On the morning of the 11th, the sun that laid bare the horrors of Meerut shone brightly on the placid splendor of Delhi. This great city, the Rome of Asia, was also the Metz of Upper India, its old-fashioned though strong defenses having been modernized by the genius of a Napier. Resting on the Jumna, it might best be described as of half-moon shape, with the straight edge running north and south along the right bank of the river.
In the center of the river line stood the imposing red sandstone palace of Bahadur Shah, last of the Moguls. North of this citadel were the magazine, the Church, some European houses, and the cutcherry, or group of minor law courts, while the main thoroughfare leading in that direction passed through the Kashmir Gate. Southward from the fort stretched the European residential suburb known as Darya Gunj (or, as it would be called in England, the “Riverside District”) out of which the Delhi Gate gave access to the open country and the road to Humayun’s Tomb. Another gate, the Raj Ghât, opened toward the river between the palace and Darya Gunj. Thus, thewalls of city and palace ran almost straight for two miles from the Kashmir Gate on the north to the Delhi Gate on the south, while the main road connecting the two passed the fort on the landward side.
The Lahore Gate of the palace, a magnificent structure, commanded the bazaar and its chief street, the superb Chandni Chowk, which extended due west for nearly two miles to the Lahore Gate of the city itself. Near the palace, in a very large garden, stood the spacious premises of the Delhi Bank. A little farther on, but on the opposite side of the Chowk, was the Kotwallee, or police station, and still farther, practically in the center of the dense bazaar, two stone elephants marked the entrance to the beautiful park now known as the Queen’s Gardens.
The remainder of the space within the walls was packed with the houses and shops of well-to-do traders, and the lofty tenements or mud hovels in which dwelt a population of artisans noted not only for their artistic skill but for a spirit of lawlessness, a turbulent fanaticism, that had led to many scenes of violence in the city’s earlier history.
The whole of Delhi, as well as the palace—which had its own separate fortifications—was surrounded by a wall seven miles long, twenty-four feet in height, well supplied with bastions, and containing ten huge gates, each a small fort in itself. The wall was protected by a dry fosse, or ditch, twenty-five feet wide and about twenty feet deep; this, in turn, was guarded by a counterscarp and glacis.
On the northwest side of Delhi, and about a mile distant from the river, an irregular, rock-strewn spine of land, called the Ridge, rose above the general level of the plain, and afforded a panoramic view of the city and palace. The rising ground began about half a mile from the Mori Gate—which was situated on what may be termed the landward side of the Kashmir Gate. It followed a course parallel with the river for two miles, and at its northerly extremity were situated the principal European bungalows and the military cantonment.
Delhi was the center of Mohammedan hopes; its palace held the lineal descendant of Aurangzebe, with his children and grandchildren; it was stored to repletion with munitions of war; yet, such was the inconceivable folly of the rulers of India at that time, the nearest British regiments were stationed in Meerut, while the place swarmed with native troops, horse, foot and artillery!
A May morning in the Punjab must not be confused with its prototype in Britain. Undimmed by cloud, unchecked by cooling breeze, the sun scorches the earth from the moment his glowing rays first peep over the horizon. Thus men who value their health and have work to be done rise at an hour when London’s streets are emptiest. Merchants were busy in the bazaar, soldiers were on parade, judges were sitting in the courts of the cutcherry, and the European housewives of the station were making their morning purchases of food for breakfast and dinner, when some of the loungers on the river-side wall saw groups ofhorsemen raising the dust on the Meerut road beyond the bridge of boats which spanned the Jumna.
The word went round that something unusual had happened. Already the idlers had noted the arrival of a dust-laden royal carriage, which crossed the pontoons at breakneck speed and entered by the Calcutta Gate. That incident, trivial in itself, became important when those hard-riding horsemen came in sight. The political air was charged with electricity. None knew whether it would end in summer lightning or in a tornado, so there was much running to and fro, and gesticulations, and excited whisperings among those watchers on the walls.
Vague murmurs of doubt and surprise reached the ears of two of the British magistrates. They hurriedly adjourned the cases they were trying and sent for their horses. One rode hard to the cantonment and told Brigadier Graves what he had seen and heard; the other, knowing the immense importance of the chief magazine, went there to warn Lieutenant Willoughby, the officer in charge.
Here, then, in Delhi, were men of prompt decision, but the troops on whom they could have depended were forty miles away in Meerut, in that never-to-be-forgotten bivouac. Meanwhile, the vanguard of the Meerut rebels had arrived. Mostly troopers of Malcolm’s regiment, with some few sepoys who had stolen ponies on the way, they crossed the Jumna, some going straight to the palace by way of the bridge of boats, while others forded the river to the south andmade for the gaol, where, as usual, they released the prisoners. This trick of emptying the penitentiaries was more adroit than it seems at first sight. Not only were the mutineers sure of obtaining hearty assistance in their campaign of robbery and murder, but every gaol-bird headed direct for his native town as soon as he was gorged with plunder. There was no better means of disseminating the belief that the British power had crumbled to atoms. The convicts boasted that they had been set free by the rebels; they paraded their ill-gotten gains and incited ignorant villagers to emulate the example of the towns. Thus a skilful and damaging blow was struck at British prestige. Neither Mohammedan moullah nor Hindu fakir carried such conviction to ill-informed minds as the appearance of some known malefactor decked out in the jewels and trinkets of murdered Englishwomen.
The foremost of the mutineers reined in their weary horses beneath a balcony on which Bahadur Shah, a decrepit old man of eighty, awaited them.
By his side stood his youngest daughter, the Roshinara Begum. Her eyes were blazing with triumph, yet her lips curved with contempt at the attitude of her trembling father.
“You see!” she cried. “Have I not spoken truly? These are the men who sacked Meerut. Scarce a Feringhi lives there save those whom I have saved to good purpose. Admit your troops! Proclaim yourself their ruler. A moment’s firmness will win back your empire.”
The aged monarch, now that the hour was at hand that astrologers had predicted and his courtiers had promised for many a year, faltered his dread lest they were not all committing a great mistake.
“This is no woman’s work,” he protested. “Where are my sons? Where is the Shahzada, Mirza Mogul?”
She knew. The heir apparent and his brothers were cowering in fear, afraid to strike, yet hoping that others would strike for them. She almost dragged her father to the front of the balcony. The troopers recognized him with a fierce shout. A hundred sabers were waved frantically.
“Help us, O King!” they cried. “We pray your help in our fight for the faith!”
Captain Douglas, commandant of the palace guards, hearing the uproar ran to the King. He did not notice the girl Roshinara, who stood there like a caged tigress.
“How dare you intrude on the King’s privacy?” he cried, striving to overawe the rebels by his cool demeanor. “You must lay down your arms if you wish His Majesty’s clemency. He is here in person and that is his command.”
A yell of defiance greeted his bold words. The Begum made a signal with her hand which was promptly understood. Away clattered the troopers towards the Raj Ghât Gate. There they were admitted without parley. The city hell hounds sprang to meet them and the slaughter of inoffensive Europeans began in Darya Gunj.
