quarters to the shorter strip of roof above the archway.
Looking over the loopholed parapet and the kneeling sepoys who were firing from behind it, he saw that the high ground by the Arsenal was a solid mass of frenzied humanity that was surging forward, thrust on by the pressure of thousands more behind, towards the flimsy barricades that separated the Mission's compound from the surrounding lanes and houses. The mutinous troops who had run back to their cantonments to fetch arms were back again in force, and not alone – they had brought others with them, the remaining Herati regiments who had been cantoned there, and thousands more budmarshes from the city. Even as he watched, they reached the barricades, and trampling them down, overran the cavalry lines and occupied the gutted stables.
In front of them, leading them, ran a wizened figure who waved a green banner and screamed to those behind him to kill the Infidels and show no mercy. Wally did not recognize him, but even at that range Ash did. It was the fakir whom he had seen earlier that day at the pay parade: Buzurg Shah, whom he had also seen on other occasions, calling for a Jehad in the more inflammable sections of the city.
‘Destroy them! Root out the Unbelievers. Kill. Kill!’ shrieked Fakir Buzurg Shah. ‘In the name of the Prophet smite and spare not! For the Faith. For the Faith. Maro! Maro* –!
‘Ya-charya! Ya-charya!’ yelled his supporters as they fanned out over the compound and began to fire at the heads of the sepoys behind the parapet on the barracks.
Wally saw one of his men fall backwards, shot between the eyes, and a second slump sideways with a bullet through his shoulder, and did not wait for more. It was no longer a question of clearing the waste ground, but of driving the mob out of the compound; and three minutes later Ash saw him lead a third sortie, racing out through the arch of the barracks with William at his side. But this time neither Kelly nor Cavagnari had been with them: Cavagnari because Wally still would not hear of his coming, and Rosie because by now his hands were too full with the care of the wounded to allow him to take part in another charge.
The fight had been a fiercer one than the two previous sorties into the waste ground, for though once more the marksmen on the rooftops, both inside and outside the compound, were forced to hold their fire for fear of killing their own men, the odds against the garrison had lengthened considerably. The Guides were now outnumbered by fifty to one, and would have been outnumbered by even more if space had permitted, since the forces opposing them included a full three regiments of armed and mutinous soldiers as well as every disaffected, hostile or bloodthirsty citizen in Kabul. But their very numbers proved a handicap to the Afghans, for they not only hampered each other, but in the fury and stress of battle no man could be sure that he was not attacking one of his own side, as with the exception of Wally their opponents were not in uniform.
The Guides, on the other hand, knew each other too well to make any such mistake. Moreover, their sepoys carried rifles with fixed bayonets while the two Englishmen and both the Indian officers were armed with service revolvers as well as sabres; and in the murderous hand-to-hand fighting that followed, every revolver shot told, for knowing that there would be no chance to reload, the men of the Escort held their fire until the last possible moment. But the mob had not followed their example, and in the initial rush to reach the Mission compound every Afghan had discharged his musket – many of them into the air – so that now they could only oppose steel to the rifle and revolver bullets of their adversaries.
The Guides had made the best possible use of that tactical error, and followed it up so fiercely with bayonet and sabre that the Afghans gave ground before the fury of their attack. Unable to flee because of the pressure of those at the back, who could not see and urged them forward, hampered by the bodies of the dead and wounded on whom they trod as the fight swayed to and fro, they turned at last and began to attack those behind them; and suddenly panic flared like a fire through dry grass and the mob were turning and clawing at each other in an attempt to escape. Retreat became a rout, and within seconds the compound was clear except for the dead and wounded.
Between them, the little band of Guides had fired exactly thirty-seven shots in the course of that brief engagement, of which no less than four – all heavy bullets fired from Lee-Enfield rifles at a distance of six yards – had smashed straight through the chest of an enemy soldier to kill a second behind him. The remainder had accounted for one man apiece, while a dozen more had been bayonetted and eight cut down by sabres.
The resulting carnage was not pleasant to look upon, for scores of men lay dead on the dusty, blood-spattered ground, while here and there a wounded one strove to drag himself to his knees and crawl like an injured animal towards the kindly shade and out of the glare of the sunlight.
The Guides had exacted a terrible toll and almost evened the odds. But they had paid a high price for that brief victory, one that with their dwindling numbers they could ill afford. Out of the twenty men who had taken part in that third sortie, only fourteen came back; and of these, half-a-dozen were barely able to walk, while none came through entirely unscathed, even though many wounds were no more than superficial.
The sepoys on the barrack roof had covered their return with rifle fire, and others of the Escort waited for them under the archway to bar the doors behind them before following them into the Residency. But this time the victors walked tiredly and there was no elation in their faces, only grimness. The grimness of men who know that the fruits of their hard-won fight cannot be retained, but will have to be fought for again and again – and with ever dwindling resources – or else abandoned to the enemy, which must spell disaster.
