Told in the East

IV.

“Trot, march!

“Canter!”

Bellairs was thinking of his wife, alone in Hanadra, unprotected except by a sixty-year-old Risaldar and a half-brother who was a civilian and an unknown quantity. There were cold chills running down his spine and a sickening sensation in his stomach. He rode ahead of the guns, with O'Rourke keeping pace beside him. He felt that he hated O'Rourke, hated everything, hated the Service, and the country—and the guns, that could put him into such a fiendish predicament.

O'Rourke broke silence first.

“Who is with your wife?” he demanded suddenly.

“Heaven knows! I left her under the protection of Risaldar Mahommed Khan, but he was to ride off for an escort for her.”

“Not your father's old Risaldar?” asked O'Rourke.

“The same.”

“Then thank God! I'd sooner trust him than I would a regiment. He'll bring her in alive or slit the throats of half Asia—maybe 'he'll do both! Come, that's off our minds! She's safer with him than she would be here. Have you lots of ammunition?”

“I brought all I had with me at Hanadra.”

“Good! What you'll need tonight is grape!”

“I've lots of it. It's nearly all grape.”

“Hurrah! Then we'll treat those dirty mutineers to a dose or two of pills they won't fancy! Come on, man—set the pace a little faster!”

“Why didn't my orders say anything about a mutiny or bringing in my wife?”

“Dunno! I didn't write 'em. I can guess, though. There'd be something like nine reasons. For one thing, they'd credit you with sense enough to bring her in without being told. For another, the messenger who took the note might have got captured on the way—they wouldn't want to tell the sepoys more than they could help. Then there'd be something like a hurry. They're attacked there too—can't even send us assistance. Told us to waylay you and make use of you. Maybe they forgot your wife—maybe they didn't. It's a devil of a business anyhow!”

It was difficult to talk at the speed that they were making, with their own horses breathing heavily, O'Rourke's especially; the guns thundering along behind them and the advance-guard clattering in front, and their attention distracted every other minute by the noise of volleys on ahead and the occasional staccato rattle of independent firing. The whole sky was now alight with the reflection of the burning barracks and they could see the ragged outlines of the cracking walls silhouetted against the blazing red within. One mile or less from the burning buildings they could see, too, the occasional flash of rifles where the two companies of the Thirty-third, Honorable East India Company's Light Infantry, held out against the mutineers.

“Why did they mutiny?” asked Bellairs.

“God knows! Nobody knows! Nobody knows anything! I'm thinking—”

“Thinking what?”

“Forrester-Carter is commanding. We'll settle this business pretty quickly, now you've come. Then—Steady, boy! Steady! Hold up! This poor horse of mine is just about foundered, by the feel of him. He'll reach Doonha, though. Then we'll ask Carter to make a dash on Hanadra and bring Mrs. Bellairs—maybe we'll meet her and the Risaldar half-way—who knows? The sepoys wouldn't expect that, either. The move'd puzzle 'em—it'd be a good move, to my way of thinking.”

“Let's hope Carter will consent!” prayed Bellairs fervently. “Now, what's the lay of things?”

“Couldn't tell you! When I left, our men were surrounded. I had to burst through the enemy to get away. Ours are all around the magazine and the sepoys are on every side of them. You'll have to use diagonal fire unless you want to hurt some of our chaps—sweep 'em cornerwise. There's high ground over to the right there, within four hundred yards of the position. Maybe they're holding it, though—there's no knowing!”

They could hear the roar of the flames now, and could see the figures of sepoys running here and there. The rattle of musketry was incessant. They could hear howls and yells and bugle-calls blown at random by the sepoys, and once, in answer as it seemed to a more than usually savage chorus from the enemy—a chorus that was punctuated by a raging din of intermittent rifle-fire—a ringing cheer.

“They must be in a tight hole!” muttered Bellairs. “Answer that, men! All together, now! Let 'em know we're coming.”

