Told in the East

XI.

There could be no retreat that day and no thought of it. Jundhra and Doonha were in ruins. The bridges were down behind them and Hanadra lay ahead. The British had to win their way into it or perish. Tired out, breakfastless, suffering from the baking heat, the long, thin British line had got—not to hold at bay but to smash and pierce—an over-whelming force of Hindus that was stiffened up and down its length by small detachments of native soldiers who had mutinied.

Numbers were against them, and even superiority of weapons was not so overwhelmingly in their favor, for those were the days of short-range rifle-fire and smoothbore artillery, and one gun was considerably like another. The mutinous sepoys had their rifles with them; there were guns from the ramparts of Hanadra that were capable of quite efficient service at close range; and practically every man in the dense-packed rebel line had a firearm of some kind. It was only in cavalry and discipline and pluck that the British force had the advantage, and the cavalry had already charged once and had been repulsed.

General Turner rode up and down the sweltering firing-line, encouraging the men when it seemed to him they needed it and giving directions to his officers. He was hidden from view oftener than not by the rolling clouds of smoke and he popped up here and there suddenly and unexpectedly. Wherever he appeared there was an immediate stiffening among the ranks, as though he carried a supply of spare enthusiasm with him and could hand it out.

Colonel Carter, commanding the right wing, turned his head for a second at the sound of a horse's feet and found the general beside him.

“Had I better have my wounded laid in a wagon, sir?” he suggested, “in case you find it necessary to fall back?”

“There will be no retreat!” said General Turner. “Leave your wounded where they are. I never saw a cannon bleed before. How's that?”

He spurred his horse over to where one of Bellairs' guns was being run forward into place again and Colonel Carter followed him. There was blood dripping from the muzzle of it.

“We're short of water, sir!” said Colonel Carter.

And as he spoke a gunner dipped his sponge into a pool of blood and rammed it home.

Bellairs was standing between his two guns, looking like the shadow of himself, worn out with lack of sleep, disheveled, wounded. There was blood dripping from his forehead and he wore his left arm in a sling made from his shirt.

“Fire!” he ordered, and the two guns barked in unison and jumped back two yards or more.

“If you'll look,” said General Turner, plucking at the colonel's sleeve, “you'll see a handful of native cavalry over yonder behind the enemy—rather to the enemy's left—there between those two clouds of smoke. D'you see them?”

“They look like Sikhs or Rajputs,” said the colonel.

“Yes. Don't they? I'd like you to keep an eye on them. They've come up from the rear. I caught sight of them quite a while ago and I can't quite make them out. It's strange, but I can't believe that they belong to the enemy. D'you see?—there—they've changed direction. They're riding as though they intended to come round the enemy's left flank!”

“By gad, they are! Look! The enemy are moving to cut them off!”

“I must get back to the other wing!” said General Turner. “But that looks like the making of an opportunity! Keep both eyes lifting, Carter, and advance the moment you see any confusion in the enemy's ranks.”

He rode off, and Colonel Carter stared long and steadily at the approaching horsemen. He saw a dense mass of the enemy, about a thousand strong, detach itself from the left wing and move to intercept them, and he noticed that the movement made a tremendous difference to the ranks opposed to him. He stepped up to young Bellairs and touched his sleeve. Bellairs started like a man roused from a dream.

“That's your wife over there!” said Colonel Carter. “There can't be any other white woman here-abouts riding with a Rajput escort!”

Bellairs gripped the colonel's outstretched arm.

“Where?” he almost screamed. “Where? I don't see her!”

“There, man! There, where that mass of men is moving! Look! By the Lord Harry! He's charging right through the mob! That's Mahommed Khan, I'll bet a fortune! Now's our chance Bugler!”

The bugler ran to him, and he began to puff into his instrument.

“Blow the 'attention' first!”

Out rang the clear, strident notes, and the non-commissioned officers and men took notice that a movement of some kind would shortly be required of them, but the din of firing never ceased for a single instant. Then, suddenly, an answering bugle sang out from the other flank.

“Advance in echelon!” commanded Colonel Carter, and the bugler did his best to split his cheeks in a battle-rending blast.

“You remain where you are, sir!” he ordered young Bellairs. “Keep your guns served to the utmost!”

Six-and-twenty horsemen, riding full-tilt at a thousand men, may look like a trifle, but they are disconcerting. What they hit, they kill; and if they succeed in striking home, they play old Harry with formations. And Risaldar Mahommed Khan did strike home. He changed direction suddenly and, instead of using up his horses' strength in outflanking the enemy, who had marched to intercept him, and making a running target of his small command, he did the unexpected—which is the one best thing to do in war. He led his six-and-twenty at a headlong gallop straight for the middle of the crowd—it could not be called by any military name. They fired one ragged volley at him and then had no time to load before he was in the middle of them, clashing right and left and pressing forward. They gave way, right and left, before him, and a good number of them ran. Half a hundred of them were cut down as they fled toward their firing-line. At that second, just as the Risaldar and his handful burst through the mob and the mob began rushing wildly out of his way, the British bugles blared out the command to advance in echelon.