It was soon in full swing. The vile deeds of the night at Meerut were re-enacted in the vivid sunlight at Delhi. Leaving their willing allies to carry sword and torch through the small community in that quarter the sowars rode to the Lahore Gate of the palace. It was thrown open by the King’s guards and dependents. Captain Douglas, and the Commissioner, Mr. Fraser, made vain appeals to men whose knees would have trembled at their frown a few minutes earlier. Thinking to escape and summon assistance from the cantonment, Douglas mounted the wall and leaped into the moat. He broke one, if not both, of his legs. Some scared coolies lifted him and carried him back to the interior of the palace. Fraser tried to protect him while he was being taken to his apartments over the Lahore Gate, but a jeweler from the bazaar stabbed the Commissioner and he was killed by the guards. Then the mob rushed up-stairs and massacred the collector, the chaplain, the chaplain’s daughter, a lady who was their guest, and the injured Douglas.
Another dreadful scene was enacted in the Delhi Bank. The manager and his brave wife, assisted by a few friends who happened to be in the building at the moment, made a stubborn resistance, but they were all cut down. The masters in the Government colleges were surprised and murdered in their class-rooms. The missionaries, whether European or native, were slaughtered in their houses and schools. The editorial staff and compositors of theDelhi Gazette, having just produced a special edition of the paper announcingthe crisis, were all stabbed or bludgeoned to death. In the telegraph office a young signaler was sending a thrilling message to Umballa, Lahore and the north.
“The sepoys have come in from Meerut,” he announced with the slow tick of the earliest form of apparatus. “They are burning everything. Mr. Todd is dead, and, we hear, several Europeans. We must shut up.”
That was his requiem. The startled operators at Umballa could obtain no further intelligence and the boy was slain at his post.[3]
The magistrate who galloped to the cantonment found no laggards there. Brigadier Graves sent Colonel Ripley with part of the 54th Native Infantry to occupy the Kashmir Gate. The remainder of the 54th escorted two guns under Captain de Teissier.
Ripley reached the main guard, just within the gate, when some troopers of the 3d rode up. The Colonel ordered his men to fire at them. The sepoys refused to obey, and the sowars, drawing their pistols, shot dead or severely wounded six British officers. Then the 54th bayoneted their Colonel, but, hearing the rumble of de Teissier’s guns, fled into the city. The guard of the gate, composed of men of the 38th, went with them, but their officer, Captain Wallace, had ridden, fortunately for himself, to hurry the guns. Hewas sent on to the cantonment to ask for re-enforcements. Not a man of the 38th would follow him, but the 74th commanded by Major Abbott, proclaimed their loyalty and asked to be led against the mutineers.
Perforce their commander trusted them. He brought them to the Kashmir Gate with two more guns, while the Brigadier and his staff, wondering why they heard nothing of the pursuing British from Meerut, thought it advisable to gather the women and children and other helpless persons, both European and native, in the Flagstaff Tower, a small building situated on the northern extremity of the Ridge.
There for some hours a great company of frightened people endured all the discomforts of terrific heat, hunger, and thirst, while wives and mothers, striving to soothe their wailing little ones, were themselves consumed with anxiety as to the fate of husbands and sons.
At the main guard there was a deadlock. Major Abbott and his brother officers, trying to keep their men loyal, stood fast and listened to the distant turmoil in the city. Like the soldiers in Meerut, they never guessed a tithe of the horrors enacted there. They were sure that the white troops in Meerut would soon arrive and put an end to the prevalent anarchy. Yet the day sped and help came not.
Suddenly the sound of a tremendous explosion rent the air and a dense cloud of white smoke, succeeded by a pall of dust, rose between the gate and the palace. Willoughby had blown up the magazine! Why? Twoartillery subalterns who had fought their way through a mob stricken with panic for the moment, soon arrived. Their story fills one of the great pages of history.
Lieutenant Willoughby, a boyish-looking subaltern of artillery, whose shy, refined manners hid a heroic soul, lost no time in making his dispositions for the defense of the magazine when he knew that a mutiny was imminent. He had with him eight Englishmen, Lieutenants Forrest and Raynor, Conductors Buckley, Shaw and Scully, Sub-Conductor Crow, and Sergeants Edwards and Stewart. The nine barricaded the outer gates and placed in the best positions guns loaded with grape. They laid a train from the powder store to a tree in the yard. Scully stood there. He promised to fire the powder when his young commander gave the signal.
Then they waited. A stormy episode was taking place inside the fort. Bahadur Shah held out against the vehement urging of his daughter aided now by the counsel of her brothers. Ever and anon he went to the river balcony which afforded a view of the Meerut road. At last he sent mounted men across the river. When these scouts returned and he was quite certain that none but rebel sepoys were streaming towards Delhi from Meerut, he yielded.
The surrender of the magazine was demanded in his name. His adherents tried to rush the gate and walls, and were shot down in scores. The attack grew more furious and sustained. The white men served their smoking cannon with a wild energy that, for a time,made the gallant nine equal to a thousand. Of course such a struggle could have only one end. Willoughby, in his turn, ran to the river bastion. Like the king, he looked towards Meerut. Like the king, he saw none but mutineers. Then, when the enemy were clambering over the walls and rushing into the little fort from all directions, he raised his sword and looked at Conductor Buckley. Buckley lifted his hat, the agreed signal, and Scully fired the train. Hundreds of rebels were blown to pieces, as they were already inside the magazine. Scully was killed where he stood. Willoughby leaped from the walls, crossed the river, and met his death while striving to reach Meerut. Lieutenants Forrest and Raynor, Conductors Buckley and Shaw, and Sergeant Stewart escaped, and were given the Victoria Cross.
Yet, so curiously constituted is the native mind, the blowing-up of the magazine was the final tocsin of revolt. It seemed to place beyond doubt that which all men were saying. The king was fighting the English. Islam was in the field against the Nazarene. The Mogul Empire was born again and the iron grip of British rule was relaxed. At once the sepoys at the Kashmir Gate fired a volley at the nearest officers, of whom three fell dead.
Two survivors rushed up the bastion and jumped into the ditch. Others, hearing the shrieks of some women in the guard room, poor creatures who had escaped from the city, ran through a hail of bullets and got them out. Fastening belts and handkerchiefstogether, the men lowered the women into the fosse and, with extraordinary exertions, lifted them up the opposite side.
At the Flagstaff Tower the 74th and the remainder of the 38th suddenly told their officers that they would obey them no longer. When this last shred of hope was gone, the Brigadier reluctantly gave the order to retreat. The women and children were placed in carriages and a mournful procession began to straggle through the deserted cantonment along the Alipur Road.
Soon the fugitives saw their bungalows on fire. “Then,” says that accurate and impartial historian of the Mutiny, Mr. T. R. E. Holmes, “began that piteous flight, the first of many such incidents which hardened the hearts of the British to inflict a terrible revenge.... Driven to hide in jungles or morasses from despicable vagrants—robbed, and scourged, and mocked by villagers who had entrapped them with promises of help—scorched by the blazing sun, blistered by burning winds, half-drowned in rivers which they had to ford or swim across, naked, weary and starving, they wandered on; while some fell dead by the wayside, and others, unable to move farther, were abandoned by their sorrowing friends to die on the road.”
