The atmosphere was somewhat bitter. ‘It is intolerable that such a situation should have arisen,’ someone said, ‘because of, well...’ she sniffed.
‘I really think Major Outram could have handled things differently,’ said another, hugging her weeping daughter to her breast.
‘What you mean is, he should have handed the Dowager Rani over to the Baluchis,’ Jenny said fiercely.
‘Well, my dear, if she is guilty of murder...’
‘She is not guilty of murder,’ Jenny shouted.
‘It is her word against everyone else’s. Against that of her own son! And we must all suffer for it.’
Laura put a pillow over her ears. She had nothing to say to them. There was nothing she could say. She could only thank God for Outram’s support, and Jenny’s, and give way to despair. She had lost her children.
*
Just before dawn the next morning, 15 February, they were roused by the beating of drums and the blowing of bugles, countered by a bugle call from just above their heads and the thud of booted feet as the garrison took up its positions. Laura got up and went to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Jenny asked.
‘Outside. I don’t think I can stand this much longer.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Neither had undressed; it was just a matter of pulling on their boots. They paused in the corridor for a moment, listening to the noise coming closer.
‘Hold your fire,’ an officer was shouting above their heads. ‘Hold your fire. Make every shot count.’
Laura took Jenny’s hand and led her along the corridor to the door. There was a Sepoy sentry.
‘Ladies must stay under cover,’ he said apologetically.
‘I am not a lady,’ Laura pointed out. ‘I am the Dowager Rani of Sittapore.’
The man hesitated, and they slipped past him into the courtyard of the Residency; it was in darkness and seemed deserted, but for a gleam of light from the billiard room, which had been converted into a surgery.
The Baluchis were now very close, and the night was beginning to fade.
‘Open fire,’ came the command. ‘By volleys. Section One!’
The muskets exploded, and Laura ran to the arched gateway.
The entire garrison was at the palisades, firing by sections. Outram was there as well, walking up and down behind the gate, where the main assault was clearly going to be launched. The volley firing and the speed with which the highly trained Sepoys could reload had temporarily driven the Baluchis back.
Laura and Jenny dashed up the outside staircase to the first floor verandah, then up the next flight to the flat roof. Here they crouched by the parapet to prevent themselves from being seen as the darkness turned to grey. They could look out and see the masses of Baluchis surging forward against several parts of the wall at once; they could see the gleaming swords and the muskets. Immediately beneath them a thin circle of company soldiers stood against the palisade, awaiting orders to fire.
Laura strained to see if she could discern Batraj or Sivitraj but she could not make them out in the crush.
Now men were being hit, as the Baluchis came again and again. The orderlies helped several back to the Residency. ‘We had best go down,’ she said.
But she cast a last look at the northern horizon. To the east, at the very edge of the plain, the sun was just rising with dazzling brilliance. And to the north, closer to the earth tiny slivers of silver were gleaming in the dawn...
Her heart missed a beat. She blinked her eyes and looked again. It was no illusion. But the pinpoints were a very long way away.
Jenny was already halfway down the steps, and Laura hurried after her into the billiard room, which was already foul with blood and stench.
‘Ladies!’ Dr White objected.
He was operating on a Sepoy who had been wounded in the thigh. The poor man stretched on the bloodstained billiard table, was naked from the waist down, and Jenny Fisher gave a little gasp and stepped back.
‘We are here to assist you, sir,’ Laura said firmly, and knelt beside another wounded Sepoy, who had received a sword slash in the arm. The wound had been bound up, but was still seeping blood; Laura swabbed it dry and gave the man a drink of water.
White returned to his operating table. The wounded man gave a fearful shriek as the probe went in search of the bullet.
Jenny ran from the room, and Laura could hear her vomiting on the verandah. Three more men were brought in.
‘This is really no place for women,’ White grumbled; having removed the bullet he was now dressing the wound.
Laura ignored him, and turned her attention to the next new arrival. Her sari was by now soaked with blood. A few minutes later, she discovered Jenny kneeling beside her.
