"To the rescue! To the rescue!"
The cry was no more than that at first. To the rescue of the eighty-five martyrs, the blows upon whose shackles still seemed to echo in their comrades' ears. Even so, the cry heard by Soma as he passed through the bazaar meant insubordination--the greatest crime he knew--and sent him flying to his own lines to give the alarm. Sent him thence by instinct, oblivious of that promise for the 31st--or perhaps mindful of it and seeing in this outburst a mere riot--to his Colonel's house with twenty or thirty comrades clamoring for their arms, protesting that with them they would soon settle matters for the Huzoors. But suspicion was in the air, and even the Colonel of the 11th could not trust all his regiment. Ready for church, he flung himself on his horse and raced back with the clamoring men to the lines.
And by this time there was another race going on. Captain Craigie's faithful troop of the 3d Cavalry were racing after his shout of "Dau-ro! bhai-yan, Dau-ro!" (Ride, brothers, ride!) toward the jail in the hopes of averting the rescue of their comrades. For, as the records are careful to say, he and his troop "were dressed as for parade"--not a buckle or a belt awry--ready to combat the danger before others had grasped it, and swiftly, without a thought, went for the first offenders. Too late! the doors were open, the birds flown.
What next was to be done? What but to bring the troop back without a defaulter--despite the taunts of escaping convicts, the temptations of comrades flushed by success--to the parade ground for orders. But there was no one to give them, for when the 3d Cavalry led the van of mutiny at Meerut their Colonel was in the European cantonment as field officer of the week, and there he "conceived it his duty to remain." Perhaps rightly. And it is also conceivable that his absence made no difference, since it is, palpably, an easier task to make a regiment mutiny than to bring it back to its allegiance.
Meanwhile the officers of the other regiments, the 11th and the 20th, were facing their men boldly; facing the problem how to keep them steady till that squadron of the Carabineers should sweep down, followed by a company or two of the Rifles at the double, and turn the balance in favor of loyalty. It could not be long now. Nearly an hour had passed since the first wild stampede to the jail. The refuse and rabble of the town were by this time swarming out of it, armed with sticks and staves; the two thousand and odd felons released from the jails were swarming in, seeking weapons. The danger grew every second, and the officers of the 11th, though their men stood steady as rocks behind them, counted the moments as they sped. For on the other side of the road, on the parade ground of the 20th regiment, the sepoys, ordered, as the 11th had been, to turn out unarmed, were barely restrained from rushing the bells by the entreaties of their native officers; the European ones being powerless.
"Keep the men steady for me," said Colonel Finnis to his second in command; "I'll go over and see what I can do."
He thought the voice of a man loved and trusted by one regiment, a man who could speak to his sepoys without an interpreter, might have power to steady another.
Jai bahâduri!(Victory to courage!) muttered Soma under his breath as he watched his Colonel canter quietly into danger. And his finger hungered on that hot May evening for the cool of the trigger which was denied him.
Jai bahâduri!A murmur seemed to run through the ranks, they dressed themselves firmer, squarer. Colonel Finnis, glancing back, saw a sight to gladden any commandant's heart. A regiment steady as a rock, drawn up as for parade, absolutely in hand despite that strange new sound in the air. The sound which above all others gets into men's brains like new wine. The sound of a file upon fetters--the sound of escape, of freedom, of license! It had been rising unchecked for half an hour from the lines of the 3d, whither the martyrs had been brought in triumph. It was rising now from the bazaar, the city, from every quiet corner where a prisoner might pause to hack and hammer at his leg-irons with the first tool he could find.
What was one man's voice against this sound, strengthened as it was by the cry of a trooper galloping madly from the north shouting that the English were in sight? What more likely? Had not ample time passed for the whole British garrison to be coming with fixed bayonets and a whoop, to make short work of unarmed men who had not made up their minds?
That must be no longer!
"Quick! brothers. Quick! Kill! Kill! Down with the officers! Shoot ere the white faces come!"
It was a sudden wild yell of terror, of courage, of sheer cruelty. It drowned the scream of the Colonel's horse as it staggered under him. It drowned his steady appealing voice, his faint sob, as he threw up his hands at the next shot, and fell, the first victim to the Great Revolt.
It drowned something else also. It drowned Soma's groan of wild, half-stupefied, helpless rage as he saw his Colonel fall,--the sahib who had led him to victory,--the sahib whom he loved, whom he was pledged to save. And his groan was echoed by many another brave man in those ranks, thus brought face to face suddenly with the necessity for decision.
"Steady, men, steady!"
That call, in the alien voice, echoed above the whistling of the bullets as they found a billet here and there among the ranks; for the men of the 20th, maddened by that fresh murder, now shot wildly at their officers.
"Steady, men! Steady, for God's sake!"
The entreaty was not in vain; they were steady still. Ay, steady, but unarmed! Steady as a rock still, but helpless!
Helpless, unarmed! By all the gods all men worshiped, men could not suffer that for long, when bullets were whistling into their ranks.
So there was a waver at last in the long line. A faint tremble, like the tremble of a curving wave ere it falls. Then, with a confused roar, an aimless sweeping away of all things in its path, it broke as a wave breaks upon a pebbly shore.
"To arms, brothers! Quick! fire! fire!"
Upon whom?[2]God knows! Not on their officers, for these were already being hustled to the rear, hustled into safety.
"Quick, brothers, quick! Kill! Kill!"
The cry rose on all sides now, as the wave of revolt surged on. But there was none left to kill; for the work was done in the 20th lines, and no new white faces came to stem the tide. Two thousand and odd Englishmen who might have stemmed it being still on the parade-ground by the church, waiting for orders, for ammunition, for a General, for everything save--thank Heaven!--for courage.
So the wave surged on, to what end it scarcely knew, leaving behind it groups of sullen, startled faces.
"Whose fault but their own?" muttered an old man fiercely; an old man whose son served beside him in the regiment, whose grandson was on the roster for future enlistment. "Why were we left helpless as new-born babes?"
"Why?" echoed a scornful voice from the gathering clusters of undecided men, waiting, with growing fear, hope, despair, or triumph, for what was to come next: waiting, briefly, for the master to come, or not to come. "Why? because they were afraid of us; because their time is past, baba jee. Let them go!"
Let them go. Incomprehensible suggestion to that brave worn stiff in the master's service; so, with a great numb ache in an old heart, an old body strode away, elbowing younger ones from its path savagely.