The men rose in their stirrups all together, and sent roaring through the blackness the deep-throated “Hip-hip-hur-r-a-a-a-a-a!” that has gladdened more than one beleaguered British force in the course of history. It is quite different from the “Hur-o-a-o-a-u-r-rh” of a forlorn hope, or the high-pitched note of pleasure that signals the end of a review. It means “Hold on, till we get there, boys!” and it carries its meaning, clear and crisp and unmistakable, in its note.

The two beleaguered companies heard it and answered promptly with another cheer.

“By gad, they must be in a hole!” remarked Bellairs.

British soldiers do not cheer like that, all together, unless there is very good reason to feel cheerless. They fight, each man according to his temperament, swearing or laughing, sobbing or singing comic songs, until the case looks grim. Then, though, the same thrill runs through the whole of them, the same fire blazes in their eyes, and the last ditch that they line has been known to be a grave for the enemy.

“Trumpeter! Sound close-order!”

The trumpet rang. The advance-guard drew rein for the section to catch up. The guns drew abreast of one another and the mounted gunners formed in a line, two deep, in front of them. The ammunition-wagon trailed like a tail behind.

“That high ground over there, I think!” suggested O'Rourke.

“Thank you, sir. Section, right! Trot, march! Canter!”

Crash went the guns and the following wagon across the roadside ditch. The tired horses came up to the collar as service-horses always will, generous to the last ounce of strength they have in them.

“Gallop!”

The limbers bumped and jolted and the short-handled whips cracked like the sound of pistol-practise. Blind, unreconnoitered, grim—like a black thunderbolt loosed into the blackness—the two guns shot along a hollow, thundered up a ridge and burst into the fire-light up above the mutineers, in the last place where any one expected them. A howl came from the road that they had left, a hundred sepoys had rushed down to block their passage the moment that their cheer had rung above the noise of battle.

“Action—front!” roared young Bellairs, and the muzzles swung round at the gallop, jerked into position by the wheeling teams.

“With case, at four hundred!”

The orders were given and obeyed almost before the guns had lost their motion. The charges had been rammed into the greedy muzzles before the horses were away, almost—and that takes but a second—the horses vanish like blown smoke when the game begins. A howl from the mutineers told that they were seen; a volley from the British infantry announced that they were yet in time; and “boom-boom!” went both guns together.

The grapeshot whined and shrieked, and the ranks of the sepoys wilted, mown down as though a scythe had swept them. Once, and once only, they gathered for a charge on the two guns; but they were met half-way up the rise by a shrieking blast of grape that ripped through them and took the heart out of them; and the grape was followed by well-aimed volleys from behind. Then they drew off to sulk and make fresh plans at a distance, and Bellairs took his section unmolested into the Thirty-third-lined rampart round the magazine.

“What kept you, sir?” demanded Colonel Forrester-Carter, nodding to him in answer to his salute and holding out his right arm while a sergeant bandaged it.

“My wife, sir—I—”

“Where is she? Didn't you bring her?”

“No, sir—I—”

“Where is she?”

“Still at Hanadra, sir—I—”

“Let the men fall in! Call the roll at once!”

“There was nothing in my orders, sir, about—” But Colonel Carter cut him short with a motion and turned his back on him.

“Much obliged, Sergeant,” he said, slipping his wounded arm into an improvised sling. “How many wagons have we here?”

“Four, sir.”

“And horses?”

“All shot dead except your charger, sir.”

“Oh! Ask Captain Trevor to come here.”

The sergeant disappeared into the shadows, and a moment later Captain Trevor came running up and saluted.

“There are seven wounded, sir, and nineteen dead,” he reported.

“Better than I had hoped, Trevor! Will you set a train to that magazine, please, and blow it up the moment we are at a safe distance?”

Trevor seemed surprised, but he saluted and said nothing.

