“Mr Hay’s gun is ready for action, sir. It wasn’t well and truly spiked, you see, and I got Brown on to it this morning.”
“Good man!” Phillip exclaimed, with sincerity. “You’ve done damned well in your first command, Mr Garvey, and I shall see to it that Captain Peel is informed of your conduct.” He rose, tucking the sketch map into the breast pocket of his coat. “I’m going to report to Sir Colin Campbell that—thanks very largely to your forethought and efficiency—the Naval Brigade detachment is at his disposal if he wishes to engage the enemy’s long-range batteries.”
Henry Garvey beamed his delight. “Shall I have my men relieved at these guns, sir? We could be yoking up the bullock teams and limbers while we’re waiting.”
Phillip nodded. He went in search of Sir Colin, to find his staff gathered round a tent on the glacis normally occupied by General Windham. From its lamp-lit interior, his voice sounded wrathfully, the strong Scottish accent contrasting with Windham’s quieter, more cultured English voice.
“Unless you’ve something exceptionally good to tell him, I shouldn’t go in, if I were you, Commander,” Captain Baird warned wryly. He drew Phillip aside and added confidentially, “The Chief is greatly put out by General Carthew’s decision to withdraw his piquets, which he fears may jeopardise the bridge before General Grant’s Brigade can cross. And if your Captain Peel’s siege-train isn’t able to reach the Oudh bank before sunrise then …” He shrugged resignedly. “Poor Carthew has been given a very severe dressing down which, according to the people here, he hardly deserves. They say he’s displayed the most magnificent personal courage and that he and the 34th fought like tigers for 24 hours before being compelled to retire. But Sir Colin will have it that he should have hung on and General Windham’s had to admit that he retired without orders. The Chief is upset, of course, over General Wilson’s death—he was killed leading a counterattack this morning, poor, brave old man. Stirling, too, and Morphey, and young Richard McCrae.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Phillip said, conscious of sadness. Brigadier Wilson had been much loved by all who knew him. He hesitated and then offered quietly, “I believe I do have something useful to suggest, Captain Baird.”
“Precisely what, Commander?” Baird asked cautiously. Phillip outlined his plan and saw the ADC’s expression relax. “By George, sir, I believe you do!” he agreed with relief. “Hold on for a few minutes, will you please? I’ll have a word with General Mansfield.”
Within ten minutes, a summons came from Sir Colin himself. Standing hatless, his sparse white hair blowing in the slight evening breeze, he was waiting at the opened tent flap as Phillip approached. As always, when crisis loomed, the Commander-in-Chief was brusque, and he came to the point bluntly and without wasting words.
“You think you can engage those two batteries and keep their fire down until Captain Peel gets here with the rest of your guns?”
“I think so, sir. Thanks to Mr Garvey, the young officer who has been commanding the naval detachment since his senior was wounded, both our twenty-four-pounders are serviceable.” Phillip went into brief details and saw the old General’s tired face light with a smile.
“Then go to it, Commander Hazard,” Sir Colin bade him gruffly. “You’ll earn my gratitude and so will your Mr Garvey. I’m returning to Mungalwar now but you have my authority to call on this garrison for any assistance you need. Just get those guns into position without delay.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Phillip acknowledged. He crossed the glacis at a run and, as he did so, one of the rebel batteries opened on the fort and, with greater accuracy than they had hitherto shown, sent half a dozen roundshot into the hospital on its north side.
CHAPTER TWO
Both naval guns were in the positions Phillip had selected for them two hours before dawn. The attack he had feared at the bridgehead did not materialise but Hay’s bullock team had proved their unreliability once again, and when random shells from a howitzer—aimed at the fort—had burst overhead, the whole team had been thrown into panicstricken confusion, and he had been compelled to have the heavy gun manhandled on to the bridge.