In such wise did the British leave Imperial Delhi. They came back, later, but many things had to happen meanwhile.
The volcanic outburst in the Delhi district might have been paralleled farther north were not the Punjabfortunate in its rulers. Sir John Lawrence was Chief Commissioner at Lahore. When that fateful telegram from Delhi was received in the capital of the Punjab he was on his way to Murree, a charming and secluded hill station, for the benefit of his health. But, like most great men, Lawrence had the faculty of surrounding himself with able lieutenants.
His deputy, Robert Montgomery, whose singularly benevolent aspect concealed an iron will, saw at once that if the Punjab followed the lead of Meerut and Delhi, India would be lost. Lahore had a mixed population of a hundred thousand Sikhs and Mohammedans, born soldiers every man, and ready to take any side that promised to settle disputes by cold steel rather than legal codes. If these hot heads, with their millions of co-religionists in the land of the Five Rivers, were allowed to gain the upper hand, they would sweep through the country from the mountains to the sea.
The troops, British and native, were stationed in the cantonment of Mian-mir, some five miles from Lahore. There were one native cavalry regiment and three native infantry battalions whose loyalty might be measured by minutes as soon as they learnt that the standard of Bahadur Shah was floating over the palace at Delhi. To quell them the authorities had the 81st Foot and two batteries of horse artillery, or, proportionately, far less a force than that at Meerut, the Britons being outnumbered eight times by the natives.
Montgomery coolly drove to Mian-mir on the morning of the 12th, took counsel with the Brigadier, StuartCorbett, and made his plans. A ball was fixed for that night. All society attended it, and men who knew that the morrow’s sun might set on a scene of bloodshed and desolation danced gaily with the ladies of Lahore. Surely those few who were in the secret of the scheme arranged by Montgomery and Corbett must have thought of a more famous ball at Brussels on a June night in 1815.
Next morning the garrison fell in for a general parade of all arms. The artillery and 81st were on the right of the line, the native infantry in the center, and the sowars on the left. A proclamation by Government announcing the disbandment of the 34th at Barrackpore was read, and may have given some inkling of coming events to the more thoughtful among the sepoys. But they had no time for secret murmurings. Maneuvers began instantly. In a few minutes the native troops found themselves confronted by the 81st and the two batteries of artillery.
Riding between the opposing lines, the Brigadier told the would-be mutineers that he meant to save them from temptation by disarming them.
“Pile arms!” came the resolute command.
They hesitated. The intervening space was small. By sheer weight of numbers they could have borne down the British.
“Eighty-first—load!” rang out the ominous order.
As the ears of the startled men caught the ring of the ramrods in the Enfield rifles, their eyes saw the lighted port fires of the gunners. They were trapped, andthey knew it. They threw down their weapons with sullen obedience and the first great step towards the re-conquest of India was taken.
Inspired by Montgomery the district officers at Umritsar, Mooltan, Phillour, and many another European center in the midst of warlike and impetuous races, followed his example and precept. Brigadier Innes at Ferozpore hesitated. He tried half measures. He separated his two native regiments and thought to disarm them on the morrow. That night one of them endeavored to storm the magazine, burnt and plundered the station, and marched off towards Delhi. But Innes then made amends. He pursued and dispersed them. Only scattered remnants of the corps reached the Mogul capital.
Thus Robert Montgomery, the even-tempered, suave, smooth-spoken Deputy Commissioner of Lahore! In the far north, at Peshawur, four other men of action gathered in conclave. The gay, imaginative, earnest-minded Herbert Edwardes, the hard-headed veteran, Sydney Cotton, the dashing soldier, Neville Chamberlain, and the lustrous-eyed, black-bearded, impetuous giant, John Nicholson—that genius who at thirty-five had already been deified by a brotherhood of Indian fakirs and placed by Mohammedans among the legendary heroes of their faith—these four sat in council and asked, “How best shall we serve England?”
They answered that question with their swords.
In Meerut reigned that blessed thing, Pax Britannica, otherwise known as the British bulldog. But the bulldog was kept on the chain and peace obtained only within his kennel. Malcolm, deprived of his regiment, gathered under his command a few young civilians who were eager to act as volunteer cavalry, and was given a grudging permission to ride out to the isolated bungalows of some indigo planters, on the chance that the occupants might have defended themselves successfully against the rioters.
In each case the tiny detachment discovered blackened walls and unburied corpses. The Meerut district abounded with Goojers, the hereditary thieves of India, and these untamed savages had lost none of their wild-beast ferocity under fifty years of British rule. They killed and robbed with an impartiality that was worthy of a better cause. When Europeans, native travelers and mails were swept out of existence they fought each other. Village boundaries which had been determined under Wellesley’s strong government at the beginning of the century were re-arranged now with match-lock, spear and tulwar. Old feuds were settled in the old way and six inches of steel were more potentthan the longest Order in Council. Yet these ghouls fled at the sight of the smallest white force, and Malcolm and his irregulars rode unopposed through a blood-stained and deserted land.
On the 21st of May, eleven days after the outbreak of the Mutiny, though never a dragoon or horse gunner had left Meerut cantonment since they marched back to their quarters from the ever-memorable bivouac, Malcolm led his light horsemen north, along the Grand Trunk Road in the direction of Mazuffernugger.
A native brought news that a collector and his wife were hiding in a swamp near the road. Happily, in this instance, the two were rescued, more dead than alive. The man, ruler of a territory as big as the North Riding of Yorkshire, his wife, a young and well-born Englishwoman, were in the last stage of misery. The unhappy lady, half demented, was nursing a dead baby. When the child was taken from her she fell unconscious and had to be carried to Meerut on a rough litter.
The little cavalcade was returning slowly to the station[4]when one of the troopers caught the hoof beats of a galloping horse behind them. Malcolm reined up, and soon a British officer appeared round a bend in the road. Mounted on a hardy country-bred, and wearing the semi-native uniform of the Company’s regiments, the aspect of the stranger was sufficiently remarkable to attract attention apart from the fact that hecame absolutely alone from a quarter where it was courting death to travel without an escort. He was tall and spare of build, with reddish brown hair and beard, blue eyes that gleamed with the cold fire of steel, close-set lips, firm chin, and the slightly-hooked nose with thin nostrils that seems to be one of nature’s tokens of the man born to command his fellows when the strong arm and clear brain are needed in the battle-field.
He rode easily, with a loose rein, and he waved his disengaged hand the instant he caught sight of the white faces.
“Are you from Meerut?” he asked, his voice and manner conveying a curious blend of brusqueness and gentility, as his tired horse willingly pulled up alongside Nejdi.
“Yes. And you?” said Malcolm, trying to conceal his amazement at this apparition.
