by Talbot Mundy
And, four on each side of the trench that they had dug, the remainder knelt and faced the night each way — partly from enforced piety, and partly because eight men back to back, with their bayonets outward and their butts against their knees, are an awkward proposition for an enemy. They mumbled the responses because Brown made them do it, and they kept their eyes skinned because the night seemed full of other eyes, and sounds.
“And now, you men,” said Brown, changing his voice to suit the nature of his task, “you can get your sleep by fours. I don’t care which four of you goes to sleep first, but there are only two watches of us left, and there are about four hours left to sleep in, by my reckoning. That’s two hours’ sleep for each man. And we’ll keep clear of the guardroom. As I understand my orders, the important point’s the cross-roads. I’m supposed to halt every one who comes, and to ask him his business. And that’d be impossible to do from the guardroom here. Let this be a lesson to you men, now. In interpretin’ orders, when a point’s in doubt, always look for the meaning of the orders rather than the letter of them, obeying the letter only when the meaning and the letter are the same thing. The letter of our orders says the guardroom. The meaning’s clear. We’re here to guard the cross-roads. We take the meaning, and let the letter hang!
“Besides! The way it seems to me, if there’s any more trouble cooking in this neighborhood, it’s going to cook pretty fast, and it’s going to boil around that guardroom; and if we’re not in the guardroom, why, that’s point number one for us! Leave the guardroom lantern lighted, and bring out nothing but your cartridge-pouches and the box of ammunition. Leave everything else where it lies. Quick, now.”
They obeyed him on the run, afraid to be out of his sight for a moment even, trusting him as little children trust a nurse, and ready to do anything so long as he would only keep them up and doing, and not make them stay by the scene of the murders. Brown knew their state of mind as accurately as he knew the range of their service rifles, and he knew just how he could best keep panic from them. He knew too, if not what was best to do, at least what he intended doing, and he knew how he could best get them in a state to do it.
Behind his own mind lay all the while a sense of loneliness and hopelessness. He did not entertain the thought of failure to hold the crossroads, and he was so certain that General Baines would come with his division that he could almost see the advance-guard trotting toward him down the trunk road. But there is no accounting for a soldier’s moods, and something told him — something deep down inside him that he could neither name nor understand — that he was out now on the adventure of a lifetime, and that the heart-cord which had held him tight to England all these years had been cut. He felt gloomy and dispirited, but not a man of the nine who followed him had the slightest inkling of it.
He halted them outside the guardroom, and bullydamned two of them because some unimportant part of their accouterments was missing; and he “‘Tshuned” them, and stood them at ease, and “‘Tshuned” them again, until he had them jumping at the word. Then he marched them two abreast in and out among the huts in search of any sign of native servants. They found no sign of any one at all. Though in that black darkness it would have been quite possible for half a hundred men to lie undetected. Brown decided that the camp was empty. He thought it probable that any one concealed there would have tried his luck on somebody at least, at close range as he passed.
So he marched them back to the guard-room once again, and sent two of them in to drag out the shivering Beluchi, who had taken cover underneath a cot and refused to come out until he was dragged out by the leg. The native’s terror served to pull the men together quite a little, for Tommy Atkins always does and always did behave himself with pride when what he is pleased to consider his inferiors are anywhere about. They showed that unfortunate Beluchi how white men marched into the darkness — best foot foremost; without halt or hesitation, when ghosts or murderers or unseen marksmen were close at hand.
The Beluchi let himself be dragged, trembling, between two of them. It was he who first saw something move, or heard some one breathe. For he was absolutely on edge, and had nothing to attend to but his own fear. The others had to keep both eyes and ears lifting, to please Brown the exacting. The Beluchi struggled and held back, almost breaking loose, and actually tearing his loin-cloth.
“Sahib!” he whispered hoarsely. “Sahib!”
“What is it?” demanded Brown, scarcely waiting for an answer, though. Something told him what it was that moved, and his own skin felt goose-fleshy from neck to heel.
“The fakir, sahib!”
There was a murmur through the ranks, a sibilant indrawing of the breath.
“Did I hear anybody swear?” asked Brown.
Nobody answered him. All nine men stood stock-still, leaning on their rifles, their heads craned forward and their eyes strained in the direction of the gloomy baobab.
“Form single rank!” commanded Brown.
There was no response. They stood there fixed like a row of chickens staring at a snake!
“Form single rank!”
He leaped at them, and broke the first rule of the service — as a man may when he is man enough, and the alternative would be black shame.
His fist was a hard one and heavy, and they felt the weight of it.
“Form single rank! Take one pace open order! Extend! Now, forward — by the right! Right dress, there!”
He marched in front of them, and they followed him for very shame, now that he had broken their paralysis.
“Halt! Port-arms! Charge bayonets!”
He was peering at something in the dark, something that chuckled and smelled horrible, and sat unusually still for anything that lived.
“Numbers One, Two, Three — left wheel — forward! Halt! Numbers Seven, Eight, Nine — right wheel — forward! Halt!”
They were standing now on three sides of a square. The fourth side was the trunk of the baobab. Between them and the trunk, the streaming tendrils swayed and swung, bats flitted and something still invisible sat still and chuckled.