"Old Dhurma hath grown milksop," jeered one spectator; "that is with doing dry-nurse to his Captain's babies."
The words caught the old man's ear and sent a quick decision to his dazed face. The baba logue! Yes; they must be safeguarded; for ominous smoke began to rise from neighboring roof-trees, and a strange note of sheer wild-beast ferocity grew to the confused roar of the drifting, shifting, still aimless crowd.
"Quick, brothers, quick! Kill, root and branch! Why dost linger? Art afraid? Afraid of cowards? Quick--kill everyone!"
The cry, boastful, jeering, came from a sepoy in the uniform of the 20th, who, with a face ablaze with mad exultation, forced his way forward. There was something in his tone which seemed to send a shiver of fresh excitement through his comrades, for they paused in their strange, aimless tumult, paused and listened to the jeers, the reproaches.
"What! art cowards too?" he went on. "Then follow me. For I began it--I fired the first shot--I killed the first infidel. I----"
The boast never ended, for above it came a quicker cry: "Kill, kill, kill the traitor! Kill the man who betrayed us."
There was a rush onward toward the boastful, arrogant voice, the report of half a dozen muskets, and the crowd surged on to revolt over the body of the man who had fired the first shot of the mutiny.
For it was a strange crowd indeed; most of it powerless for good or ill, sheep without a shepherd, wandering after the rabble of escaped convicts and the refuse of bazaars as they plundered and fired the houses. Joining in in the license helplessly, drifting inevitably to violence, so that some looked on curiously, unconcernedly, while others, maddened by the smell of blood, the sounds of murder, dragged helpless Englishmen and Englishwomen from their carriages and did them to death savagely.
But there were more like Soma, who, as the darkness deepened and the glare and the dire confusion and dismay grew, stood aloof from it voluntarily, waiting, with a certain callousness, to see if the master would come, or if folk said true when they declared his time was past, his day done.
Where was he? He should have come hours ago, irresistible, overwhelming. But there was no sign. Not a hint of resistance, save every now and again a clatter of hoofs through the darkness, an alien voice calling "Mâro! Mâro!" to those behind him, and a fierce howl of an echo, "Mâro! Mâro! Mâ-roh!" from the faithful troop. For Captain Craigie, finding none to help him, had changed his cry. It was "kill, kill, kill" now. And the faithful troop obeyed orders.
Soma when he heard it gave a great sigh. If there had been more of that sort of thing he would dearly have loved to be in it; but the other was butchery. So he wandered alone, irresolute, drifting northward from the dire confusion and dismay, and crossing the Mall to question a sentry of his own regiment as to what had happened to the masters. But the man replied by eager questions as to what had happened to the servants. And they both agreed that if the two thousand could not quell a riot it would be idle to help them, the Lord's hand being so palpably against them.
Nevertheless, half an hour afterward the sentry still waited at his post, and the guard over the Treasury saluted as if nothing unusual was afoot to a group of Englishmen galloping past.
"Those men know nothing," called Major Erlton to another man. "It can't be so bad. Surely something can be done!"
"Something should have been done two hours ago," came a sharp voice. "However, the troops have started at last. If anyone----"
The remainder was lost in the clatter. But more than one man's voice had been lost in those two hours at Meerut on the 10th of May, 1857; indeed, everything seems to have been lost save--thank Heaven once more!--personal courage.
It was now near eight o'clock, and Soma, skulking by the Mall, midway between the masters and the men, still irresolute, still uncertain, heard the first cry of "To Delhi! to Delhi!" which, as the night wore on, was to echo so often along that road. The cry which came unbidden as the astounding success of the revolt brought thoughts of greater success in the future.
The moon was now rising to silver the dense clouds of smoke which hung above the pillars of flame, and give an additional horror of light to the orgies going on unchecked. It showed him a group of 3d Cavalry troopers galloping madly down the Mall. It showed them the glitter of his buckles, making them shout again:
"To Delhi, brother, to Delhi!"
Not yet. He had not seen the upshot yet. He must go and see what was going on in the lines first. So he struck rapidly across the open as the quickest way. And then behind him, close upon him, came another clatter of hoofs, a very different cry.
"Shâh bash! bhaiyân. Mâro! Mâro!"
Remembering the glitter of his buckles, he turned and ran for the nearest cover. None too soon, for a Mohammedan trooper was after him, shouting "Deen! Deen!Death to the Hindoo pig!" For any cry comes handy when the blood is up and there is a saber in the hand. Soma had to double like a hare, and even so, when he paused to get his breath in a tangle of lime-bushes there was a graze on his cheek. He had judged his distance in one of those doubles a hair's breadth too little. The faint trickle of blood sent a spasm of old inherited race hatred through him. The outcaste should know that the Hindoo pig shot straight. The means of showing this were not far to find in the track of the faithful troop. Five minutes after, Soma, with a musket dragged from beneath something which lay huddled up face down upon Mother Earth, was crouching in a belt of cover, waiting for the troop to come flashing through the glare seeking more work. For there had been yells and screams enough round that bungalow to stop looting there. And as it came number seven bent lower to his saddle bow suddenly, then toppled over with a clang.
"Left wheel! clear those bushes!" came the order sharply. But Soma was too quick for that.
"Close up. Forward!" came the order again, as Captain Craigie's faithful troop went on, minus a man, and Soma, stumbling breathlessly in safety, knew that the die was cast. There was an answering quiver in his veins which comes when like blood has been spilled. He knew his foe now; he could go to Delhi now. And hark! There was a regular rattle of musketry, at last--not the dropping fire of mere butchery, but a regular volley. He gripped his musket tighter and listened: if the battle had begun he must be in it. The air was full of cracklings and hissings--an inarticulate background to murderous yells, terrified screams, horrors without end; but no more volleys came to tell of retribution.
What did it mean? Soma held his breath hard. Hark! what was that? A louder burst of that recurring cry, "To Delhi! to Delhi!" as the last stragglers of the 3d Cavalry, escaping from the lines at the long-delayed appearance there of law and order, followed their comrades' example.
So that the two thousand coming down in force found nothing but the women and children; poor, frightened, terror-struck hostages, left behind, inevitably, in the unforeseen success.
But Soma, knowing nothing of this, waited--that grip on his musket slackening--for the next volley. But none came. Only, suddenly, a bugle call.