“I am Lieutenant Hodson of the 1st Bengal Fusiliers. I have ridden from Kurnaul, where the Commander-in-Chief is waiting until communication is opened with Meerut. Where is General Hewitt?”
“I will take you to him! From Kurnaul, did you say? When did you start?”
“About this hour yesterday.”
Malcolm knew then that this curt-spoken cavalier had ridden nearly a hundred miles through an enemy’s country in twenty-four hours.
“Is your horse equal to another hour’s canter?” he inquired.
“He ought to be. I took him from a bunniah when my own fell dead in a village about ten miles in the rear.”
Bidding a young bank manager take charge of the detachment, Frank led the newcomer rapidly to headquarters. Hodson asked a few questions and made his companion’s blood boil by the unveiled contempt he displayed on hearing of the inaction at Meerut.
“You want Nicholson here,” said he, laughing with grim mirth. “By all the gods, he would horse-whip your general into the saddle.”
“Hewitt is an old man, and cautious, therefore,” explained Frank, in loyal defense of his chief. “Perhaps he deems it right to await the orders you are now bringing.”
“An old man! You mean an old woman, perhaps? I come from one. I had to go on my knees almost before I could persuade Anson to let me start.”
“Well, you must admit that you have made a daring and lucky ride?”
“Nonsense! Why is one a soldier! I would cross the infernal regions if the need arose. If I had been in Meerut on that Sunday evening, no general that ever lived could have kept me out of Delhi before daybreak. The way to stop this mutiny was to capture that doddering old king and hold him as a hostage, and twenty determined men could have done it easily in the confusion.”
That was William Hodson’s way. Men who met him began by disliking his hectoring, superciliousbearing. They soon learnt to forget his gruffness and think only of his gallantry and good-comradeship.
At any rate his stirring advice and the dispatches he brought roused the military authorities at Meerut into activity. Carrying with him a letter to the Commander-in-Chief he quitted Meerut again that night, and dismounted outside Anson’s tent at Kurnaul at dawn on the second day!
On the 27th, Archdale Wilson led the garrison towards the rendezvous fixed on by the force hurriedly collected in the Punjab for the relief of Delhi. On the afternoon of the 30th, cavalry vedettes reported the presence of a strong body of mutineers on the right bank of the river Hindun, near the village of Ghazi-ud-din Nuggur and at a place where a high ridge commanded an iron suspension bridge. It was found afterwards that the rebels meant to fight the two British forces in detail before they could effect a junction. The generalship of the idea was good, but the sepoys did not count on the pent-up wrath of the British soldiers, who were burning to avenge their murdered countrymen and dishonored countrywomen, for it was now becoming known that many a fair English lady had met a fate worse than death ere sword or bullet stilled her anguish.
A company of the 60th Rifles dashed forward to seize the bridge, Lieutenant Light and his men took up the enemy’s challenge with their heavy eighteen-pounders, and Colonel Mackenzie and Major Tombs, at the head of two batteries of horse artillery, crossedthe river and turned the left flank of the sepoy force. Then the Rifles extended and charged, the mutineers yielded, and Colonel Custance with his dragoons sabered them mercilessly for some miles.
Next morning, Whit-Sunday, while the chaplains were conducting the burial service over those who had fallen, the mutineers came out of Delhi again. A severe action began instantly. Tombs had two horses shot under him, and thirteen out of fifty men in his battery were killed or wounded. But the issue was never in doubt. After three hours’ hard fighting the rebels broke and fled. So those men in Meerut could give a good account of themselves when permitted! Actually, they won the two first battles of the campaign.
Exhausted by two days’ strenuous warfare in the burning sun, they could not take up the pursuit. The men were resting on the field when a battalion of Ghoorkahs, the little fighting men of Nepaul, arrived under the command of Colonel Reid. They had marched by way of Bulandshahr, and Malcolm heard to his dismay that the native infantry detachment stationed there, aided by the whole population of the district, had committed the wildest excesses.
Yet Winifred and her uncle had passed through that town on the road to Cawnpore. Aligarh, too, was in flames, said Reid, and there was no communication open with Agra, the seat of Government for the North-West Provinces. There was a bare possibility that the Maynes might have reached Agra, or that Nana Sahib had protected them for his own sake. Such slenderhopes brought no comfort. Black despair sat in Malcolm’s heart until the Brigadier sent for him and ordered him to take charge of the guard that would escort the records and treasure from Meerut to Agra. He hailed this dangerous mission with gloomy joy. Love had no place in a soldier’s life, he told himself. Henceforth he must remember Winifred only when his sword was at the throat of some wretched mutineer appealing for mercy.
He went to his tent to supervise the packing of his few belongings. His bearer,[5]a Punjabi Mohammedan, who cursed the sepoys fluently for disturbing the country during the hot weather, handed him a note which had been brought by a camp follower.
It was written in Persi-Arabic script, a sort of Arabic shorthand that demands the exercise of time and patience ere it can be deciphered by one not thoroughly acquainted with it. Thinking it was a request for employment which he could not offer, Malcolm stuffed it carelessly into a pocket. He rode to Meerut, placed himself at the head of the 8th Irregular Cavalry, a detachment whose extraordinary fidelity has already been narrated, and set forth next morning with his train of bullock carts and their escort.
He called the first halt in the village where he had parted from Winifred. The headman professed himself unable to give any information, but the application of a stirrup leather to his bare back while his wrists were tied to a cart wheel soon loosened his tongue.
The king’s hunting lodge was empty, he whined; and the Roshinara Begum had gone to Delhi. Nana Sahib’s cavalcade went south soon after the Begum’s departure, and a moullah had told him, the headman, that the Nana had hastened through Aligarh on his way to Cawnpore, not turning aside to visit Agra, which was fifty miles down the Bombay branch of the Grand Trunk Road.
Malcolm drew a negative comfort from the moullah’s tale. That night he encamped near a fair-sized village which was ominously denuded of men. Approaching a native hut to ask for a piece of charcoal wherewith to light a cigar, he happened to look inside. To his very great surprise he saw, standing in a corner, a complete suit of European armor, made of tin, it is true, but a sufficiently bewildering “find” in a Goojer hovel.
A woman came running from a neighbor’s house. While giving him the charcoal she hastily closed the rude door. She pretended not to understand him when he sought an explanation of the armor, whereupon he seized her, and led her, shrieking, among his own men. The commotion brought other villagers on the scene, as he guessed it would. A few fierce threats, backed by a liberal display of naked steel, quickly evoked the curious fact that nearly all the able-bodied inhabitants “had gone to see the sahib-log[6]dance.”
Even Malcolm’s native troops were puzzled by this story, but a further string of terrifying words andmore saber flourishing led to a direct statement that the white people who were to “dance” had been captured near the village quite a week earlier and imprisoned in a ruined tomb about a mile from the road. It was risky work to leave the valuable convoy for an instant, but Malcolm felt that he must probe this mystery. Taking half a dozen men with him, and compelling the woman to act as guide, he went to the tomb in the dark.
