Barracks, Bivouacs and Battles. Forbes Archibald

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СКАЧАТЬ down a Pandy who turned on him, sprang to the side of the man with the dripping sabre in his hand.

      “Look if the lad’s alive,” were the first words of Mick Sullivan, for he was the man with the sabre.

      Mick’s chum, for he it was who had headed the rescuers, stooped down, and found the young officer alive and conscious. He told Mick so.

      “Thin hould me up, acushla, for it’s kilt intirely I am,” and poor Mick threw his arm over his chum’s shoulder, and the gallant fellow’s head fell on his breast.

      The Pandies were massing again, so the little party, carrying Mick and the officer, struggled back again into their feeble refuge inside the square. The youngster was seen to first, and then Dr. Home proceeded to investigate Mick’s condition.

      “Och an’ sure, docthor jewel, ye may save yersilf the trouble. I’m kilt all over – as full of wownds as Donnybrook is of drunk men at noightfall. I’ve got me discharge from the sarvice, an’ that widout a pinsion. There’s niver a praiste in an odd corner av the mansion, is there, chum?”

      The chum told him the place was not a likely one for priests.

      “I’d fain have confissed before I die, an’ had a word wid a praiste, but sure they can’t expict a man on active sarvice to go out av the wurrld as reg’lar as if he were turnin’ his toes up in his bed. Chum,” continued the poor fellow, his voice becoming weaker as the blood trickled from him into a hollow of the earthen floor, “chum, dear, give us a hould av yer hand. Ye mind that poor young crayture av a wife of mine I left wapin’ fur me on the quay av Southampton. There’s some goold and jools in the dimmickin’ bag in me belt, an’ if ye could send them to her, ye would be doin’ yer old chum a kindness.”

      The chum promised in a word – his heart was too full for more. Mick lay back silent for a little, gasping in his growing exhaustion. But suddenly he raised himself again on his elbow, and in a heightened voice continued —

      “An’, chum, if ever ye see the 30th Light again, tell them, will ye, that Mick Sullivan died wid a sword in his hand” – he had never quitted the grip of the bloody sabre – “an’ wid spurs on his heels. I take ye all to witness, men, that I die a dhragoon, an’ not a swaddy! Divil a word have I to say against the Ross-shire Buffs, chaps – divil a word; but I’m a dhragoon to the last dhrap av me blood! Ah me!” – here honest Mick’s voice broke for the first time – “ah me! niver more will I back horse or wield sword!”

      And then he fell back, panting for breath, and it seemed as if he had spoken his last words. But the mind of the dying man was on a train of thought that would still have expression. Again he raised himself into a sitting posture, and loud and clear, as if on the parade-ground, there rang out from his lips the consecutive words of command —

      “Carry swords!”

      “Return swords!”

      “Prepare to dismount!”

      “Dismount!”

      A torrent of blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell forward dead. Mick Sullivan had dismounted for ever.

* * * * *

      When the great mutiny was finally stamped out, Mick Sullivan’s chum got himself sent back to the 30th Light, down in the Madras Presidency. He delivered his poor comrade’s dying message to the regiment, and told the tale of his heroic death; and how Outram had publicly announced that, had he survived, he would have recommended Mick for the Victoria Cross. From colonel to band-boy, the 30th Light was deeply moved by the recital. The regiment subscribed to a man to place a memorial-stone over Mick’s grave in the cemetery inside the Lucknow Residency, where he had been laid among the heroes of the siege. The quarter-master took temporary charge of the “goold and jools” which were Mick’s legacy to “the Crayture,” and the colonel himself wrote home instructions that every effort should be made to find the little woman and have her cared for.

* * * * *

      One morning, about a month later, the colonel and his wife were taking their early canter on the Bangalore maidan. As they crossed the high road from down country, they noticed, tramping through the deep dust, a white woman with a child in her arms. She dragged herself wearily; the pale fagged face, and the wistful upward look at them as she trudged by, moved the good heart of the colonel’s wife.

      “Speak to her,” she said to her husband; “she is a stranger, and forlorn.”

      “Where are you bound for, my good woman?” asked the colonel; “have you come far?”

      The woman set down the child, a well-grown boy, who looked about two years old, and with a long sigh of weariness replied —

      “I’ve come from England, sir, and I am on my way to the 30th Light Dragoons to find my husband.”

      “That little chap is quite too heavy for you to carry. What is your name, young one?”

      The urchin sprang to “attention,” saluted with rigid accuracy, and gravely replied —

      “Mick Tullivan, Tir!”

      “Good God!” whispered the colonel’s wife; “it’s Sullivan’s widow – it’s ‘the Crayture’ herself. Gallop to barracks for a gharry, and while you are gone, I will tell her. God pity her!”

      And the kind lady was out of the saddle, and had the boy in her arms, and her tears were raining on his face, as the colonel rode away on his errand.

      When the gharry arrived “the Crayture” was sitting by the wayside, the skirt of her dress drawn over her face, her head on the shoulder of the colonel’s wife, her boy gripped tight in her arms.

      The Mem Sahib carried the poor thing to her own bungalow for a day or two; and then good-hearted old Bess Bowles, the trumpeter’s wife of G troop, came and took her and her boy away to the room that had been prepared for her in the married quarters. Perhaps it was not exactly in accordance with strict regulations, but the colonel had put the widow woman “on the strength” – she was no longer an unrecognised waif, but had her regimental position. Her ration of bread and meat her husband’s comrades of G troop contributed; the officers made a little fund that sufficed to give her soldier’s pay. She earned it, for a week after she “joined,” the surgeon found her in the hospital, in quiet informal possession of the ward in which lay the most serious cases; and when next year the cholera smote the regiment, the rugged old Scot pronounced her “worth her weight in gold.” She has long ago been a member of the sisterhood of army nurses. I remember her out in Africa during the Zulu war, and since then she has smoothed soldiers’ pillows in the Egyptian campaigns; but she is still, and will be till the day she dies, a supernumerary “on the strength” of the 30th Light. She never married again; she is an elderly woman now, and the winsomeness of the days when we knew her as “the Crayture” has gone; but the quiet faithful courage that sustained her on the weary line of march and the forlorn-hope expedition to the East, is staunch still in her honest heart. The sergeant-major of to-day of G troop in the 30th Light – I call the corps by its old familiar name still, but they are Hussars now – is a straight, clean-built young fellow, with a light heart, a bright eye, and a quaint humour. His name is Mick Sullivan, and he is the son of “the Crayture,” and of the man who died in the porch of “Doolie Square.”

      THE FATE OF “NANA SAHIB’S ENGLISHMAN”

      One fine evening in September 1856, young Mr. Kidson entered Escobel Castle by the great front door, and was hurrying across the hall on his way to the passage leading to his own apartments, when his worthy old mother, who had seen СКАЧАТЬ