The retreat!
Incredible! Impossible! Yes! Once, twice, thrice--the retreat! The masters were not going to fight at Meerut then, and he must try Delhi. So, turning swiftly, he cut into the road behind the cry.
"My God, Craigie! what's that? Not the retreat, surely!" came a boyish voice from the clatter and rattle of the faithful troop.
"Don't know! Hurry up all you can, Clark! There's more of the devils needing cold steel yonder, and I'd like to see to my wife's safety as soon as I can.Shâh bâsh bhaiâan Dân-ro. Mâro."
"Mâro--Mâ--ro--Mâ----roh!" echoed the howl. What was the retreat to them when their Captain's voice called to them as brothers? It is idle to ask the question, but one cannot help wondering if the Captain's pocket still held the official wigging. For the sake of picturesque effect it is to be hoped it did.
Nevertheless itwasthe retreat. A council of officers had suggested that since the mutineers were not in their lines, they might be looting the European cantonments. So the two thousand returned thither, after firing that one volley into a wood, and then finding all quiet to the north proceeded to bivouac on the parade ground for the night. Not a very peaceful spot, since it was within sight and sound of blazing roof-trees and plundering ruffians. The worst horrors of that night, we are told, can never be known. Perhaps some people beg to differ, holding that no horror can exceed the thought of women and children hiding like hares on that southern side, creeping for dear life from one friendly shadow to another, and finding help in dark hands where white ones failed them, within reach of that bivouac. But the faithful troop did good service, and many another band of independent braves also. Captain Craigie, finding leisure at last, found also--it is a relief to know--that some of his own men had sneaked away from duty to secure his wife's safety when they saw their Captain would not. And if anything can relieve the deadly depression which sinks upon the soul at the thought of that horrible lack of emotion in the north, it is to picture that very different scene on the south, when Captain Craigie, seeing his only hope of getting the ladies safely escorted to the European barracks lay in his troopers, brought the two Englishwomen out to them and said, simply, "Here are the mems! Save them."
And then the two score or so of rough men, swashbucklers by birth and training, flung themselves from their horses, cast themselves at those alien women's feet with tears and oaths. Oaths that were kept.
But, on the other side, people were more placid. One reads of Englishmen watching "their own sleeping children with gratitude in their hearts to God," with wonderings as "to the fate of their friends in the south," with anticipations of "what would befall their Christian brethren in Delhi on the coming morn, who, less happy than ourselves, had no faithful and friendly European battalions to shield them from the bloodthirsty rage of the sepoys."
What, indeed? considering that for two hours bands of armed men had clattered and marched down that dividing road crying "To Delhi, to Delhi!" But no warning of the coming danger had been sent thither; the confusion had been too great. And now, about midnight, the telegraph wires had been cut. Yet Delhi lay but thirty miles off along a broad white road, and there were horses galore and men ready to ride them. Men ready for more than that, like Captain Rosser of the Carabineers, who pleaded for a squadron, a field battery, a troop, a gun--anything with which to dash down the road and cut off that retreat to Delhi. But everything was refused. Lieutenant Mohler of the 11th offered to ride, and at least give warning; but that offer was also set aside. And many another brave man, no doubt, bound to obey orders, ate his heart out in inaction that night, possessing himself in some measure of patience with the thought that the dawn must see them on that Delhi road.
But there was one man who owed obedience to none; who was free to go if he chose. And he did choose. Ten minutes after it dawned upon Herbert Erlton that no warning had been given, that no succor would be sent, he had changed horses for the game little Arab which had once belonged to Jim Douglas, and was off, to reach Delhi as best he could; for a woman slept in the very city itself exposed to the first assault of ruffianism, whom he must save, if he could. So he set his teeth and rode straight. At first down the road, for the last of the fugitives had had a good hour's start of him, and he could count on four or five miles plain sailing. Then, since his object was to head the procession, and he did not dare to strike across country from his utter ignorance both of the way or how to ask it, he must give the road a half-mile berth or so, and, keeping it as a guide, make his way somehow. There were bridges he knew where he must hark back to the only path, but he must trust to luck for a quiet interval.
The plan proved more difficult than he expected. More than once he found himself in danger from being too close to the disciplined tramp which he began to overtake about six miles out, and twice he lost himself from being too far away, by mistaking one belt of trees for another. Still there was plenty of time if the Arab held out with his weight. The night was hot and stifling, but if he took it coolly till the road was pretty clear again he could forge ahead in no time; for the Arab had the heels of every horse in Upper India. Major Erlton knew this, and bent over to pat its neck with the pride of certainty with which he had patted it before many a race which it had won for him since it had lost one for Jim Douglas.
So he saved it all he knew; but he rode fourteen stone, and that, over jumps, must tell. There was no other way, however, that he knew of, by which an Englishman could head that procession of shouting black devils.
One headed already, as it happened; though he was unaware of the supreme importance of the fact, ignorant of what lay behind him. Jim Douglas, who had left Meerut all unwitting of that rescue party on its way to the jail, was still about a mile from the halfway house where he expected to find his relay. He had had the greatest difficulty in getting the drugged mare to go at all at first, and more than once had regretted having refused old Tiddu's advice. She had pulled herself together a bit, but she was in a drip of sweat and still shaky on her feet. Not that it mattered, he being close now to Begum-a-bad, with plenty of time to reach Delhi by dawn.
He rather preferred to pace slowly, his feet out of the stirrups, his slight, easy figure dressed, as it always was when in English costume, with the utmost daintiness, sitting well back in the saddle. For the glamour of the moonlight, the stillness of the night, possessed him. Everything so soundless save when the jackals began; there were a number of them about. A good hunting country; the memory of many a run in his youthful days, with a bobbery pack, came to him. After all he had had the cream of life in a way. Few men had enjoyed theirs more, for even this idle pacing through the stillness was a pleasure. Pleasure? How many he had had! His mind, reverting from one to another, thought even of the owner of the golden curl without regret. She had taught him the religion of Love, the adoration of a spotless woman. And Zora, dear little Zora, had taught him the purity of passion. And then his mind went back suddenly to a scene of his boyhood. A boy of eighteen carrying a girl of sixteen who held a string of sea-trout midway in a wide, deep ford. And he heard, as if it had been yesterday, the faint splash of the fish as they slipped one by one into the water, and felt the fierce fighting of the girl to be set down, his own stolid resistance, their mutual abuse of each other's obstinacy and carelessness. Yes! he would like to see his sisters again, to know that pleasure again. Then his mind took another leap. Alice Gissing had not struggled in his hold, because she had been in unison with his ideal of conduct; but if she had not been, she would have fought as viciously, as unconsciously as any sister. Alice Gissing, who---- He settled his feet into the stirrups sternly, thinking of that telegram with its one word "Come," which ended so many chances.