The building, a mosque-like structure of considerable size, was situated in the midst of a grove of mango trees. A clear space in front of the tomb was lighted with oil lamps and bonfires. It was packed with uproarious natives, and Malcolm’s astonished gaze rested on three European acrobats doing some feat of balancing. A clown was cracking jokes in French, some nuns were singing dolefully, and a trio of girls, wearing the conventional gauze and spangles of circus riders, were standing near a couple of piebald ponies.
He and his men dashed in among the audience and the Goojers ran for dear life when they caught sight of a sahib at the head of an armed party. The performers and the nuns nearly died of fright, believing that their last hour had surely come. But they soon recovered from their fear only to collapse more completely from joy. A French circus, it appeared, had camped near a party of nuns in the village on the main road, and were captured there when the news came that the English were swept out of existence. Most fortunately for themselves the nuns were regardedas part of the show, and the villagers, after robbing all of them, penned them in the mosque and made them give a nightly performance. There were five men and three women in the circus troupe, and among the four nuns was the grave reverend mother of a convent.
Malcolm brought them to the village and caused it to be made known that unless every article of value and every rupee in money stolen from these unfortunate people, together with a heavy fine, were brought to him by daybreak, he would not only fire each hut and destroy the standing crops, but he would also hang every adult male belonging to the place he could lay hands on.
These hereditary thieves could appreciate a man who spoke like that. They met him fairly and paid in full. When the convoy moved off, even that amazing suit of armor, which was used for the state entry of the circus into a town, was strapped on to the back of a trick pony.
The nuns, he ascertained, were coming from Fategarh to Umballa and they had met the great retinue of Nana Sahib below Aligarh. With him were two Europeans, a young lady and an elderly gentleman, but they were traveling so rapidly that it was impossible to learn who they were or whither they were going.
Here, then, was really good news. Like every other Englishman in India Malcolm believed that the Mutiny was confined to a very small area, of which his own station was the center. He thought that if Winifredand her uncle reached Cawnpore they would be quite safe.
He brightened up so thoroughly that he quite enjoyed a sharp fight next day when the budmashes of Bulandshahr regarded the straggling convoy as an easy prey.
There were three or four such affairs ere they reached Agra, and his Frenchmen proved themselves to be soldiers as well as acrobats. On the evening of the 2d of June he marched his cavalcade into the splendid fortress immortalized by its marble memorials of the great days of the Mogul empire.
The fact that a young subaltern had brought a convoy from Meerut was seized on by the weak and amiable John Colvin, Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Provinces, as a convincing proof of his theory that the bulk of the native army might be trusted, and that order would soon be restored. Each day he was sending serenely confident telegrams to Calcutta and receiving equally reassuring ones from a fatuous Viceroy. It was with the utmost difficulty that his wiser subordinates got him to disarm the sepoy regiments in Agra itself. He vehemently assured the Viceroy that the worst days of the outbreak were over and issued a proclamation offering forgiveness to all mutineers who gave up their arms, “except those who had instigated others to revolt, or taken part in the murder of Europeans.”
Such a man was sure to regard Malcolm’s bold journey from the wrong point of view. So delighted was he that he gave the sowars two months’ pay,lauded Malcolm in theGazette, and forthwith despatched him on a special mission to General Sir Hugh Wheeler at Cawnpore, to whom he recommended Frank for promotion and appointment as aide-de-camp.
This curious sequence of events led to Malcolm’s following Winifred Mayne along the road she had taken exactly three weeks earlier. The route to Cawnpore lay through Etawah, a place where revolt had already broken out, but which had been evacuated by the mutineers, who, like those at Aligarh, Bulandshahr, Mainpuri, Meerut, and a score of other towns, ran off to Delhi after butchering all the Europeans within range.
With a small escort of six troopers, his servant, and two pack-horses, he traveled fast. As night was falling on June 4th, he re-entered the Grand Trunk Road some three miles north of Bithoor, where, all unknown to him, Nana Sahib’s splendid palace stood on the banks of the Ganges.
It was his prudent habit to halt in small villages only. Towns might be traversed quickly without much risk, as even the tiniest display of force insured safety, but it was wise not to permit the size of his escort to be noted at leisure, when a surprise attack might be made in the darkness.
Therefore, expecting to arrive at Cawnpore early next day, he elected not to push on to Bithoor, and proposed to pass the night under the branches of a great pipal tree. Chumru, his Mohammedan bearer, was a good cook, in addition to his many other acquirements.Having purchased, or made his master pay for, which is not always the same thing in India, a small kid (by which please understand a young goat) in the village, he lit a fire, slew the kid, to the accompaniment of an appropriate verse from the Koran, and compounded an excellent stew.
A native woman brought some chupatties and milk, and Malcolm, being sharp set with hunger, ate as a man can only eat when he is young, and in splendid health, and has ridden hard all day.
He had a cigar left, too, and he was searching his pockets for a piece of paper to light it when he brought forth that Persi-Arabic letter which reached him at the close of the second battle of Ghazi-ud-din Nuggur.
He was on the point of rolling it into a spill, but some subtle influence stopped him. He rose, walked to Chumru’s fire, and lit the cigar with a burning stick. Then summoning a smart young jemadar with whom he had talked a good deal during the journey, he asked him to read the chit. The woman who supplied the chupatties fetched a tiny lamp. She held it while the trooper bent over the strange scrawl, and ran his eyes along it to learn the context.
And this is what he read:
“To all whom it may concern—Be it known that Malcolm-sahib, late of the Company’s 3d Regiment of Horse, is a friend of the heaven-born princess Roshinara Begum, and, provided he comes to the palace at Delhi within three days from the date hereof, he is to be given safe conduct by all who owe allegiance to the Light ofthe World, the renowned King of Kings and lord of all India, Bahadur Shah, Fuzl-Ilahi, Panah-i-din.”
“To all whom it may concern—Be it known that Malcolm-sahib, late of the Company’s 3d Regiment of Horse, is a friend of the heaven-born princess Roshinara Begum, and, provided he comes to the palace at Delhi within three days from the date hereof, he is to be given safe conduct by all who owe allegiance to the Light ofthe World, the renowned King of Kings and lord of all India, Bahadur Shah, Fuzl-Ilahi, Panah-i-din.”
The trooper scowled. Those concluding words—“By the grace of God, Defender of the Faith”—perhaps touched a sore place, for he, too, was a true believer.
“You are a long way from Delhi, sahib, and the chit is a week old. I suppose you did not pay the expected visit to her Highness the Begum?” he said.
“If you are talking of the Begum Roshinara, daughter of the King of Delhi,” put in the woman, who was ready enough to indulge in a gossip with these good-looking soldiers, “she passed through this place to-day.”
“Surely you are telling some idle tale of the bazaar,” said Malcolm.
“No, sahib. My brother is a grass-cutter in the Nana’s stables. While I was at the well this morning a carriage came down the road. It was a rajah’s carriage, and there were men riding before and behind. I asked my brother if he had seen it, and he said that it brought the Begum to Bithoor, where she is to wed the Nana.”
“What! A Mohammedan princess marry a Brahmin!”