They had not been away very long, yet during that brief interval five of the men who had been posted on the roofs of the two Residency houses had been killed and another six wounded; for the makeshift parapets gave them little protection from the marksmen stationed on the higher rooftops of the near-by houses, and the skies seemed to be raining lead. They helped the wounded down to where the desperate Kelly and his solitary Hospital Assistant, Rahman Baksh, were working like men possessed – coatless, and splashed with blood from head to f
oot like butchers in an abattoir as they tirelessly swabbed, cut and stitched, bandaged, applied tourniquets and administered anaesthetics and opiates in the hopelessly overcrowded rooms where the wounded sat or lay or stood leaning against the walls, their powder-grimed faces drawn with weariness and pain, but making no complaint.
The dead had been treated more cavalierly; there was no time to spare for carrying away corpses, and they had been used instead to reinforce those inadequate parapets. For the Guides were realists. In a crisis such as this they saw no reason why their comrades should not continue to serve their Corps to the end; and the end did not look to be far off, because there were now less than ten men on the two roofs not counting the dead. And the enemy had no shortage of men or ammunition…
‘Has there been an answer from the Amir yet, sir?’ asked William, stripping off his stained coat as he limped into the office and found his Chief grey-faced from pain, but still firing methodically through the broken shutter.
‘No. We must send again. Are you wounded?’
‘Only a hack on the shin, sir. Nothing to worry about.’ William sat down and began to tear his handkerchief into strips and knot them together. ‘But I'm afraid we lost six men, and several of the others were badly mauled.’
‘Is young Hamilton all right?’ inquired Sir Louis sharply.
‘Yes, bar a scratch or two. He's a bonnie fighter, yon laddie. He fought like ten men and sang the whole time. Hymns, of all things. The men seem to like it – I wonder if they've any idea what he's singing about? They probably think it's a war-song… which I suppose it is, when you come to think of it: “The Son of God goes forth to war” and all that –’
‘Was that what he was singing?’ asked Cavagnari, sighting carefully. He pulled the trigger and gave a grunt of satisfaction: ‘Got him!’
‘No,’ said William, winding his home-made bandage about a shallow cut on his left hand. ‘It was something about “charging for the God of Battle and putting the foe to rout” –’ He used his teeth to help him pull the knot tight, and resuming his coat said: ‘Do you want me to write another letter, sir?’
‘Yes. Make it short. And tell that damned scoundrel that if he lets us die he's done for, as the Sirkar will send an army to take over his country and -No, better not say that. Just urge the fellow in the name of hospitality and honour to come to our assistance before we are all murdered. Tell him our case is desperate.’
William sat down to write again to the Amir, while Cavagnari sent a servant to inquire if there was anyone with a reasonable knowledge of the Bala Hissar who was prepared to run the risk of trying to take a letter to the palace – other than a soldier, who could not be spared. The risk was a grave one, for, with the back door barricaded, every rooftop within sight occupied by enemy sharpshooters, and the approaches to the compound held by the mob, the chances of anyone being able to win through were negligible. Yet William had barely finished writing when the servant returned with one of the office clerks, an elderly quiet-voiced Hindu with relatives in Kabul, who knew his way about the Bala Hissar, and possessing the Hindu indifference to death, had volunteered to make the attempt.
William went down with him to the courtyard while Wally sent a man over to the barracks and two more up to the roofs of the Residency, to tell the jawans there to do what they could to draw the fire of the enemy while the messenger made his attempt.
The Hindu had been helped over the barricade that blocked the southern end of the lane between the Residency and the barracks, and turning right, hurried forward, hugging the windowless back wall of the Mohammedan quarters, where he was temporarily protected from the enemy on the housetops to the north. But once past the barrack block he had to run the gauntlet of the open ground; and already a number of the enemy had crept back into the compound to take cover in the cavalry lines and behind the low mud walls that enclosed the pickets. A score of these, led by the fakir, rushed out to intercept him before he could reach the Kulla-Fi-Arangi, while others cut off his retreat. And though he held up the letter, calling out to them that he was unarmed and bore a message to their Amir, they fell upon him with knives and tulwars, slashing, stabbing and literally hacking the defenceless man to pieces in full view of the garrison.
The brutal murder did not go unavenged, for the sepoys on the barrack roof leapt to their feet and fired volley after volley at the killers, and Wally, who had watched from the roof of the Mess House, sent Jemadar Jiwand Singh and twenty Guides to drive them out of the compound. It was the fourth sortie that the Guides had launched that morning, and once again they drove the Afghans back and took a terrible revenge for the mangled thing that still clutched in one severed hand a blood-soaked piece of paper that implored the help of the useless craven who sat upon the throne of Afghanistan.