‘Good girl,’ she said, and hugged her briefly.
They worked there for over an hour. All around them the firing continued and the casualties grew, while the sun rose higher and the air became hotter and more sultry. But as yet no Baluchi had got inside the compound. And surely those pinpoints of light were coming ever closer?
It was an hour later that Outram himself came to the surgery. Both Laura and White looked up, alarmed that the commander might have been hit. But Outram was unhurt, although smoke-stained and grave. He beckoned Laura outside. The air was thick with dust and smoke, and she could hear the screams of anguish and shouts of defiance.
‘Are they not magnificent?’ Outram asked.
‘Yes indeed. How many Baluchis are there?’
‘Hardly less than eight thousand. And we have given not an inch. But now, Laura...we are running out of ammunition.’
‘Oh, my God! But General Napier is coming.’
‘If only we could be sure of that.’
‘I saw him, this morning.’
He frowned at her.
‘I saw pin-points of light, in the sunrise.’
Outram ran up the steps to the roof, levelled his glass. ‘Are they there?’ Laura followed him.
The sun was now high, and scorching down on the plain. ‘Do you not see them?’
‘Perhaps. Yes, there is something out there, moving and glittering.’
‘It is General Napier.’
‘Still perhaps twenty-four hours away. And we have not enough ammunition for more than another hour.’
To die, at such a time, with help so near...Laura sighed, and went over to the parapet, to look down at the two little steamers, still alongside the dock.
She grasped Outram’s arm. ‘The steamers!’
‘Eh?’
‘Could we not abandon the Residency for the steamers?’
‘The Baluchis will simply follow. They have horses; they can gallop faster than those tubs can move, especially against the current and with more than a hundred people on board.’
‘It is a matter of time,’ Laura said. ‘If we take to the water, they will find it more difficult to get at us. And if we can steam upriver, no matter how slowly, all the while General Napier will be coming closer.’
‘By God! You’re right!’ he said. ‘It might do.’
‘It is better than sitting here waiting to be cut to pieces. Can you hold out long enough for the captain to raise steam?’
‘We must,’ he said. ‘All right, Laura, I put you in charge of evacuating the women and children. Get them aboard.’
Laura shook her head. ‘You will have to give that task to Jenny Fisher. The women will never listen to me.’
He nodded. ‘Perhaps you are right. Then you go and tell the skipper to get up steam.’ He hurried down the stairs and into the operating theatre. ‘We are about to evacuate the Residency and take to the steamers. Women and children first, then the wounded. Haste, now, haste!’
He returned to the fighting. Jenny ran down to the cellar. It took her some time and a great deal of shouting to get the women to leave the comparative safety of the stone walls and venture out among the shrieks and screams of flying bullets, but she managed it at last, and shepherded them
down to the dock and onto the steamers, apparently unnoticed by the Baluchis.
By then Laura was already aboard. Captain Brown, who was also the engineer, had already started to raise steam. He grinned when he heard the orders. ‘Sure, and I was thinking of getting out meself, if things got any rougher. But did you say everybody’s coming? Where am I to put them all?’
The little ship was only fifty feet long, but she had two decks.
‘She’ll heel over,’ Brown said. ‘And if she don’t, she’ll run aground. This time of year the river’s at its lowest.’
‘Can’t we use the other ship as well?’
‘She has engine trouble. She’ll not raise steam in time.’
‘Then we’ll have to keep stable by placing most of the people on the lower deck,’ Laura told him. She went to hurry the women trailing down the dock.
‘I’ve been hit,’ a woman wailed. ‘I’ve been hit.’
Laura examined her quickly, but saw no blood. ‘The bullet was spent. Now, please arrange yourself amidships, and sit on the deck.’
‘On the deck?’
‘That way there will be less chance of you really being hit. No, no, please...’ she stood in front of the ladder as several of the women went towards it. ‘You cannot go on the upper deck.’