“One pace forward — march!”
They could see now. The fakir sat and stared at them and grinned. Brown raised the lamp and let its rays fall on him. The light glinted off his eyes, and off the only other part of him that shone — the long, curved, ghastly fingernails that had grown through the palm of his upstretched hand.
“How did you get here?” demanded Brown, not afraid to speak, for fear that fright would take possession of himself as well as of his men, but quite well aware that the fakir would not answer him. Then he remembered the Beluchi.
“Ask him, you! Ask him how he came here.”
The Beluchi found his tongue, and stammered out a question. The fakir chuckled, and following his chuckle let a guttural remark escape him.
“He says, sahib, that he flew!”
“Ask him, could he fly with nine fixed bayonets in him!”
There was a little laughter from the men at that sally. It takes very little in the way of humor to dispel a sense of the uncanny or mysterious.
“He answers, sahib, that you have seen what comes of striking him. He asks how many dead there be.”
“Does he want me to hold him answerable for those men’s lives?”
“He says he cares not, sahib! He says that he has promised what shall befall you, sahib, before a day is past — you and one other!”
“Ask him, where is the Punjabi skin-buyer?”
The fakir chuckled at that question, and let out suddenly a long, low, hollow-sounding howl, like a she-wolf’s just at sundown. He was answered by another howl from near the guardroom, and every soldier faced about as though a wasp had stung him.
“Front!” commanded Brown. “Now, one of you, about turn! Keep watch that way! Is that the Punjabi? — ask him.”
“He says ‘Yes!’ sahib. He and others!”
“Very well. Now tell him that unless he obeys my orders on the jump, word for wor
d as I give them, I’ll hang him as high as Haman by that withered arm of his, and have him beaten on the toenails with a cleaning-rod before I fill him so full of bayonet-holes that the vultures’ll take him for a sponge! Say I’m a man of my word, and don’t exaggerate.”
The Beluchi translated.
“He says you dare not, sahib!”
“Advise him to talk sense.”
“He says, sahib, ‘You have had one lesson!”’
“Now it’s my turn to give him one. Men! We’ll have to give up that sleep I talked about. This limping dummy of a fakir thinks he’s got us frightened, and we’ve got to teach him different. There’s some reason why we’re not being attacked as yet. There’s something fishy going on, and this swab’s at the bottom of it! We want him, too, on a charge of murder, or instigating murder, and the guardroom’s the best place for him. To the guardroom with him. He’ll do for a hostage anyhow. And where he is, I’ve a notion that the control of this treachery won’t be far away! Grab him below the arms and by the legs. One of you hold a bayonet-point against his ribs. The rest, face each way on guard. Now — all together, forward to the guardroom — march!”
The fakir howled. Ululating howls replied from the surrounding night, and once a red light showed for a second and disappeared in front of them. Then the fakir howled again.
“Look, sahib! See! The guardroom!”
It was the Beluchi who saw it first — the one who was most afraid of things in general and the least afraid of Sergeant Brown. A little flame had started in the thatch.
“Halt!” ordered Brown. “Two of you hold the fakir! The remainder — volley-firing — kneeling — point-blank-range. Ready — as you were — independent firing — ready! Now, wait till you see ’em in the firelight, then blaze away all you like!”
His last words were cut off short by the sound of rifle-fire. Each rifle in turn barked out, and three rifles answered from the night.
“Let that fakir feel a bayonet-point, somebody!”
The fakir cursed between his teeth, in proof of prompt obedience by one of the men who held him.
“Tell him to order his crowd to cease fire!”
The Beluchi translated, and the fakir howled again. The flames leaped through the thatch, and in a minute more the countryside was lit for half a mile or more by the glare of the burning guardroom.
The flames betrayed more than a hundred turbaned men, who hugged the shadows.
“Keep that bayonet-point against his ribs. See? That comes o’ moving instead o’ sitting still! If we’d shut ourselves in the guardroom there, we’d have been merrily roasting in there now! We stole a march on them. Beauty here was sitting on his throne to see the fun. Didn’t expect us. Thought we’d be all hiding under the beds, like Sidiki here! Goes to prove the worst thing that a soldier can do is to sit still when there’s trouble. We’re better off than ever. We’re free and they won’t dare do much to us as long as we’ve got Sacred-Smells-and-Stinks in charge. Form up round him, men, and keep your eyes skinned till morning!”
VIII.
Of course, discussing matters in the light of history, with full and intimate knowledge of everything that had a bearing on the Mutiny, there are plenty of club-armchair critics who maintain that England could not do otherwise than win in ‘57. They always do say that afterward of the side that won the day.
But then, with history yet to make, things looked very different, and nobody pretended that there was any certainty of anything except a victory for the mutineers. All that either side recognized as likely to reverse conditions was the notorious ability that a beaten and cornered British army has for upsetting certainties. So the rebels had more than a little argument as to what steps should be taken next, once the initial butchery and loot had taken place.