Wally had seen many ugly sights during the past year, and thought himself immune from them. But the savage and barbaric dismembering of the unfortunate Hindu – who as an unarmed messenger carrying a letter to the ruler of Afghanistan should have been protected by his office – had turned his stomach, and he had run down from the roof with the intention of leading that charge himself. But on reaching the courtyard he had been greeted by the news that the enemy in the rear, having failed to break down the small door in the back wall of the Residency courtyard, were now sapping the wall itself and had already broken through in two places.
The threat was too grave to be ignored, so sending the Jemadar to lead the sortie instead, he turned to deal with this new threat. It had been bad enough to have to fend off attacks from their front and their right flank while being harassed by fire from the surrounding housetops; but if the enemy were to break through from the rear and pour in troops at ground level, the garrison might find themselves forced to abandon the Residency, together with their wounded, and retreat to the barracks as the only position left to them. An untenable position at that, as the barracks would be impossible to hold once the Residency was lost, because the enemy would then be able to concentrate their fire on it from a range of a few yards; and once penned inside it there would be no way of seeing across the compound or gaining any idea of what the Afghans were doing.
The rear wall was only too easy to breach as it was woefully thin, and the men who filled the narrow street behind it were hacking at it in perfect safety, for they could not be fired on except from the roofs of the Residency houses – which entailed standing up on the curtain wall of the Envoy's House or the extreme edge of the Mess House, and aiming directly downwards: and since the first three jawans to attempt this were killed instantly by enemy marksmen crouching behind the parapets of rooftops on the opposite side of the street, it was not tried again.
The sappers below had been at work for some time before the danger was spotted, for the continuous crackle of firing, allied to the roar of a mob whose rage against the Infidel and inbred lust for fighting had been inflamed by the long fast of Ramadan, had masked the sounds of pick-axes from the men inside the Residency. The existence of this new and deadly threat had only been realized when a group of servants, crouching in a ground-floor room of the Envoy's House, saw a hole appear near the skirting. One of them had rushed upstairs to give the alarm, and implored the Envoy to leave his office and go over to the other house.
‘Huzoor, if these shaitans break through below, you will be trapped. And then what shall become of us? You are our father and our mother, and if we lose you, we are lost – we are all lost!’ yammered the terrified man, beating his head against the floor.
‘Be-wakufi!’ snapped Cavagnari angrily. ‘Stand up, thou. Weeping will not save your lives, but work may do so. Come on, William – and you others too – they'll need help down there.’
He made for the stairs, followed by William and the two jawans who had been firing through loopholes in the shutters, the wailing servant bringing up the rear. But Wally, appraising his Chief's grey face and unfocused eyes and realizing that this time he could not refuse his help, managed to persuade him that he would be far
better employed as a sniper on the top floor of the Mess House, firing through a loophole at the mob surrounding the Arsenal to discourage them from invading the compound again.
Cavagnari had not demurred. He was beginning to suffer from the effects of concussion, and he did not suspect that Lieutenant Hamilton's real reason for asking him to man that particular position was that the top floor of the Mess House seemed to Wally a far safer place than the crowded courtyard, and he meant to ensure that his wounded chief ran no unnecessary risks.
As though to prove that his caution was justified, he had no sooner escorted Sir Louis from the courtyard than a musket ball was fired into it from close range and at knee level. The shot had wounded two men, and created considerable confusion among the remainder as it appeared to have come from inside the tent that had contained the ammunition; and it was only when a second and third shot followed that the garrison realized that the enemy's sappers must have broken through the wall behind the empty tent, and were firing at them blindly from the street behind the Residency. The courtyard cleared with magical swiftness, and William detailed Naik Mehr Dil and sepoys Hassan Gul and Udin Singh to block the hole, which could not be reached until the tent came down.
The three jawans had managed to dismantle it and push the heavy folds of canvas into the breach with the aid of tent poles, after which they had reinforced this inadequate barricade with a large tin-lined box containing their Commanding Officer's winter underwear and sheepskin poshteen, and a massive wood and leather screen from the dining-room. But in the process the Naik was shot in the arm, so as soon as the work was finished Hassan Gul took the wounded man into the Mess House to find the Doctor-Sahib, for Mehr Dil's arm hung useless, and blood was pouring from under the waist-cloth that he had tied above the wound as a tourniquet in the hope of checking the flow.
They found the ground-floor rooms full of dead, wounded and dying men, but there was no sign of the Doctor-Sahib, and his exhausted hospital assistant, Rahman Baksh, looking up briefly from tying a pad made from a towel over a hole in a sepoy's thigh, said that the Sahib had been called upstairs and that Hassan Gul had better take the Naik up there – there was no room down here for any more wounded.