“It may be so, sahib. They say these great people do not consider such things when there is aught to be gained.”
“But what good purpose can this marriage serve?”
The woman looked up at Malcolm under her long eyelashes.
“Where have you been, sahib, that you have not heard that the sepoys have proclaimed the Nana as King?” she asked timidly.
“King! Is he going to fight the Begum’s father?”
“I know not, sahib, but Delhi is far off, and Cawnpore is near. Perchance they may both be kings.”
A man’s voice called from the darkness, and the woman hurried away. Malcolm, of course, was in a position to appraise the accuracy of her story. He knew that the Nana, a native dignitary with a grievance against the Government, was a guest of Bahadur Shah a month before the Mutiny broke out, and was at the Meerut hunting lodge on the very night of its inception. Judging by Princess Roshinara’s words, her relations with the Brahmin leader were far from lover-like. What, then, did this sudden journey to Cawnpore portend? Was Sir Hugh Wheeler aware of the proposed marriage, with all the terrible consequences that it heralded? At any rate, his line of action was clear.
“Get the men together, Akhab Khan,” he said to the jemadar. “We march at once.”
Within five minutes they were on the road. There was no moon, and the trees bordering both sides of the way made the darkness intense. The still atmosphere, too, was almost overpowering. The dry earth, sun-baked to a depth of many feet, was giving off its store of heat accumulated during the day. The air seemed to be quivering as though it were laden with the fumes of a furnace. It was a night when men might die or go mad under the mere strain of existence. Its verylanguor was intoxicating. Nature seemed to brood over some wild revel. A fearsome thunderstorm or howling tornado of dust might reveal her fickleness of mood at any moment.
It was man, not the elements, that was destined to war that night. The small party of horsemen were riding through the scattered houses of Bithoor, and had passed a brilliantly lighted palace which Malcolm took to be the residence of Nana Sahib, when they were suddenly ordered to halt. Some native soldiers, not wearing the Company’s uniform, formed a line across the road. Malcolm, drawing his sword, advanced towards them.
“Whose troops are you?” he shouted.
There was no direct answer, but a score of men, armed with muskets and bayonets, and carrying a number of lanterns, came nearer. It must be remembered that Malcolm, a subaltern of the 3d Cavalry, wore a turban and sash. He spoke Urdu exceedingly well, and it was difficult in the gloom to recognize him as a European.
“We have orders to stop and examine all wayfarers—” began some man in authority; but a lifted lantern revealed Frank’s white face; instantly several guns were pointed at him.
“Follow me!” he cried to his escort.
A touch of the spurs sent Nejdi with a mighty bound into the midst of the rabble who held the road. Malcolm bent low in the saddle and a scattered volley revealed the tree-shrouded houses in a series of brightflashes. Fortunately, under such conditions, there is more room to miss than to hit. None of the bullets harmed horse or man, and the sowars were not quite near enough to be in the line of fire. After a quick sweep or two with his sword, Malcolm saw that his men were laying about them heartily. A pack-horse, however, had stumbled, bringing down the animal ridden by Chumru, the bearer. To save his faithful servant Frank wheeled Nejdi, and cut down a native who was lunging at Chumru with a bayonet.
More shots were fired and a sowar was wounded. He fell, shouting to his comrades for help. A general mêlée ensued. The troopers slashed at the men on foot and the sepoys fired indiscriminately at any one on horseback. The uproar was so great and the fighting so strenuous that Malcolm did not hear the approach of a body of cavalry until a loud voice bawled:
“Why should brothers slay brothers? Cease your quarreling, in the name of the faith! Are there not plenty of accursed Feringhis on whom to try your blades?”
Then the young officer saw, too late, that he was surrounded by a ring of steel. Yet he strove to rally his escort, got four of the men to obey his command, and, placing himself in front, led them at the vague forms that blocked the road to Cawnpore. In the confusion, he might have cut his way through had not Nejdi unfortunately jumped over a wounded man at the instant Frank was aiming a blow at a sowar. His sword swished harmlessly in the air, and his adversary,hitting out wildly, struck the Englishman’s head with the forte of his saber. The violent shock dazed Malcolm for a second, but all might yet have been well were it not for an unavoidable accident. A sepoy’s bayonet became entangled in the reins. In the effort to free his weapon the man gave such a tug to the bit on the near side that the Arab crossed his fore-legs and fell, throwing his rider violently. Frank landed fairly on his head. His turban saved his neck, but could not prevent a momentary concussion. For a while he lay as one dead.
When he came to his senses he found that his arms were tied behind his back, that he had been carried under a big tree, and that a tall native, in the uniform of a subadar of the 2d Bengal Cavalry, was holding a lantern close to his face.
“I am an officer of the 3d Cavalry,” he said, trying to rise. “Why do you, a man in my own service, suffer me to be bound?”
“You are no officer of mine, Feringhi,” was the scornful reply. “You are safely trussed because we thought it better sport to dangle you from a bough than to stab you where you dropped. Quick, there, with that heel-rope, Abdul Huq. We have occupation. Let us hang this crow here to show other Nazarenes what they may expect. And we have no time to lose. The Nana may appear at any moment.”
That ominous order filled Malcolm’s soul with a fierce rage. He was not afraid of death. The wine of life ran too strongly in his veins that craven fear should so suddenly quell the excitement of the combat that had ended thus disastrously. But his complete helplessness—the fact that he was to be hanged like some wretched felon by men wearing the uniform of which he had been so proud—these things stirred him to the verge of frenzy.
Oddly enough, in that moment of anguish he thought of Hodson, the man who rode alone from Kurnaul to Meerut. Why had Hodson succeeded? Would Hodson, knowing the exceeding importance of his mission, have turned to rescue a servant or raise a fallen horse? Would he not rather have dashed on like a thunderbolt, trusting to the superior speed of his charger to carry him clear of his assailants? And Nejdi! What had become of that trusted friend? Never before, Arab though he was, had he been guilty of a stumble. Perhaps he was shot, and sobbing out his gallant life on the road, almost at the foot of the tree which would be his master’s gallows.
A doomed man indulges in strange reveries. Malcolm was almost as greatly concerned with Nejdi’s imagined fate as with his own desperate plight when the trooper who answered to the name of Abdul Huq brought the heel-rope that was to serve as a halter.
The man was a Pathan, swarthy, lean, and sinewy, with the nose and eyes of a bird of prey. Though a hawk would show mercy to a fledgling sparrow sooner than this cut-throat to a captive, the robber instinct in him made him pause before he tied the fatal noose.
“Have you gone through the Nazarene’s pockets, sirdar?” he asked.
“No,” was the impatient answer. “Of what avail is it? These chota-sahibs[7]have no money. And Cawnpore awaits us.”
“Nevertheless, every rupee counts. And he may be carrying letters of value to the Maharajah. Once he is swinging up there he will be out of reach, and our caste does not permit us to defile our hands by touching a dead body.”