Hark! What was that? A clatter of hoofs behind. And something more, surely. A jingle, a jangle, familiar to a soldier's ears. Cavalry at the gallop. He drew aside hastily into the shadow of the arcaded trees and waited.
Cavalry, no doubt. And the moon shone on their drawn sabers. By Heaven! Troopers of the 3d! Half a dozen or more!
"Shâh bâsh, brothers," cried one as they swept past, "we can breathe our beasts a bit at Begum-a-bad and let the others come up; no need to reach Delhi ere dawn. The Palace would be closed."
Delhi! The Palace! And who were the others? That, if they were coming behind, could soon be settled. He turned the Belooch and trotted her back in the shadow, straining eyes and ears down the tree-fringed road which lay so still, so white, so silent.
Something was on it now, but something silent, almost ghost-like,--an old man, muttering texts, on a lame camel which bumped along as even no earthly camel ought to bump. That could not be the "others."
No! Surely that was a thud, a jingle, a clatter once more. And once more the glitter of cold steel in the moonlight. Forty or fifty of the 3d this time, with stragglers calling to others still further behind, "To Delhi! To Delhi! To Victory or Death!"
As he stood waiting for them all to pass ere he moved, his first thought was, that with all these armed men at Begum-a-bad there would be no chance of a remount. Then came a swift wonder as to what had happened. A row of some sort, of course, and these men had fled. Ere long, no doubt, a squadron of Carabineers would come rattling after them. No! That was not cavalry. That was infantry in the distance. Quite a number of men shouting the same cry. Men of the 20th, to judge by what he could see. Then the row had been a big one. Still the men were evidently fugitives. There was that in their recurring cry which told of almost hopeless, reckless enthusiasm.
And how the devil was he to get his remount? It was to be at the serai on the roadside, the very place where these men would rest. Yet he must get to Delhi, he must get there sharp! The possibility that Delhi was unwarned did not occur to him; he only thought how he might best get there in time for the row which must come. Should he wait for the English troops to come up, and chance his remount being coolly taken by the first rebel who wanted one? Or, Delhi being not more than fifteen miles off across country, should he take the mare as far as she would go, leave her in some field, and do the rest on foot? He looked at his watch. Half-past one! Say five miles in half an hour. The mare was good for that. Then ten miles, at five miles an hour. The very first glimmer of light should see him at the boat-bridge if--if the mare could gallop five miles.
He must try her a bit slowly at first. So, slipping across the broad, white streak of road to the Delhi side, he took her slanting through the tall tiger grass, for they were close on a nullah which must be forded by a rather deep ford lower down, since the bridge was denied to him. About half a mile from the road he came upon the track suddenly, in the midst of high tamarisk jungle growing in heavy sand, and the next moment was on the shining levels of the ford. The mare strained on his hand, and he paused to let her have a mouthful of water. As she stood there, head down, a horseman at the canter showed suddenly, silently, behind him, not five yards away, his horse's hoofs deadened by the sand.
There was a nasty movement, an ominous click on both sides. But the moon was too bright for mistakes; the recognition was mutual.
"My God, Erlton!" he cried, as the other, without a pause, went on into the ford. "What's up?"
"Is it fordable?" came the quick question, and as Jim Douglas for an answer gave a dig with his spurs, the Major slackened visibly; his eye telling him that the depth could not be taken, save at a walk.
"What's up?" he echoed fiercely. "Mutiny! murder! I say, how far am I from Delhi?"
"Delhi!" cried Jim Douglas, his voice keen as a knife. "By Heaven! you don't mean they don't know--that they didn't wire--but the troops----"
"Hadn't started when I left," said the Major with a curse. "I came on alone. I say, Douglas," he gave a sharp glance at the other's mount and there was a pause.
"My mare's beat--been drugged," said Jim Douglas in the swish-swish of the water rising higher and higher on the horses' breasts, and there was a curious tone in his voice as if he was arguing out something to himself. "I've a remount at the serai, but the odds are a hundred to one on my getting it. I'd given up the chance of it. I meant to take the mare as many miles across country as she'd go--more, perhaps--for she feels like falling at a fence, and walk the rest. I didn't know then----" He paused and looked ahead. The water, up to the girths, made a curious rushing sound, like many wings. The long, shiny levels stretched away softly, mysteriously. The tamarisk jungle reflected in the water seemed almost as real as that which edged the shining sky. A white egret stood in the shallows; tall, ghostly.
"I thought it was only--a row."
The voice ceased again, the breathings of the tired horses had slackened; there was no sound but that rushing, as of wings, as those two enemies rode side by side, looking ahead. Suddenly Jim Douglas turned.
"You ride nigh four stone heavier than I do, Major Erlton."
The heavy, handsome face came round swiftly, all broken up with sheer passion.
"Do you suppose I haven't been thinking that ever since I saw your cursed face. And you know the country, and I don't. You know the lingo, and I don't. And--and--you're a deuce sight better rider than I am, d----n you! But for all that, it's my chance, I tell you. My chance, not yours."
A great surge of sympathy swept through the other man's veins. But the water was shallowing rapidly. A step or two and this must be decided.
"It's yours more than mine," he said slowly, "but it isn't ours, is it? It's the others', in Delhi."
Herbert Erlton gave an odd sound between a sob and an oath, a savage jag at the bridle as the little Arab, over-weighted, slipped a bit coming up the bank. Then, without a word, he flung himself from the saddle and set to work on the stirrup nearest him.
"How many holes?" he asked gruffly, as Jim Douglas, with a great ache in his heart, left the Belooch standing, and began on the other.
"Three; you're a good bit longer in the leg than I am."
"I suppose I am," said the Major sullenly; but he held the stirrup for the other to mount.
Jim Douglas gathered the reins in his hand and paused.
"You had better walk her back. Keep more to the left; it's easier."