‘But I always travel on the upper deck,’ the first woman said haughtily. ‘The lower deck is for natives and animals.’
‘Today, you are travelling on the lower deck,’ Laura said firmly. ‘Jenny...’
‘The Dowager Rani is right,’ Jenny said. ‘Ladies, you simply must co-operate.’
White and his orderlies assisted the wounded down the dock. This provoked a fresh outbreak of complaints.
‘They’re not putting those men with us?’
‘Ugh!’
‘I’m going to be sick, I know it.’
‘Those men were hit defending you,’ Laura snapped.
White arranged his people on the deck, which immediately became stained with blood; the women and children huddled together, well away from them. Laura looked up towards the Residency. The flag still flew from the roof, but the firing was unabated. Surely Outram would know they were ready.
The Baluchis had seen them. Men ran onto the bridge, pointing at the smoke issuing from the steamer’s funnel. One or two fired muskets, but fortunately the range was too great for accuracy, even had they been expert marksmen. But the steamer was a large target, and every so often there was the crunch of lead into wood, or the clang of a bullet striking metal. Sooner or later someone was going to be hit.
‘I’m going up to see what’s happening,’ Laura told Brown.
‘Dangerous,’ the Scotsman remarked. ‘But it’s getting late.’
Laura gathered up her sari to her knees and ran along the dock and up the slope. The Sepoys had abandoned the perimeter, and were holding the Residency building itself, from which there was direct access to the dock. The Baluchis had swarmed across the palisade and the parade ground, but were still restrained by the deadly volley firing of the Sepoys who retreated in sections, one firing, one reloading, and one withdrawing. Their courage and precision were totally admirable. Their British officers, Conway and Outram, stood at the end of the firing line, encouraging and commanding. Yet they were so few. If the Baluchis were to launch a concerted attack they were bound to be overrun.
Outram looked round and saw her. He raised his hand briefly in acknowledgement, and issued his orders.
Now it was a time for haste. The Sepoys fired a last time, then broke and ran. For a moment the Baluchis hesitated, then uttered a great shout of triumph and flooded into the Residency, the steamers forgotten.
It seemed as if the fleeing Sepoys would be overrun, but the Residency itself proved too great a temptation for the attackers. Some climbed up on to the roof to haul down the Union Jack; others invaded Outram’s private apartments in search of loot. Others had already spread yelling and shouting, to the various bungalows.
The Sepoys ran down the dock and hastily boarded the steamer. Conway immediately sent men to the upper deck to resume firing.
Outram came last. He grasped Laura’s arm and raced her along the dock, slipping and panting, while bullets hummed around them and the shrieks of the Baluchis were only feet away. The steamer had already been cast off, and they leapt across the widening gap as the current pulled the ship away from the dock.
The Baluchis yelled their rage at the escape of their victims, but crowded together they presented an easy target, and several fell into the water as they were hit.
Captain Brown put his head out of the wheelhouse and grinned down at the Resident. ‘Now where d’you wish to go, Major?’ he inquired.
*
Their danger was not over yet. Within half an hour Baluchi horsemen were galloping along both banks, shooting at the little steamer as it moved slowly upstream.
The Sepoys did not reply. They were saving the last of their ammunition.
‘How much fuel do you have, Mr Brown?’ Outram asked. ‘Maybe eight hours.’
‘Which will take us where?’
‘Well, we must be making all of two knots against this current. Sixteen miles, if we don’t touch bottom.’
‘And the Baluchis can watch us every foot of the way. Very good, Captain Brown. Just keep going.’
‘What happens if we run out of fuel before General Napier reaches us?’ Laura asked.
‘We shall anchor in the middle of the river and sit it out.’
The prospect was grim, but conditions on board the steamer were grimmer yet. There was no room to move on the lower deck, and the upper was reserved for fifty of the Sepoys and their officers. The enormous weight meant that the ship was lower in the water than usual, and once or twice there was a grating sound as she scraped across a sandbank. There was no food and only a little water, and as the sun rose higher it became extremely hot.