It had taken the combined efforts of the Shannon’s 42 seamen and Marines to drag it there but it was a measure of their willingness and discipline that they had performed their difficult task without breaking silence, requiring only a few whispered orders to direct them. Finally, in response to Phillip’s request, two elephants had been brought down and these had been a godsend, under the expert supervision of an unexpected volunteer in the shape of the Irregular Cavalry Colonel, whose bitter tirade had earlier provoked Sir Colin Campbell’s wrath. Colonel Cockayne was fluent in the native dialect and, under his urging, the mahouts had handled their huge beasts with great skill, hauling the sixty-five-hundredweight of unwieldy metal along the turf-covered surface of the bridge as if harnessed to a child’s toy. The movement of the guns had, apparently, been unnoticed by the rebel gunners in the opposing batteries; they continued to throw shot at the bridge at fairly lengthy intervals but without success and, long before the Shannon’s guns were unlimbered, both batteries had ceased fire.
“They are probably closing in for the kill,” Colonel Cockayne suggested grimly. “Damme, the swine must know that the Commander-in-Chief’s column will attempt to make the crossing soon after first light! They don’t lack artillery. They’ll be bringing up all the heavy cannon they’ve got and trying to shorten the range, no doubt, in the hope of giving themselves an easier target. Do you really suppose you can stop them, with these two guns of yours, Commander Hazard?”
Before Phillip could reply, a rebel twenty-four-pounder opened on the fort, the dark mound at its summit starkly outlined against the blazing buildings immediately to its front. By the same glow, the gun itself was revealed, only partially masked by a fold in the ground, and two others also commenced firing on the fort, all three situated on the far bank of the canal. They had, as Colonel Cockayne had predicted, moved in considerably closer and Phillip turned, with a grin, to his gun’s crew, which was under the nominal command of Cadet Lascelles.
“Right, my lads—action front and let’s see if we can’t teach the Pandy gunners how it’s done! Stand aside, Mr Lascelles, if you please—I’ll lay her myself.”
The naval guns had been borrowed from the Bengal Artillery, since the Shannon’s own sixty-eights—too heavy to be moved on existing wooden carriages—had been left in the fort at Allahabad, pending the construction of suitable carriages for them. On Captain Peel’s instructions, the borrowed guns had been fitted with sights to enable them to be ranged accurately—a refinement their previous owners had considered unnecessary. The additions were simple but effective: a dispart, with a notch cut along it, on the gun muzzle, and a tangent sight in the form of a long screw fitted into a hole bored through the cascabel, pointed at the top and with a cross-arm to turn it round, by means of which the elevation of the gun could be adjusted. After days and nights of practise in Lucknow, all the Shannon gunners attached to the Commander-in-Chief’s column had become very expert and Phillip’s grin widened, as he recalled William Peel’s claim for his twenty-fours. “It should not be said of these guns that one can shoot with them as well as with a rifle, but rather that one can shoot with a rifle as well as with them …”
Still smiling, he laid the gun, loading with spherical case. The first shot went over the target, the shell bursting too high. As the great gun ran back six feet from its firing position, it was sponged, re-loaded, and run up; Phillip adjusted the elevation, and the gun-captain stood ready, his smouldering linstock in his hand. The third shot was on target and one of the canal bank battery was silenced, its crew sythed down by the exploding shrapnel. The other two ceased their bombardment of the fort and brought their gun muzzles round in the direction of the bridge but their first ragged salvoes fell into the river well short and after a brief duel, in which Garvey’s gun joined, the Gwalior gunners abandoned their canal bank positions and withdrew out of r
ange.
“Very impressive, Commander,” Colonel Cockayne observed, his voice holding genuine warmth. “The Gwalior artillery was always said to be extremely good but your fellows put them to shame. Or possibly it is your presence that is responsible for their accurate shooting; it was not so apparent in our recent battle for Cawnpore, with your juniors in command.”
Phillip mopped his heated face. “My juniors are not to be faulted, sir,” he defended. “These guns are being used now as they are supposed to be used.” He gestured to the specially affixed sights and went into technical details. “Employed as light field-guns—as, I understand, they were being employed in your recent battle—they are awkward to manoeuvre and excessively slow. Captain Peel did have them up in the attacks on the Lucknow mutineers’ positions but this was when they were required to breach fortress walls, to enable infantry to carry them with the bayonet. Sir Colin was determined to move fast and there was no alternative—we had to get into the Residency. But”—he shrugged—“we put double crews on each heavy gun and depended as little as possible on bullocks and native drivers. Both are unreliable under fire. They—” He broke off, eyes narrowed and watchful, sensing rather than hearing the sound of oars. Muffled oars, coming from the opposite direction from that in which, a few minutes ago, his guns had been sighted. There was nothing to be seen on the dark surface of the river and, apart from a few isolated rifle shots from the fort, little to be heard.
