The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny. Tracy Louis

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      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, and they 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.

      CHAPTER IV

      ON THE WAY TO CAWNPORE

      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 potent than 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 station4 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 he came 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, supercilious bearing. 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 СКАЧАТЬ