The Indians were caught between a fire and a charge that they had good reason to fear in front of them, and a disturbance on their left flank that might mean anything. As one-half of them turned wildly to face what might be coming from this unexpected quarter, the British troops came on with a roar, and at the same moment Mahommed Khan reached the rear of their firing-line and crashed headlong into it.

In a second the whole Indian line was in confusion and in another minute it was in full retreat not knowing nor even guessing what had routed it. Retreat grew into panic and panic to stampede and, five minutes after the Risaldar's appearance on the scene, half of the Indian line was rushing wildly for Hanadra and the other half was retiring sullenly in comparatively dense and decent order.

Bellairs could not see all that happened. The smoke from his own guns obscured the view, and the necessity for giving orders to his men prevented him from watching as he would have wished. But he saw the Rajputs burst out through the Indian ranks and he saw his own charger—Shaitan the unmistakable—careering across the plain toward him riderless.

“For the love of God!” he groaned, raising both fists to heaven, “has she got this far, and then been killed! Oh, what in Hades did I entrust her to an Indian for? The pig-headed, brave old fool! Why couldn't he ride round them, instead of charging through?”

As he groaned aloud, too wretched even to think of what his duty was, a galloper rode up to him.

“Bring up your guns, sir, please!” he ordered. “You're asked to hurry! Take up position on that rising ground and warm up the enemy's retreat!”

“Limber up!” shouted Bellairs, coming to himself again. Fifteen seconds later his two guns were thundering up the rise.

As he brought them to “action front” and tried to collect his thoughts to figure out the range, a finger touched his shoulder and he turned to see another artillery officer standing by him.

“I've been lent from another section,” he explained: “You're wanted.”

“Where?”

“Over there, where you see Colonel Carter standing. It's your wife wants you, I think!”

Bellairs did not wait for explanations. He sent for his horse and mounted and rode across the intervening space at a breakneck gallop that he could barely stop in time to save himself from knocking the colonel over. A second later he was in Ruth's arms.

“I thought you were dead when I saw Shaitan!” he said. He was nearly sobbing.

“No, Mahommed Khan rode him,” she answered, and she made no pretense about not sobbing. She was crying like a child.

“Salaam, Bellairs sahib!” said a weak voice close to him. He noticed Colonel Carter bending over a prostrate figure, lifting the head up on his knee. There were three Rajputs standing between, though, and he could not see whose the figure was.

“Come over here!” said Colonel Carter, and young Bellairs obeyed him, leaving Ruth sitting on the ground where she was.

“Wouldn't you care to thank Mohammed Khan?” It was a little cruel of the colonel to put quite so much venom in his voice, for, when all is said and done: a man has almost a right to be forgetful when he has just had his young wife brought him out of the jaws of death. At least he has a good excuse for it. The sting of the reproof left him bereft of words and he stood looking down at the old Risaldar, saying nothing and feeling very much ashamed.

“Salaam, Bellairs sahib!” The voice was growing feebler. “I would have done more for thy father's son! Thou art welcome. Aie! But thy charger is a good one! Good-by! Time is short, and I would talk with the colonel sahib!”

He waved Bellairs away with a motion of his hand and the lieutenant went back to his wife again.

“He sent me away just like that, too!” she told him. “He said he had no time left to talk to women!”

Colonel Carter bent down again above the Risaldar, and listened to as much as he had time to tell of what had happened.

“But couldn't you have ridden round them, Risaldar?” he asked them.

“Nay, sahib! It was touch and go! I gave the touch! I saw as I rode how close the issue was and I saw my chance and took it! Had the memsahib been slain, she had at least died in full view of the English—and there was a battle to be won. What would you? I am a soldier—I.”

“Indeed you are!” swore Colonel Carter.

“Sahib! Call my sons!”

His sons were standing near him, but the colonel called up his grandsons, who had been told to stand at a little distance off. They clustered round the Risaldar in silence, and he looked them over and counted them.

“All here?” he asked.

“All here!”

“Whose sons and grandsons are ye?”

“Thine!” came the chorus.

“This sahib says that having done my bidding and delivered her ye rode to rescue, ye are no more bound to the Raj. Ye may return to your homes if ye wish.”

There was no answer.

“Ye may fight for the rebels, if ye wish! There will be a safe-permit written.”

Again there was no answer.

“For whom, then, fight ye?”

“For the Raj!” The deep-throated answer rang out promptly from every one of them, and they stood with their sword-hilts thrust out toward the colonel. He rose and touched each hilt in turn.

“They are now thy servants!” said the Risaldar, laying his head back. “It is good! I go now. Give my salaams to General Turner sahib!”

“Good-by, old war-dog!” growled the colonel, in an Anglo-Saxon effort to disguise emotion. He gripped at the right hand that was stretched out on the ground beside him, but it was lifeless.

Risaldar Mahommed Khan, two-medal man and pensionless gentleman-at-large, had gone to turn in his account of how he had remembered the salt which he had eaten.