“O'Rourke! Please see about burying the dead at once. Mr. Bellairs, let me have two horses, please, and their drivers, from each gun. Sergeant! See about putting the wounded into the lightest of the wagons and harness in four gun-horses the best way you can manage.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Which is your best horseman, Mr. Bellairs? Is his horse comparatively fresh? I'll need him to gallop with a message. I'll dictate it to Captain O'Rourke as soon as he is ready. Let the gunner stay here close to me.”

Bellairs sought out his best man and the freshest-seeming horse in wondering silence. He felt sick with anxiety, for what could one lone veteran Risaldar do to protect Mrs. Bellairs against such a horde as was in Hanadra? He looked at the barracks, which were still blazing heavenward and illuminating the whole country-side, and shuddered as he wondered whether his quarters at Hanadra were in flames yet.

“It's a good job old Carter happened to be here!” he heard one of his men mumble to another. “He's a man, that is—I'd sooner fight under him than any I know of!”

“What d'you suppose the next move is?” asked the other man.

“I'd bet on it! I'll bet you what you like that—”

But Bellairs did not hear the rest.

A bugle rang out into the night. The gunners stood by their horses. Even the sentries, posted outside the rampart to guard against alarm, stood to attention, and Colonel Carter, wincing from the pain in his right arm, walked out in front of where the men were lined up.

Captain O'Rourke walked up and saluted him.

“I've arranged to bury them in that trench we dug this evening, sir, when the trouble started. It's not very deep, but it holds them all. I've laid them in it.”

“Are you sure they're all dead?”

“I've burnt their fingers with matches, sir. I don't know of any better way to make sure.”

“Very well. Can you remember any of the burial service?”

“'Fraid not, sir.”

“Um! That's a pity. And I'm afraid I can't spare the time. Take a firing-party, Captain O'Rourke, and give them the last honors, at all events.”

A party marched away toward the trench, and several minutes later O'Rourke's voice was heard calling through the darkness, “All ready, sir!”

“Present arms!” ordered the colonel, and the gunners sat their horses with their hilts raised to their hips and the two long lines of infantry stood rigid at the general salute, while five volleys—bulleted—barked upward above the grave. They were, answered by sniping from the mutineers, who imagined that reprisals had commenced.

“Now, men!” said Colonel Carter, raising his voice until every officer and man along the line could hear him, “as you must have realized, things are very serious indeed. We are cut off from support, but now that the guns are here to help us, we could either hold out here until relieved or else fight our way into Jundhra, where I have no doubt we are very badly needed. But”—he spoke more slowly and distinctly now, with a distinct pause between each word—“there is an officer's lady alone, and practically unprotected at Hanadra. Our duty is clear. You are tired—I know it. You have had no supper, and will get none. It means forced marching for the rest of this night and a good part of tomorrow and more fighting, possibly on an empty stomach; it means the dust and the heat and the discomfort of the trunk road for all of us and danger of the worst kind instead of safety—for we shall have farther to go to reach Jundhra. But I would do the same, and you men all know it, for any soldier's wife in my command, or any English woman in India. We will march now on Hanadra. No! No demonstrations, please!”

His uplifted left hand was just in time to check a roar of answering approval.

“Didn't I tell you so?” exclaimed a gunner to the man beside him in an undertone. “Him leave a white woman to face this sort o' music? He'd fight all India first!”

Ten minutes later two companies of men marched out behind the guns, followed by a cart that bore their wounded. As they reached the trunk road they were saluted by a reverberating blast when the magazine that they had fought to hold blew skyward. They turned to cheer the explosion and then settled down to march in deadly earnest and, if need be, to fight a rear-guard action all the way.

And in the opposite direction one solitary gunner rode, hell-bent-for-leather, with a note addressed to “O. C.—Jundhra.” It was short and to the point. It ran:

        Have blown up magazine;  Mrs. Bellairs at Hanadra;
        have gone to rescue her.
                (Signed)  A. FORRESTER-CARTER (Col.)
                        per J. O'Rourke