But there were few complaints. Most of the women and children were simply too exhausted, and besides, they could see the smoke rising behind them from the Residency as it was set on fire.
At five o’clock that afternoon, the steamer’s funnel ceased to belch smoke. Brown promptly gave the order to drop anchor, and the steamer Satellite came to a halt in the middle of the river, riding to the current. The Baluchis, who had easily kept pace with them, uttered whoops of exultation.
‘We have them confused, anyway,’ Outram remarked.
‘But they seem quite happy with the situation,’ Laura pointed out.
The afternoon drifted by. Now that they had stopped, they presented an easier target, and one or two of the women were hit by ricocheting bullets. Outram ordered his men to return fire, but soon darkness fell, and there was no moon. The Baluchis on the banks kept up an enormous hullabaloo, punctuated by the firing of muskets.
‘Do they never sleep?’ Laura asked Outram.
‘They are covering other noises, I would say,’ Outram said. ‘But they are not natural sailors.’
He kept every man on the alert, and sure enough, shortly before midnight several boats loomed out of the darkness.
‘The ladies will lie down,’ Outram ordered; this time he was obeyed without question. The Sepoys on the upper deck opened fire with the last of their cartridges; those on the lower deck met the attack with bayonets. For several minutes after the boats came alongside there was a desperately fierce fight. Men screamed and shouted as they hacked and cut and clubbed; some even fought with fists and fingers. After several of the Baluchis had fallen or been thrown overboard, the rest lost heart and went after them.
The cost had been severe, however. Four Company men had been killed and another dozen wounded. The tiny force was reduced to less than half its original number. Most of the women were in a state of near hysteria as Dr White, assisted by Laura and Jenny and his orderlies, carried out emergency surgery by the light of a single lantern, his patients’ screams echoing into the night.
When Laura was sent away for a breath of fresh air
she climbed to the wheelhouse where Outram, Conway, and Brown were gazing out at the night.
‘What happens tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘We will sit it out.’
‘This is all my fault,’ she observed.
Outram put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her. ‘It was a good idea. The only idea. But I hope you haven’t forgotten how to pray.’
*
Slowly the racket on the banks died. Even the Baluchis had to sleep some time.
Laura slept for a while, but she was back on duty just before dawn. Suddenly a chill breeze swept across the river, and immediately a mist arose, almost blotting out the banks. It would, she thought, have been a good time for the Baluchis to launch another attack, but the banks remained uncannily silent.
She returned to the upper deck to find Outram and Conway; neither man had slept.
‘There’s nobody out there,’ Conway said. ‘I’d swear to it. And listen.’
Out of the slowly lightening darkness to the east, there came the rhythm of drums, and the screech of fifes.
The Banks of the Indus, 17 February 1843.
As I sit here and write my journal by the light of a flickering candle, I am the happiest of men. My Laura sleeps but a few feet away from me.
Alas, we do not share the same tent. Sir Charles is a stickler for propriety and would have none of that, nor would I have dared suggest it. But nonetheless I have held her in my arms, looked into her lovely eyes, and assured myself both that she is well and that she loves me as much as ever.
The only sadness in our reunion is the absence of her children who, she fears, have been suborned by Batraj. Thus she cries out for vengeance upon the Thug, a vengeance which I will execute, tomorrow.
After we received a message from Outram to say that he was in touch with Laura and that he anticipated an assault upon the Residency within a few days, we set off immediately.
Outram’s and Laura’s forebodings were proven true, and the Residency is apparently still burning. But Outram, gallant fellow, evacuated his people, including Laura, on to a steamer and sought to make his escape up river. He could not go downstream, because the way was blocked. In any event, on account of the dry weather and the resulting shallowness of the water, his was a hazardous adventure, with the Baluchis controlling the banks to either side. He could thus proceed no more than a few miles, and then anchor and await our arrival. While at anchor his little band, less than a hundred fighting men, was assailed by a huge force of Baluchis.
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