"Oh! I'll do," came the sullen voice. "Stop a bit, the curb's too tight."
"Take it off, will you? he knows me."
Major Erlton gave an odd, quick, bitter laugh. "I suppose he does. Right you are."
He stood, putting the curb chain into his pocket, mechanically, but Jim Douglas paused again.
"Good-by! Shake hands on it, Erlton."
The Major looked at him resentfully, the big, coarse hand came reluctantly; but the touch of that other like iron in its grip, its determination, seemed to rouse something deeper than anger.
"The odds are on you," he said, with a quiver in his voice. "You'll look after her--not my wife, she's in cantonments--but in the city, you know."
The voice broke suddenly. He threw out one hand in a sort of passionate despair, and walked over to the Belooch.
"I'll do everything you could possibly do in my place, Erlton."
The words came clear and stern, and the next instant the thud of the Arab's galloping hoofs filled the still night air. The sound sent a spasm of angry pain through Major Erlton. The chance had been his, and he had had to give it up because he rode three stone heavier; and, curse it! knew only too well what a difference a pound or two might make in a race.
Nevertheless Jim Douglas had been right when he said the chance was neither his nor the Major's. For, less than an hour afterward, riding all he knew, doing his level best, the Arab put his foot in a rat hole just as his rider was congratulating himself on having headed the rebels, just as, across the level plain stretching from Ghazeabad to the only bridge over the Jumna, he fancied he could see a big shadowy bubble on the western sky, the dome of the Delhi mosque. Put its foot in a rat hole and came down heavily! The last thing Jim Douglas saw was--on the road which he had hoped to rejoin in a minute or two--a strange ghostlike figure. An old man on a lame camel, which bumped along as even no earthly camel ought to bump.
As he fell, the rushing roar in his ears which heralds unconsciousness seemed by a freak of memory to take a familiar rhythm:
"La! il-lah-il-Ullaho! La! il-lah-il-Ul-la-ho!"
The chill wind which comes with dawn swayed the tall grass beyond the river, and ruffling the calm stretches below the Palace wall died away again as an oldish man stepped out of a reed hut, built on a sandbank beside the boat-bridge, and looked eastward. He was a poojari, or master of ceremonial at the bathing-place where, with the first streak of light, the Hindoos came to perform their religious ablutions. So he had to be up betimes, in order to prepare the little saucers of vermilion and sandal and sacred gypsum needed in his profession; for he earned his livelihood by inherited right of hallmarking his fellow-creatures with their caste-signs when they came up out of the water. Thus he looked out over those eastern plains for the dawn, day after day. He looks for it still; this account is from his lips. And this dawn there was a cloud of dust no bigger than a man's hand upon the Meerut road. Someone was coming to Delhi.
But someone was already on the bridge, for it creaked and swayed, sending little shivers of ripples down the calm stretches. The poojari turned and looked to see the cause; then turned eastward again. It was only a man on a camel with a strange gait, bumping noiselessly even on the resounding wood. That was all.
The city was still asleep; though here and there a widow was stealing out in her white shroud for that touch of the sacred river without which she would indeed be accursed. And in a little mosque hard by the road from the boat-bridge a muezzin was about to give the very first call to prayer with pious self-complacency. But someone was ahead of him in devotion, for, upon the still air, came a continuous rolling of chanted texts. The muezzin leaned over the parapet, disappointed, to see who had thus forestalled him at heaven's gate; stared, then muttered a hasty charm. Were there visions about? The suggestion softened the disappointment, and he looked after the strange, wild figure, half-seen in the shimmering, shadowy dawn-light, with growing and awed satisfaction. This was no mere mortal, this green-clad figure on a camel, chanting texts and waving a scimitar. A vision has been vouchsafed to him for his diligence; a vision that would not lose in the telling. So he stood up and gave the cry from full lungs.
"Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!"
The echo from the rose-red fortifications took it up first; then one chanting voice after another, monotonously insistent.
"Prayer is more than sleep! than sleep! than sleep!"
And the city woke to another day of fasting. Woke hurriedly, so as to find time for food ere the sun rose, for it was Rumzân, and one-half of the inhabitants would have no drop of water till the sun set, to assuage the terrible drought of every living, growing thing beneath the fierce May sun. The backwaters lay like a steel mirror reflecting the gray shadowy pile of the Palace, the poojari--waist-deep in them--was a solitary figure flinging water to the sacred airts, absorbed in a thorough purification from sin.
Then from the serrated line of the Ridge came a bugle followed by the roll of a time gun. All the world was waking now. Waking to give orders, to receive them; waking to mark itself apart with signs of salvation; waking to bow westward and pray for the discomfiture of the infidel; waking to stand on parade and salute the royal standard of a ruler, hell-doomed inevitably, according to both creeds.
A flock of purple pigeons, startled by the sound, rose like cloud flakes on the light gray sky above the glimmering dome of the big mosque, then flew westward toward the green fields and groves on the further side of the town. For the roll of the gun was followed by a reverberating roll, and groan, and creak, from the boat-bridge. The little cloud on the Meerut road had grown into five troopers dashing over the bridge at a gallop recklessly. The poojari, busy now with his pigments, followed them with his eyes as they clattered straight for the city gate. They were waking in the Palace now, for a slender hand set a lattice wide. Perhaps from curiosity, perhaps simply to let in the cool air of dawn. It was a lattice in the women's apartments.
The poojari went on rubbing up the colors that were to bring such spiritual pride to the wearers, then turned to look again. The troopers, finding the city gate closed, were back again; clamoring for admittance through the low arched doorway leading from Selimgarh to the Palace. And as the yawning custodian fumbled for his keys, the men cursed and swore at the delay; for in truth they knew not what lay behind them. The two thousand from Meerut, or some of them, of course. But at what distance?
As a matter of fact only one Englishman was close enough to be considered a pursuer, and he was but a poor creature on foot, still dazed by a fall, striking across country to reach the Raj-ghât ferry below the city. For when Jim Douglas had recovered consciousness it had been to recognize that he was too late to be the first in Delhi, and that he could only hope to help in the struggle. And that tardily, for the Arab was dead lame.
So, removing its saddle and bridle to give it a better chance of escaping notice, he had left it grazing peacefully in a field and stumbled on riverward, intending to cross it as best he could; and so make for his own house in Duryagunj for a fresh horse and a more suitable kit. And as he plodded along doggedly he cursed the sheer ill-luck which had made him late.