For instance, in Jailpore
More than a hundred fakirs and wandering priests and mendicants had sent in word that the province from end to end was ready, and that the British slept. But there were those in Jailpore who distrusted fakirs and religious votaries of every kind. They believed them fully capable of rousing the countryside, of working on the religious feelings of the unsophisticated rustics and setting them to murdering and plundering right and left. But they doubted their ability to judge of the army’s sleepiness. These doubters were the older men, who had had experience of England’s craft in war. They knew of the ability of some at least of England’s generals to match guile against guile, and back up guile with swift, unexpected hammer-strokes.
There were men who claimed that what had happened in Jailpore would be repeated in Bholat and elsewhere. There was no need, these maintained, to march and join hands with other rebels. Each unit was sufficient to itself. Each city would be a British funeral pyre. Why march?
Some said, “The general at Bholat will learn of the massacre, and will learn too, that not quite all were killed. He will come hotfoot to find the four we could not find. For these British are as cobras; slay the he cobra and the she one comes to seek revenge. Slay the she one and beware! Her husband will track thee down, and strike thee. They are not ordinary folk!”
There were other factions that maintained that General Baines was strong enough, with his three thousand, to hold Bholat, unless the men of Jailpore marched, to join hands with the Bholatis — who were surely in revolt by this time. There were others who declared that he would leave Bholat and Jailpore to their fates without any doubt at all, and would march to join hands with the nearest contingent, at Harumpore.
The bolder spirits of this latter faction were for setting off at once to prevent this combination. For a little while their arguments almost prevailed.
But another faction yet, and an even more numerous one, insisted it were best to wait for news from other centers.
Why march, they argued, why strike, why run unnecessary risks, before they knew what was happening elsewhere?
“Surely,” these argued, “the English will hear that four here are still unaccounted for. Some attempt will be made to find and rescue them. But if we find and slay them, and send their heads to Bholat, then will the English know that they are indeed dead. Then there will be no attempt at rescue, and we shall hold Jailpore unmolested as headquarters.”
That piece of logic won the day for a while, and parties were made up to explore the place, and search in every nook and cranny for the three women. and a child who surely had not passed out through any of the gates, and who were therefore just as surely in the city. A reward was offered by the committee of rebel-leaders and, although nobody believed that the reward would actually be paid, the opportunities for looting privately while searching were so great that the search was thorough.
It failed, though, for the very simple reason that nobody suspected that the huge stone trap-door in the floor of the powder-magazine had ever been opened, or ever could be opened. The magazine had been a white man’s watch. White men had kept guard over it for more than a hundred years, and the natives had forgotten that a maze of tunnels and caverns lay beneath it.
So, while bayonet-points and swords were pushed into crevices, while smoke was sent down passages and tunnels and great, loose-limbed, slobbering hounds were led on the leash and cast to find a trail, the three women and the child lay still beneath the piled-up powder, and doled out water, and biscuit in siege-time measures. They lay in pitch-darkness, in a vault where not even a sound could reach them, except the whispered echo of their own voices and the scampering of the rats. They were growing nearly blind, and nearly crazed, with the darkness and the silence and the fear.
Every second they expected to see daylight through the cracks above, as rebels levered up the door, or to hear feet and voices coming through the vaults below, for doubtless the vaults led somewhere. But for their fear of snakes and rats and unknown horrors, they would have tried to find a way through the vaults themselves. But as each movement that they made, and each word that they spoke, sent echoes reverberating through the gloom, they lay still and shuddered.
Once they heard footsteps on the stone flags overhead. But the footsteps went away again, and then all was still. Soon they lost all count of time. They were only aware of heat and discomfort and fear and utter weariness.
One woman and an infant wept. One woman prayed aloud incessantly. The third woman — the menial, the worst educated and least enlightened of the three, according to the others’ notion of it — stubbornly refused to admit that there was not some human means of rescue.
“If Bill were here,” she kept on grumbling, “Bill’d find a way!”
And in the darkness that surrounded her she felt that she could see Bill’s face, as she remembered it — red-cheeked and clean-shaven — six years or more ago.
IX.
The blazing roof of the guardroom lit up even the crossroads for a while, and Brown and his men could see that for the present there was a good wide open space between them and the enemy. The firelight showed a tree not far from the crossroads, and since anything is cover to men who are surrounded and outnumbered, they made for that tree with one accord, and without a word from Brown.
“We’ve all the luck,” said Brown. “There’s not a detachment of any other army in the world would walk straight on to a find like this!”
He held up one frayed end of a manila rope, that was wound around the tree-trunk. Some tethered ox had rendered them that service.
“Fifty feet of good manila, and a fakir that needs hanging! Anybody see the connection?”
There was a chorus of ready laughter, and the two men who had the unenviable task of carrying the fakir picked him up and tossed him to the tree-trunk. The roof of the guardhouse was blazing fiercely, and now they had fired the other roofs. The fakir, the tree and the little bunch of men who held him prisoner were as plainly visible as though it had been daytime. A bullet pinged past Brown’s ear, and buried itself in the tree-trunk with a thud.
“Let him feel that bayonet again!” said Brown.
A rifleman obeyed, and the fakir howled aloud. An answering howl from somewhere beyond the dancing shadows told that the fakir had been understood.