Dust and Steel. Patrick Mercer

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СКАЧАТЬ company and strolled over towards them.

      ‘Something wrong, sir?’ asked McGucken breezily, turning and placing himself carefully between Carmichael and the other two officers.

      ‘No, Colour-Sar’nt, but I assumed that Captain Morgan would need to speak to me.’ Carmichael was thoroughly out of sorts and McGucken’s reply only added to his agitation.

      ‘Aye, sir, I’m sure he will in his own good time. Please listen for the bugle, sir.’

      Seething, Carmichael turned away quickly whilst Bolton and Morgan completed their plans.

      ‘So, swing one gun between each of my companies, please, then I’ll halt the whole column in front of the crowd and opposite the sepoys yonder…’ Morgan looked towards the nearer flank of the 10th BNI, now only a few hundred paces away, ‘…and load with charges only. Have a canister round very obviously to hand by each of your six barrels, please, then make ready any guns that are spare when we know how many executions are to take place. Meanwhile, my men will load and take aim; if there’s trouble, prime as fast as you can, but fire only on my orders. I’ll leave all the execution side to you; I imagine that you’ve done it before?’

      ‘Well, no…actually this is the first time I’ve done anything like this.’ All Bolton’s initial bluster had gone. He’d taken a good look at the two infantrymen’s decorations and now he seemed glad to have someone else in charge.

      ‘Aye, sir, well dinna fret, there’s a first time for all of us, but the Old Nails’ll look after ye.’ McGucken used the nickname given to the 95th in the Crimea and it was hard to imagine that there had ever been a first time for a man like this. His lean frame and combed whiskers burst with confidence, yet his words were sensitive and immediately reassuring.

      With a cautious smile and a salute, Bolton turned back to give orders to his own men.

      ‘How does that work exactly, sir?’ McGucken asked Morgan. ‘Them gunners ain’t Queen’s troops, yet they’re mainly Europeans: how’s that?’

      ‘Well, John Company started to recruit some all-white regiments of its own after trouble with the sepoys years ago,’ Morgan explained. ‘All the artillery out in India is manned by European crews – and just at the moment I’m damn glad it is. I’m told they’re pretty sharp lads – not that it’s going to take any great skill to blow the lights out of some poor wretch strapped to the end of your barrel.’

      The sepoys stood taut and erect as the 95th marched along the road in front of them. As the British troops approached, the crowd’s murmur had turned to heckles and catcalls, even a few sods had been thrown and some rotten fruit, but as the pacing red column had neither checked nor hesitated, so the crowd drew back. Now the mob fidgeted and swayed as the two bodies of troops scanned each other. As the sepoys stiffened and stood more rigidly, more fixedly than any line-drawing from the drill manual, so the arms and legs of the 95th swung more regularly, more perfectly than they had ever done on an English barrack yard.

      ‘Right Wing, Ninety-Fifth Regiment, halt!’ The non-commissioned officers were waiting for Morgan’s word of command; once it came it was passed down the sweating ranks, bringing the scarlet and white-belted lines to a dusty stop.

      ‘The wing will advance…’ Morgan paused whilst the ranks tensed, ‘…left face.’ The British troops pivoted, backs now to the crowd, and stared at the native regiments, no more than thirty yards away from them across the road.

      Under Bolton’s words of command the guns wheeled into position between the slabs of infantry, the sparkling brass barrels being unhooked and thrown about to stare at the sepoys, bombardiers’ yells sending gunners scurrying to the ammunition limbers, ramrods whirling and thrusting as the charges were pushed home, the black, menacing muzzles silently challenging the native troops. The whole, slick process ended when by each gun a lance-bombardier stood hefting a linen bag of canister shot.

      ‘Wait a moment, sir, let the fuckers see what’s in store for ’em,’ McGucken growled quietly. ‘D’you want to untie ten now, sir?’

      ‘Yes, do that, please, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Morgan knew that the sepoys were studying their every move, and as the men fiddled to take the string and greased paper from one little parcel of ten paper cartridges that sat in their pouches, he looked across at his targets.

      The sepoys swayed slightly in the heat, the odd tongue quickly licking dry lips, fingers flexing nervously on the stocks of the rifles that they all held by their sides, expressions fixed but difficult to read under the sweeping, exaggerated moustaches that all the jawans wore. Morgan saw the native officers, swords drawn, standing just behind the trembling ranks. They were all older men, most grey-haired, some wearing campaign medals. The subadar-majors waited at the centre of each battalion’s line, where the colour-parties would normally have been with long strings of ‘joys’, the religious beads that looked, to the British at least, so odd around the neck of a uniform coatee. To their rear were a handful of white faces, the European officers.

      ‘Right y’are, sir, let ’em see we mean business.’ Quietly, McGucken guided Morgan.

      ‘Right Wing, Ninety-Fifth Regiment…’ Morgan’s mind flew back to the first time that he had spoken the order that he was about to give, ‘…with ball cartridge…load’, it had been at the Alma. Despite the heat, Morgan shivered.

      Rifles were canted forward before each man reached to the black, leather pouch on the front of his belt and pulled out a single, paper tube. After a regulation pause, the tops were bitten off the cartridges before the powder was poured down the muzzle of every Enfield, then the steel ramrods were pulled from below the barrel of each weapon before the charge and lead bullet were rammed home. Another pause, then the rifles were lifted obliquely across the men’s bodies, left hands catching the stocks at the point of balance before each right hand thumbed back the steel hammers to half cock.

      Right down the line the sergeants craned their heads, making sure that all the troops were ready for the fiddly operation of fitting their percussion caps. The sergeants nodded to McGucken, now standing at the centre of the four companies beside Morgan.

      He quietly prompted, ‘Right, sir.’

      ‘Caps!’ Morgan’s word of command was repeated and four hundred right hands groped in the little leather pouches that sat just beside the brass buckles on their waist belts for the pea-sized, hollow copper percussion caps to fit over the nipples at each rifle’s breech. One or two men fluffed it, dropping the caps, the tense silence being broken with the customary sergeants’ cries of: ‘You wouldn’t drop it if it was wet and slippery, would you? Pick the fucker up!’ And the offenders, embarrassed at their own clumsiness, scrabbled in the dust.

      Then again came sergeants’ nods and McGucken’s, ‘Right, sir,’ before Morgan’s command, ‘Front rank…kneel.’ Half the men pushed their right feet back and then sank to their knees, the rank behind bringing their rifles level with their waists, pointing over the heads of those in front.

      ‘Ready.’ At Morgan’s order, each hammer was clicked to full cock, making every weapon ready to fire.

      ‘Right Wing…targets front, preee…sent!’ Morgan’s final word of command from the centre of the line brought all the rifles into the aim. As damp white faces squinted down the Enfields’ sights at the bellies of the sepoys no more than a handful of paces away, a gasp and an involuntary flinch swept down the Indian ranks. The native troops blinked, hardly believing their eyes. They were only too aware of the devastation that a rifle volley would cause at that range; they’d been shown СКАЧАТЬ