Vaguely uneasy nevertheless, Phillip crossed to the far side of the bridge but the Marine sentry posted there shook his head emphatically when questioned. “No, sir, nothing’s stirring. Seems to have gone very quiet all of a sudden, sir.”
“What’s wrong, Commander?” Colonel Cockayne asked as he, too, peered into the blackness. The moon was partially obscured by cloud, its reflected radiance dimmed to a dull, faint glimmer. “You don’t imagine they’ll send a raiding party, do you? Because you can dismiss the idea—they won’t risk it at night. In any case, they know we’ve got heavy guns here by now and they’ll expect them to be guarded.”
“I thought I heard a boat,” Phillip said. “But I must have imagined it. The sound was coming from upstream and …” The reverberating roar of several guns, opening in unison, drowned his voice. The batteries which had originally been firing on the bridge had changed their positions, he realised, as the Colonel gripped his arm and pointed. Roundshot thudded against a large, flat-bottomed boat thirty yards from where he was standing but it was too dark to see how much damage had been done and, intent only on returning the enemy fire, he ran back to his own gun.
“They’re still on the far side of the canal, sir,” little Lascelles told him eagerly. “But one, at least, is in one of those walled enclosures that run down to the river’s edge. They must have knocked part of the wall down. May I open fire, sir?”
“Yes, carry on, Mr Lascelles,” Phillip told him crisply. “But take your time—accuracy is more important than seeing how many rounds you can get off.” Garvey’s gun had already opened and he left them to it, clambering back on to the parapet of the bridge in order to spot the flashes and endeavour to pinpoint the batteries’ exact positions. A shell whined overhead, its fuse spluttering, and more roundshot struck the water upstream of the bridge—the rebels had a howitzer, his brain registered, and six—no, seven—guns, well spread out, three to his left on the canal side, four between the still smouldering Assembly Rooms and the river bank to his right. If they made anything like good practise, he thought grimly, then the bridge was done for—its flimsy, floating base would be smashed to pieces long before dawn. Fortunately they were not making good practise, most of their shots continuing to be well wide of their target but … A muffled explosion over to his right sent him scrambling back to the island.
Garvey’s men were cheering triumphantly and he saw, as smoke and a single tongue of flame rose skywards that a well aimed—or lucky—shot had hit one of the rebels’ ammunition waggons, imprudently parked in a garden enclosure running down to the river bank. There must have been a second close beside it for, even as he stared at the running figures silhouetted against the blaze, another waggon was caught in the conflagration and this, too, blew up with a dull roar.
“Well done, my lads!” Phillip shouted. “Well done indeed, Mr Garvey!”
He did not discourage the cheering; the rebels, by this time, were well aware of their presence on the bridge, and his men had worked hard—they deserved the chance to vent their feelings. From the piquet of the Rifle Brigade on the Oudh bridgehead and from that of the 88th, on the Cawnpore side, the cheers were echoed and re-echoed with heartening enthusiasm and he found himself smiling, for, heaven knew, they had had little enough to cheer about during the past three days. A defiant roar from the Gwalior cannon and the bursting of a shell from the howitzer, unpleasantly close, put an abrupt end to the cheering; Lascelles’ gun had not ceased fire and Garvey’s crew needed no orders to bring their weapon back into action. The duel was resumed and Phillip was about to cross to Lascelles’s position when a hoarse shout from Colonel Cockayne sent him back to the bridge parapet at a run.
“Look!” the cavalryman invited, a note of fury in his voice. “For God’s sake, look at that, Commander!”
He pointed and Phillip, following the direction of his upraised hand, saw that there were ten or a dozen swimmers in the water, their dark heads clearly visible as they struck out frantically for the Oudh bank. He saw something else as well— the body of the Marine sentry who had been posted on the parapet, which lay spreadeagled across the thwarts of one of the boats forming the bridge. The man was dead, his throat cut from ear to ear and hideously gaping, his Enfield lying uselessly beside him. Beyond him, moving gently with the pull of the current, a native riverboat with a straw-thatched awning had been wedged between two of the anchored craft which supported the bridge.