For he was late.
The five troopers were already galloping through the grape-garden toward the women's apartments and the King's sleeping rooms.
Their shouts of "The King! The King! Help for the martyrs! Help for the Holy War!" dumfoundered the court muezzin, who was going late to his prayers in the Pearl Mosque; the reckless hoofs sent a squatting bronze image of a gardener, threading jasmine chaplets for his gods peacefully in the pathway, flying into a rose bush.
"The King! The King! Help! Help!"
The women woke with the cry, confused, alarmed, surprised; save one or two who, creeping to the Queen's room, found her awake, excited, calling to her maids. "Too soon!" she echoed contemptuously. "Can a good thing come too soon? Quick, woman--I must see the King at once--nay, I will go as I am if it comes to that."
"The physician Ahsan-Oolah hath arrived as usual for the dawn pulse-feeling," protested the shocked tirewoman.
"All the more need for hurry," retorted Zeenut Maihl. "Quick! Slippers and a veil! Thine will do, Fâtma; sure what makes thee decent----" She gave a spiteful laugh as she snatched it from the woman's head and passed to the door; but there she paused a second. "See if Hafzân be below. I bid her come early, so she should be. Tell her to write word to Hussan Askuri to dream as he never dreamed before! And see," her voice grew shriller, keener, "the rest of you have leave. Go! cozen every man you know, every man you meet. I care not how. Make their blood flow! I care not wherefore, so that it leaps and bounds, and would spill other blood that checked it." She clenched her hands as she passed on muttering to herself. "Ah! ifhewere a man--ifhisblood were not chilled with age--if I had someone----"
She broke off into smiles; for in the anteroom she entered was, man or no man, the representative of the Great Moghul.
"Ah, Zeenut!" he cried in tones of relief. "I would have sought thee." The trembling, shrunken figure in its wadded silk dressing gown paused and gave a backward glance at Ahsan-Oolah, whose shrewd face was full of alarm.
"Believe nothing, my liege!" he protested eagerly. "These rioters are boasters. Are there not two thousand British soldiers in Meerut? Their tale is not possible. They are cowards fled from defeat; liars, hoping to be saved at your expense. The thing is impossible."
The Queen turned on him passionately. "Are not all things possible with God, and is not His Majesty the defender of the faith!"
"But not defender of five runaway rioters," sneered the physician. "My liege! Remember your pension."
Zeenut Maihl glared at his cunning; it was an argument needing all her art to combat.
"Five!" she echoed, passing to the lattice quickly. "Then miracles are about--the five have grown to fifty. Look, my lord, look! Hark! How they call on the defender of the faith."
With reckless hand she set the lattice wide, so becoming visible for an instant, and a shout of "The Queen! The Queen!" mingled with that other of "The Faith! The Faith! Lead us, Oh! Ghâzee-o-din-Bahâdur-shâh, to die for the faith."
Pale as he was with age, the cry stirred the blood in the King's veins and sent it to his face.
"Stand back," he cried in sudden dignity, waving both counselors aside with trembling, outstretched hands. "I will speak mine own words."
But the sight of him, rousing a fresh burst of enthusiasm, left him no possibility of speech for a time. The Lord had been on their side, they cried. They had killed every hell-doomed infidel in Meerut! They would do so in Delhi if he would help! They were but an advance guard of an army coming from every cantonment in India to swear allegiance to the Pâdishah. Long live the King! and the Queen!
In the dim room behind, Zeenut Maihl and the physician listened to the wild, almost incredible, tale which drifted in with the scented air from the garden, and watched each other silently. Each found in it fresh cause for obstinacy. If this were true, what need to be foolhardy? time would show, the thing come of itself without risk. If this were true, decisive action should be taken at once; and would be taken.
But the King, assailed, molested by that rude interrupting loyalty, above all by that cry of the Queen, felt the Turk stir in him also. Who were these intruders in the sacred precincts, infringing the seclusion of the Great Moghul's women? Trembling with impotent passion, inherited from passions that had not been impotent, he turned to Ahsan-Oolah, ignoring the Queen, who, he felt, was mostly to blame for this outrage on her modesty. Why had she come there? Why had she dared to be seen?
"Your Majesty should send for the Captain of the Palace Guards and bid him disperse the rioters, and force them into respect for your royal person," suggested the physician, carefully avoiding all but the immediate present, "and your Majesty should pass to the Hall of Audience. The King can scarce receive the Captain-sahib here in presence of the Consort." He did not add--"in her present costume"--but his tone implied it, and the King, with an angry mortified glance toward his favorite, took the physician's arm. If looks could kill, Ahsan-Oolah would not, he knew, have supported those tottering steps far; but it was no time to stick at trifles.
When they had passed from the anteroom Zeenut Maihl still stood as if half stupefied by the insult. Then she dashed to the open lattice again, scornful and defiant; dignified into positive beauty for the moment by her recklessness.
"For the Faith!" she cried in her shrill woman's voice, "if ye are men, as I would be, to be loved of woman, as I am, strike for the Faith!"
A sort of shiver ran through the clustering crowd of men below; the shiver of anticipation, of the marvelous, the unexpected. The Queen had spoken to them as men; of herself as woman. Inconceivable!--improper of course--yet exciting. Their blood thrilled, the instinct of the man to fight for the woman rose at once.
"Quick, brothers! Rouse the guard! Close the gates! Close the gates!"
It was a cry to heal all strife within those rose-red walls, for the dearest wish of every faction was to close them against civilization; against those prying Western eyes and sniffing Western noses, detecting drains and sinks of iniquity. So the clamor grew, and faces which had frowned at each other yesterday sought support in each other's ferocity to-day, and wild tales began to pass from mouth to mouth. Men, crowding recklessly over the flower-beds, trampling down the roses, talked of visions, of signs and warnings, while the troopers, dismounting for a pull at a pipe, became the center of eager circles listening not to dreams, but deeds.
"Dost feel the rope about thy neck, Sir Martyr?" said a bitter jeering voice behind one of the speakers. And something gripped him round the throat from behind, then as suddenly loosed its hold, as a shrouded woman's figure hobbled on through the crowd. The trooper started up with an oath, his own hand seeking his throat involuntarily.