While the callous ruffian was delivering himself of this curious blend of cynicism and dogma, his skilled fingers were rifling Malcolm’s pockets. First he drew forth a sealed packet addressed to Sir Hugh Wheeler. He recognized the government envelope and, though neither of the pair could read English, Abdul Huq handed it to his leader with an “I-told-you-so” air.
It was in Frank’s mind to revile the men, but, most happily, he composed himself sufficiently to resolvethat he would die like an officer and a gentleman, while the last words on his lips would be a prayer.
The next document produced was the Persi-Arabic scrawl which purported to be a “safe-conduct” issued by Bahadur Shah, whom the rebels acclaimed as their ruler. Until that instant, the Englishman had given no thought to it. But when he saw the look of consternation that flitted across the face of the subadar when his eyes took in the meaning of the writing, despair yielded to hope, and he managed to say thickly:
“Perhaps you will understand now that you ought to have asked my business ere you proposed to hang me off hand.”
His active brain devised a dozen expedients to account for his presence in Bithoor, but the native officer was far too shrewd to be beguiled into setting his prisoner at liberty. After re-reading the pass, to make sure of its significance, the rebel leader curtly told Abdul Huq and another sowar to bring the Feringhi into the presence of the Maharajah, by which title he evidently indicated Nana Sahib.
The order was, at least, a reprieve, and Malcolm breathed more easily. He even asked confidently about his horse and the members of his escort. He was given no reply save a muttered curse, a command to hold his tongue, and an angry tug at his tied arms.
It is hard to picture the degradation of such treatment of a British officer by a native trooper. The Calcutta Brahmin who was taunted by a Lascar—a warrior-priest insulted by a social leper—scarceflinched more keenly under the jibe than did Malcolm when he heard the tone of his captors. Truly the flag of Britain was trailing in the mire, or these men would not have dared to address him in that fashion. In that bitter moment he felt for the first time that the Mutiny was a real thing. Hitherto, in spite of the murders and incendiarism of Meerut, the risings in other stations, the proclamation of Bahadur Shah as Emperor, and the actual conflicts with the Mogul’s armed retainers on the battle-field of Ghazi-ud-din Nuggur, Malcolm was inclined to treat the outburst as a mere blaze of local fanaticism, a blaze that would soon be stamped under heel by the combined efforts of the East India Company’s troops and the Queen’s Forces. Now, at last, he saw the depth of hate with which British dominion was regarded in India. He heard Mohammedans alluding to a Brahmin as a leader—so might a wolf and a snake make common alliance against a watch dog. From that hour dated a new and sterner conception of the task that lay before him and every other Briton in the country. The Mutiny was no longer a welcome variant to the tedium of the hot weather. It was a life-and-death struggle between West and East, between civilization and barbarism, between the laws of Christianity and the lawlessness of Mahomet, supported by the cruel, inhuman, and nebulous doctrines of Hinduism.
Not that these thoughts took shape and coherence in Malcolm’s brain as he was being hurried to the house of Nana Sahib. A man may note the deadly maliceof a cobra’s eye, but it is not when the poison fangs are ready to strike that he stops to consider the philosophy underlying the creature’s malign hatred of mankind.
Events were in a rare fret and fume in the neighborhood of Cawnpore that night. As a matter of historical fact, while Malcolm was hearing from the villager that Roshinara Begum had come to Bithoor, the 1st Native Infantry and 2d Cavalry had risen at Cawnpore.
Nana Sahib was deep in intrigue with all the sepoy regiments stationed there, and his adherents ultimately managed to persuade these two corps to throw off their allegiance to the British Raj. Following the recognized routine they burst open the gaol, burnt the public offices, robbed the Treasury, and secured possession of the Magazine. Then, while the ever-swelling mob of criminals and loafers made pandemonium in the bazaar, the saner spirits among the mutineers hurried to Bithoor to ascertain the will of the man who, by common consent, was regarded as their leader.
He was expecting them, eagerly perhaps, but with a certain quaking that demanded the assistance of the “Raja’s peg,” a blend of champagne and brandy that is calculated to fire heart and brain to madness more speedily than any other intoxicant. He was conversing with his nephew, Rao Sahib, and his chief lieutenants, Tantia Topi and a Mohammedan named Azim-Ullah, when the native officers of the rebel regiments clattered into his presence.
“Maharajah,” said their chief, “a kingdom is yoursif you join us, but it is death if you side with the Nazarenes.”
He laughed, with the fine air of one who sees approaching the fruition of long-cherished plans. He advanced a pace, confidently.
“What have I to do with the British?” he asked. “Are they not my enemies, too? I am altogether with you.”
“Will you lead us to Delhi, Maharajah?”
“Why not? That is the natural rallying ground of all who wish the downfall of the present Government.”
“Then behold, O honored one, we offer you our fealty.”
They pressed near him, tendering the hilts of their swords. He touched each weapon, and placed his hands on the head of its owner, vowing that he would keep his word and be faithful to the trust they reposed in him.
“Our brothers of the 53d and 56th have not joined us yet,” said one.
“Then let us ride forth and win them to our side,” said the Nana grandiloquently. He went into the courtyard, mounted a gaily-caparisoned horse, and, surrounded by the rebel cohort, cantered off towards Cawnpore.
Thus it befell that the mob of horsemen pressed past Malcolm and his guards as they entered the palace. The subadar tried in vain to attract the Nana’s attention. Fearing lest he might be forgotten if he were not in the forefront of the conspiracy, this manbade his subordinates take their prisoner before the Begum, and ran off to secure his horse and race after the others. He counted on the despatches gaining him a hearing.
Abdul Huq, more crafty than his chief, smiled.
“Better serve a king’s daughter than these Shia dogs who are so ready to fawn on a Brahmin,” said he to his comrade, another Pathan, and a Sunni like himself, for Islam, united against Christendom, is divided into seventy-two warring sects. Hence the wavering loyalty of two sepoy battalions in Cawnpore carried Malcolm out of the Nana’s path, and led him straight to the presence of Princess Roshinara.
The lapse of three weeks had paled that lady’s glowing cheeks and deepened the luster of her eyes. Not only was she worn by anxiety, in addition to the physical fatigue of the long journey from Delhi, but the day’s happenings had not helped to lighten the load of care. Yet she was genuinely amazed at seeing Malcolm.
“How come you to be here?” she cried instantly, addressing him before Abdul Huq could open his mouth in explanation.
“As your Highness can see for yourself, I am brought hither forcibly by these slaves,” said Frank, thinking that now or never must he display a bold front.
“How did you learn that I had left Delhi?”
“The journeyings of the Princess Roshinara are known to many.”
“But you came not when I summoned you.”
“Your Highness’s letter did not reach me until after the affair on the Hindun river.”
“What is all this idle talk?” broke in Abdul Huq roughly. “This Feringhi was carrying despatches—”
“Peace, dog!” cried the Begum. “Unfasten the Sahib’s arms, and be gone. What! Dost thou hesitate!”
She clapped her hands, and some members of her bodyguard ran forward.