It was obviously this which the swimmers had used to convey them across the river and which they had now abandoned but … Why, in heaven’s name, had they abandoned it? There were hardly enough of them to have constituted a raiding party and the fact that the unfortunate sentry had seen—and presumably challenged—them was not sufficient reason for them to kill him, unless … Phillip tore off his jacket and sword-belt, his heart thudding as the awful truth dawned on him. Deaf to the Colonel’s startled questions, he precipitated himself into the water. A few swift strokes took him to the abandoned boat, and as he dragged himself on to its deck, he saw the faint gleam of an ignited length of fuse. To allow themselves time to escape, the raiders had used a slow match of quite exceptional length, he realised thankfully; it was hissing its way very slowly across the damp deckboards and he had no trouble in extinguishing it with his booted foot.
The worst danger averted, he took his time removing the two kegs of powder from beneath the thick straw awning and dumping them, one after the other, into the murky river water. Satisfied, as he watched the bubbles rise from the saturated powder, he set the boat adrift and clambered back to the bridge. The Shannon’s Marines and the men of the bridgehead piquet were blazing away with rifles at the fugitive swimmers but, Colonel Cockayne told him regretfully, without hitting of them, and Phillip could not find it in his heart to share his regrets when the raiders finally gained the bank and vanished. True, they had brutally murdered the Marine sentry but it had been a bold, well-planned attempt to destroy the bridge and, in carrying it out, the rebels had displayed more courage than the Colonel, at any rate, had given them credit for. Wisely, however, he refrained from saying so, and warded off congratulations on his own exploit with a wry, “Well, it was either them or us, sir, and when I realised what they were up to, there wasn’t time to delegate the job to anyone else.”
Two of the Marines brought up the body of their dead comrade and, while this was being taken back to the fort for burial, he instructed the others to try and sink the drifting bomb vessel. A few rounds of accurate Enfield fire caused it to settle and start to fill with water but, ironica
lly, it was a roundshot from one of the enemy batteries which sealed its fate, bringing cynical cheers from those of the Shannon party who witnessed the incident. All the men were in good heart, even the weary, sweating gunners; they were unable to silence the batteries opposing them—now augmented by another four howitzers—but they were holding their own, drawing fire from the fort and forcing the rebels to withdraw from their riverbank positions to others at longer range.
Shortly before dawn, Midshipman Lightfoot, Phillip’s galloper, made his appearance, with Captain Baird and some other members of the Commander-in-Chief’s staff. They brought the welcome news that Brigadier Hope Grant had left camp with the cavalry and horse guns, with which he would cross the river to Cawnpore, in order to clear the way for the Lucknow convoy, with the heavy guns following with all possible speed. Baird continued on, to acquaint General Windham with this information and Lightfoot, surrounded by eager questioners, told them that Captain Peel had reached Mungalwar with the Shannon’s siege-train at a little after 2 p.m.
“The Captain is waiting only to obtain fresh gun-cattle, sir,” he said to Phillip. “He instructed me to tell you that he will be at the bridgehead by sunrise, and he will be obliged, sir, if you would remain in your present position to cover General Hope Grant’s crossing.” His instructions carried out, Lightfoot added, less formally, “I saw your sister and the children when they reached camp. They were bearing up pretty well, sir, although they didn’t get in until an hour after our siege-train.”
“Did you speak to them, Mr Lightfoot?” Phillip asked.
“Only to ask how they were, sir, as I thought you’d want to know. Conditions were a bit—well, chaotic at the camp, with guns and stores mixed up with the sick and the women and children. They were streaming in all night and there were hardly any tents up for them because the baggage train was still on the road. The wounded have had a very bad time of it indeed, sir, and I fear many of them won’t live to reach Cawnpore. Captain Peel sent me to look for Mr Salmon and he seemed in a poor way, so the Captain had him moved to our section of the column, with the rest of our wounded men. He said we could best look after our own, sir. And Mr Salmon certainly agreed!”
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