"Heed her not!" said a bystander hastily, "'tis the Queen's scribe, Hafzân. She hath a craze against men. One made her what she is. Go on! Havildar-jee. So thou didst cut thememdown, and fling the babe----"
But the doer of the deed stood silent. He did in truth seem to feel the rope about his neck. And he seemed to feel it till he died; when itwasthere.
But Hafzân had passed on, and there were no more with words of warning. So the clamor grew and grew, till the garden swarmed with men ready for any deed.
Ahsan-Oolah saw this, and laid a detaining hand on the Captain of the Guard's arm, who, summoned in hot haste from his quarters over the Lahore gate, came in by the private way, and proposed to go down and harangue the crowd.
"It is not safe, Huzoor," he cried. "My liege, detain him. These men by their own confession are murderers----"
The King looked from one to the other doubtfully. Someone must get rid of the rioters; yet the physician said truth.
"And if aught befall," added the latter craftily, "your Majesty will be held responsible."
The old man's hand fell instantly on the Englishman's arm. "Nay, nay, sahib! go not. Go not, my friend! Speak to them from the balcony. They will not dare to violate it."
So, backed by the sanctity of the Audience Hall of a dead dynasty, the Englishman stood and ordered the crowd to desist from profaning privacy in the name of the old man behind him; whose power he, in common with all his race, hoped and believed to be dead.
It was sufficient, however, to leave some respect for the royal person, and make the crowd disperse. To little purpose so far as peace and quiet went, since the only effect was to send a leaven of revolt to every corner of the Palace. And the Palace was so full of malcontents, docked of power, privilege, pensions; of all that makes life in a Palace worth living.
So the cry "Close the gates" grew wider. The dazed old King clung to the Englishman's arm imploring him to stay; but now a messenger came running to say that the Commissioner-sahib had called and left word that the Captain was to follow without delay to the Calcutta gate of the city. The courtiers, who had begun to assemble, looked at each other curiously; the disturbance, then, had spread beyond the Palace. Could, then, this amazing tale be true? The very thought sent them cringing round the old man, who might ere long be King indeed.
Yet as the Captain dashed at a gallop past the sentries standing calmly at the Lahore gate, there was no sign of trouble beyond, and he gave a quick glance of relief back at those cool quarters of his over the arched tunnel where the chaplain, his daughter, and her friend were staying as his guests. He felt less fear of leaving them when he saw that the city was waking to life as always, buckling down quietly to the burden and heat of a new day. It was now past seven o'clock, and the sunlight, still cool, was bright enough to cleave all things into dark or light, shade or shine. Up on the Ridge, the brigade, after listening to the sentence on the Barrackpore mutineers, was dispersing quietly; many of the men with that fiat of patience till the 31st in their minds, for the carriage-load of native officers returning from the Meerut court-martial had come into cantonments late the night before. On the roofs of the houses in the learned quarter women were giving the boys their breakfasts ere sending them off to school. The milkwomen were trooping in cityward from the country, the fruit-sellers and hawkers trooping out Ridge-way as usual. The postman going his rounds had left letters, written in Meerut the day before, at two houses. And Kate Erlton returning from early church had found hers and was reading it with a scared face. Alice Gissing, however, having had that laconic telegram, had taken hers coolly. The decision had had to be made, since nothing had happened; and Herbert had the right to make it. For her part, she could make him happy; she had the knack of making most men happy, and she herself was always content when the people about her were jolly. So she was packing boxes in the back veranda of the little house on the city wall.
Thus she did not see the man who, between six and seven o'clock, ran breathlessly past her house, as a shortcut to the Court House from the bridge, taking a message from the toll-keeper to the nearest Huzoor, the Collector, who was holding early office, that a party of armed troopers had come down the Meerut road, that more could be seen coming, and would the Huzoor kindly issue orders. That first and final suggestion of the average native subordinate in any difficulty.
Armed men? That might mean much or nothing. Yet scarcely anything really serious, or warning would have been sent. The Commissioner, anyhow, must be told. So the Collector flung himself on his horse, which, in Indian fashion, was waiting under a tree outside the Court House, and galloped toward Ludlow Castle. No need for that warning, however, for just by the Cashmere gate he met the man he sought driving furiously down with a mounted escort to close the city gates. He had already heard the news.[3]
Gathering graver apprehensions from this hasty meeting, the Collector was off again to warn the Resident, then still further to beg help from cantonments. No delay here, no hesitation. Simply a man on a horse doing his best for the future, leaving the present for those on the spot.
Nor was there delay anywhere. The Commissioner, calling by the way for the Captain of the Guard, the nearest man with men under him, was at the gate, giving on the bridge of boats, by half-past seven. The Resident, calling on his way at the magazine for two guns to sweep the bridge, joined him there soon after. Too late. The enemy had crossed, and were in possession of the only ground commanding the bridge. Nothing remained but to close the gate and keep the city quiet till the columns of pursuit from Meerut should arrive; for that there was one upon the road no one doubted. The very rebels clamoring at the gate were listening for the sound of those following footsteps. The very fanatics, longing for another blow or two at an infidel to gain Paradise withal ere martyrdom was theirs, listened too; for during that moonlit night the certainty of failure had been as myrrh and hyssop deadening them to the sacrifice of life.
So the little knot of Englishmen, looking hopefully down the road, looked anxiously at each other, and closed the river gate; kept it closed, too, even when the 20th claimed admittance from their friends the guard within. For the 38th regiment, whose turn it was for city work, was also rotten to the core.
But they could not close that way through Selimgarh, though it, in truth, brought no trouble to the town. The men who chose it being intriguers, fanatics, the better class of patriots more anxious to intrench themselves for the struggle within walls, than to swarm into a town they could not hope to hold. But there were others of different mettle, longing for loot and license. The 3d Cavalry had many friends in Delhi, especially in the Thunbi Bazaar; so they made for it by braving the shallow streams and shifting sandbanks below the eastern wall, and so gaining the Raj-ghât gate. Here, after compact with vile friends in that vile quarter, they found admittance and help. For what?
Between the bazaar and the Palace lay Duryagunj, full of helpless Christian women and children; and so, "Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed," the convenient Cry of Faith, was ready as, followed by the rabble and refuse once more, the troopers raced through the peaceful gardens, pausing only to kill the infidels they met. But like a furious wind gathering up all vile things in the street and carrying them along for a space, then dropping them again, the band left a legacy of license and sheer murder behind it, while it sped on to loot.