“Throw these troopers into the courtyard,” she commanded. “If they resist—”
But the Pathans were too wise to refuse obedience. Not yet had the rebels felt their true power. They sullenly untied Malcolm’s bonds, and disappeared. Using eyes and ears each moment to better advantage, Frank was alive to the confusion that reigned in Nana Sahib’s abode. Men ran hither and thither in aimless disorder. The Brahmin’s retainers were like jackals who knew that the lion had killed and the feast was spread. The only servants who preserved the least semblance of discipline were those of the Princess Roshinara. It was an hour when the cool brain might contrive its own ends.
“I am, indeed, much beholden to you, Princess,” said Frank. “I pray you extend your clemency to my men. I have an escort of six sowars, and a servant. Some of them are wounded. My horse, too, which I value highly—”
He paused. He saw quite clearly that she paid no heed to a word that he was saying. Her black eyeswere fixed intently on his face, but she was thinking, weighing in her mind some suddenly-formed project. He was a pawn in the game on the political chess-board, and some drastic move was imminent.
Some part of his speech had reached her intelligence. She caught him by the wrist and hurried him along a corridor into a garden, muttering as she went:
“Allah hath sent thee, Malcolm-sahib. What matters thy men and a horse? Yet will I see to their safety, if that be possible. Yes, yes, I must do that. You will need them. And remember, I am trusting thee. Wilt thou obey my behests?”
“I would be capable of little gratitude if I refused, Princess,” said he, wondering what new outlet the whirligig of events would provide.
Leading him past an astonished guardian of the zenana, who dared not protest when this imperial lady thought fit to profane the sacred portal by admitting an infidel, she brought Malcolm through a door into a larger garden surrounded by a high wall. She pointed to a pavilion at its farthest extremity.
“Wait there,” she said. “When those come to you whom you will have faith in, do that which he who brings them shall tell you. Fail not. Your own life and the lives of your friends will hang on a thread, yet trust me that it shall not be severed while you obey my commands.”
With that cryptic message she ran back to the door, which was immediately slammed behind her. Having just been snatched from the very gate of eternity bythe Begum’s good offices, Malcolm determined to fall in with her whims so long as they did not interfere with his duty. Although Cawnpore was in the hands of the mutineers and he had lost his despatches, he determined, at all costs, to reach Sir Hugh Wheeler if that fine old commander were still living. Meanwhile, he hastened to the baraduri, an elegant structure which was approached by a flight of steps and stood in the angle of two high battlemented walls.
The place was empty and singularly peaceful after the uproar of the village and of that portion of the palace which faced the Grand Trunk Road.
Overhead the sky was clear and starlit, but beyond the walls stretched a low, half luminous bank of mist, and he was peering that way fully a minute before he ascertained that the garden stood on the right bank of the Ganges. Almost at his feet, the great river was murmuring on its quiet course to the sea, and the mist was due to the evaporation of its waters, which were mainly composed of melted snow from the ice-capped Himalayas.
When his eyes grew accustomed to his surroundings he made out the shape of a native boat moored beneath the wall. It had evidently brought a cargo of forage to Bithoor. So still was the air that the scent of the hay lingered yet in the locality.
Between Bithoor and Cawnpore the Ganges takes a wide bend. At first Malcolm scarce knew in which quarter to look for the city, but distant reports and the glare of burning dwellings soon told him more than itsmere direction. So Cawnpore, in its turn, had yielded to the canker that was gnawing the vitals of India! He wondered if Allahabad had fallen. And Benares? And the populous towns of Bengal—perhaps even the capital city itself? The Punjab was safe. Hodson told him that. But would it remain safe? He had heard queer tales of the men who dwelt in the bazaars of Lahore, Umritsar, Rawalpindi, and the rest. Nicholson and John Lawrence were there; could they hold those warrior-tribes in subjection, or, better still, in leash? He might not hazard an opinion. His sky had fallen. This land of his adoption was his no longer. He was an outlaw, hunted and despised, depending for his life on the caprice of a fickle-minded woman. Then he thought of the way his comrades of the 60th, of the Dragoons and the Artillery, had chased the sepoys from the Hindun, and his soul grew strong again. Led by British officers, the native troops were excellent, but, deprived of the only leaders they really respected, they became an armed mob, terrible to women and children, but of slight account against British-born men.
His musings were disturbed by the sound of horses advancing quietly across a paddy field which skirted that side of the wall running at a right angle with the river. It was impossible to see far owing to the mist that clung close to the ground, but he could not be mistaken as to the presence of a small body of mounted men within a few yards. They had halted, too, but his alert ears caught the occasional clink of accouterments,and the pawing of a horse in the soft earth. He racked his brain to try to discover some connection between this cavalry post and the parting admonition given by the Begum Roshinara, and he might have guessed the riddle in part had he not heard hurried footsteps in the garden. They came, not from the door by which he was admitted, but from the Palace itself. Whoever the newcomers were they made straight for the pavilion, and, as he was unarmed, he did not hesitate to show himself against the sky line. For ill or well, he wanted to know his fate, and he determined to spring over the battlements in the hope of reaching the river if he received the slightest warning of hostile intent by those who sought him.
“Is that you, Malcolm?” said a low voice, and his heart leaped when he recognized Mr. Mayne’s accents.
“Yes. Can it be possible that you are here?”
He ran down the stone steps. On the level of the garden he could see three figures, one a white-robed native, one a man in European garments, and the third a woman wrapped in a dark cloak. A suppressed sob uttered by the woman sent a gush of hot blood to his face. He sprang forward. In another instant Winifred was in his arms. And that was their unspoken declaration of love—in the garden of Nana Sahib’s house at Bithoor—while within hail were thousands who would gladly have torn them limb from limb, and the southern horizon was aflame with the light of their brethren’s dwelling-places.
“Oh, Frank, dear,” whispered the girl brokenly,“what evil fortune has led you within these walls? Yet, I thank God for it. Promise you will kill me ere they drag me from your side again.”
“Hush, Winifred. For the sake of all of us calm yourself,” said her uncle. “This man says he has brought us here to help us to escape. Surely you can find in Malcolm’s presence some earnest of his good faith.”
The native now intervened. Speaking with a certain dignity and using the language of the court, he said that they had not a moment to lose. They must descend the wall by means of a rope, and in the field beyond they would find three of the officer-sahib’s men, with his horse and a couple of spare animals. Keeping close to the river until they came to a tree-lined nullah—a small ravine cut by a minor tributary of the Ganges—they should follow this latter till they approached the Grand Trunk Road, taking care not to be seen as they crossed that thoroughfare. Then, making a détour, they must avoid the village, and endeavor to strike the road again about two miles to the north of Bithoor, thereafter traveling at top speed towards Meerut, but letting it be known in the hamlets on the way that they came from Cawnpore.
This unlooked-for ally impressed the concluding stipulation strongly on Malcolm, but, when asked for a reason, he said simply:
“It is the Princess’s order. Come! There is no time for further speech. Here is the rope.”
He uncoiled a long cord from beneath his cummerbund,and, running up the steps, adjusted it to a pillar of the baraduri with an ease and quickness that showed familiarity with such means of exit from a closely-guarded residence.