But now the cry of "Close the gates" rose once more, this time from the shopkeepers, the respectable quarters, the secluded alleys, and courtyards. And many a door was closed on the confusion and never opened again, except to pass in bare bread, for four long months.
"Close the gates! Close the gates! Close the gates!" The cry rose from the Palace, the city, the little knot of Englishmen looking down the Meerut road. Yet no one could compass that closing. Recruits swarmed in through Selimgarh to the Palace. Robbers swarmed in through the Raj-ghât gate to harry the bazaars. Only through the Cashmere gate, held by English officers and a guard of the 38th, no help came. The Collector arriving therein, hot from his gallop to cantonments, found more wonder than alarm; for death was dealt in Delhi by noiseless cold steel; and the main-guard having to be kept, in order to secure retreat and safety to the European houses around it, no one had been able to leave it. And all around was still peaceful utterly; even the roar of growing tumult in the city had not reached it. Sonny Seymour was playing with his parrot in the veranda, Alice Gissing packing boxes methodically. The Collector galloping past--as, scorning the suggestion that it was needless risk to go further, he replied briefly, that he was the magistrate of the town, and struck spurs to his horse--made some folk look up--that was all.
But he could scarcely make his way through the growing crowd, which, led by troopers, was beginning to close in behind the knot of waiting Englishmen. And once more they looked down the Meerut road as they heard that some time must elapse ere they could hope for reinforcement. The guns could not be got ready at a moment's notice; nor could the Cashmere gate guard leave the post. But the 54th regiment should be down in about---- In about what? No one asked; but those waiting faces listened as for a verdict of life and death.
In about an hour.
An hour! And not a cloud of dust upon the Meerut road.
"They can't be long, though, now," said the eldest there hopefully. "And Ripley will bring his men down at the double. If we go into the guard-house we can hold our own till then, surely."
"I can hold mine," replied a young fellow with a rough-hewn homely face. He gave a curt nod as he spoke to a companion, and together they turned back, skirting the wall, followed by an older, burlier man. They belonged to the magazine, and they were off to see the best way of holding their own. And they found it--found it for all time.
But fate had denied to those other brave men the nameless something which makes men succeed together, or die together. Within half an hour they were scattered helplessly. The Resident, after seeking support from the city police for one whose name had been a terror to Delhi for fifty years, and finding insult instead, was flying for dear life through the Ajmere gate to the open county; The Commissioner, who, after seizing a musket from a wavering guard beside him and--with the first shot fired in Delhi--shooting the foremost trooper dead, seems to have lost hope, with mutiny around and treason beside him, jumped into his buggy alone and drove off to those cool quarters above the Palace gate, as his nearest refuge. Their owner, the Captain sought like refuge by flinging himself into the cover of the dry moat, and creeping--despite injuries from the fall--along it till some of his men, faithful so far, seeing him unable for more, carried him to his own room.
The Collector! Strangely enough there is no record of what the Magistrate of the city did, thus left alone. He had been wounded by the crowd at first, and was no doubt weary after his wild gallopings. Still he, holding his own so far, managed to gain the same refuge, somehow. What else could he do alone? One thing we know he could not do. That is, mount the broad, curving flight of shallow stone stairs leading to the cool upper rooms. So the chaplain helped him; the chaplain who had "from an early hour been watching the advance of the Meerut mutineers through a telescope and feeling there was mischief in the wind."
Mischief indeed! and danger; most of all in those rose-red walls within which refuge had been sought. For the King was back in the women's apartments listening to the Queen's cozenings and Hussan Askuri's visions, when that urgent appeal to send dhoolies to convey the English ladies at the gate to the security of the harem reached him; reached him in Ahsan-Oolah's warning voice of wisdom. And he listened to both the wheedling ambition and the crafty policy with a half-hearing for something beyond it of pity, honor, good faith; while Hâfzan, pen in hand, sat with her large profoundly sad eyes fixed on the old man's face, waiting--waiting.
"If they come here--outcaste! infidel! I go," said Zeenut Maihl.
"Thou shalt go with a bowstring about thy neck, woman, if I choose," said the old King fiercely. "Write! girl--the Queen's dhoolies to the Lahore gate at once."
So, through the swarms of pensioners quarreling already over new titles and perquisites, through the groups of excited fanatics preparing for martyrdom about the Mosque, past Abool-Bukr, three parts drunk, boasting to ruffling blades of the European mistresses he meant to keep, the Queen's dhoolies went swaying out of the precincts; all yielding place to them. And beyond, in the denser, more dangerous crowd without, they passed easily; for those tinsel-decked, tawdry canopies, screened with sodden musk and dirt-scented curtains, were sacred.
Sacred even to the refuse and rabble of the city, the dissolute eunuchs, the mob of retainers, palace guards, and blood-drunk soldierly surging through that long arched tunnel by the Lahore gate, and hustling to get round that wide arch, and so, a few steps further, see the Commissioner standing at bay upon that wide curving red-stone stair that led upward. Standing and thinking of the women above; of one woman mostly. Standing, facing the wild sea of faces, waiting to see if that last appeal for help had been heard.
"Room! Room! for the Queen's dhoolies!"
The cry echoed above the roar of the crowd.
At last! He turned, to pass on the welcome news, perchance; but it was enough--that one waver of that stern face! There was a rush, a cry, a clang of steel on stone, a fall! And then up those wide curving stairs, like fiends incarnate, jostled a mad crew, elbowing each other, cursing each other, in their eagerness for that blow which would win Paradise.
Four crowns of glory in the first room, where the chaplain, the Captain, and the two English girls fell side by side. One in the next, where the Collector and Magistrate, weary and wounded, still lay alone.
"Way! Way! for the Queen's dhoolies!"
But they had come too late, as all things seemed to come too late on that fatal 11th of May.
Too late! Too late! The words dinned themselves into a horseman's brain, as he dashed out of the compound of a small house in Duryagunj and headed straight through the bazaar for the little house on the city wall by the Cashmere gate. And as he rode he shouted: "Deen! Deen!"
It was a convenient cry, and suited the trooper's dress he wore. He had had to shoot a man to get it, but he hoped to shoot many more when he had seen Alice Gissing in safety, and the Meerut column had come in. It could not be long now.