Barclay of the Guides Part 11

"Let us begin at the beginning," Lumsden interposed. "What were you doing in that hut?"

Ahmed told his story in as few words as possible. The officers did not interrupt him until he began to relate what he had heard the pretended fakir say about the Maulavi. Then Lumsden brought his fist down heavily on the table before him and said--

"That's the rascal I saw at Lah.o.r.e a few months ago, without a doubt--a tall, lean, lantern-jawed fellow with a beak like the old Duke's. They told me he seemed to be very busy, though no one knew what his business was. Now, Ahmed, could you judge by what you heard whether this fakir had spoken to any other men in the corps?"

"I do not think he had, sahib. He was persuading these men to speak to the others."

"Very well. Go on with your story."

Ahmed repeated, as nearly as he could remember them, the actual words used by the fakir, and then described how he had been seized and carried, bound, into the tent, and lay gagged while his captors discussed how they should dispose of him. When he had related the manner in which he had set the hut on fire, Lumsden looked pleased.

"It was a good thought, and cleverly done, my lad. That's the kind of thing I like to see in my Guides--quickness, decision, willingness to take risks. I shall keep my eye on you. But now, you fellows," he added in English, the other officers having entered the room, "what are we to do about an explanation? The men will be desperately excited, you may be sure; those three scoundrels must be marked off as deserters, and Ahmed must have some tale for the rest of the men."

"Say they were in a funk at burning down the hut," suggested Lieutenant Battye.

"Won't wash, Quintin. The punishment would only be stopping of leave or something of that kind: none of the men would run away from that."

"Ask the youngster," said the adjutant. "These Pathans are good at fairy tales."

The question was put to Ahmed.

"It might be done thus, sahib," said the boy. "The fakir was not a true fakir. He is one Minghal, once chief of Mandan, and we blew up his tower and captured his village."

"I remember. Sherdil told me of that little piece of trickery--a box of porcelain from Delhi, eh? Well?"

"He is my enemy, sahib. We could say that he came to kill me, and indeed he tried to stick his knife into me just before Hawes Sahib came, but I kicked him down. The rest might be told even as it happened, except for what the fakir said."

"Very good. An excellent notion: you others agree? You shall tell them that. Now get to your hut: you have done very well."

Ahmed saluted and went away. He found Sherdil awaiting him in great excitement. The story he told seemed perfectly convincing. The conduct of Minghal was just what might have been expected of him, and the three Guides who abetted him clearly had no other course than to take flight.

And the explanation spread through the whole corps next day, and was accepted with equal belief.

When Ahmed had gone, the officers sat up far into the night discussing the incident. It indicated the possibility of grave disorders arising.

They were all aware of an undercurrent of disaffection in many regiments of the native army. Apart from the fears aroused by the threatened introduction of the new cartridge, there were other causes of discontent and suspicion, both among the sepoys and the native population generally. The native officers did not take kindly to the system of promotion by seniority instead of by merit. Slight instances of insubordination had been too leniently dealt with by the officers, and the men had begun to regard themselves as of vast importance. Tales had been spread of the difficulties of the British army in the Crimea; many of the sepoys believed that it had been almost entirely destroyed, and the British prestige had fallen in consequence. They had a grievance, too, in the matter of foreign service. When they were enlisted they were expressly guaranteed against service over sea. But the Government, with reprehensible disregard of this engagement, ordered some native regiments to sail across the dreaded kala pani, and when they refused, neither enforced the order nor punished the refusal as mutiny. Since then a law had been pa.s.sed withdrawing the reservation in the case of new recruits, and the older men believed that the guarantee was to be no longer observed in their case.

Attempts to graft Western ideas and customs on an Oriental people had embittered the populace generally. Changes in the land system which had prevailed from time immemorial had exasperated the zamindars.

Interference with the native customs in regard to succession had enraged the princes, and the recent annexation of the province of Oudh had alienated an immense population from which the native regiments were largely recruited.

These and other matters bred a spirit of unrest and distrust, and made the minds of the sepoys fit soil for the seeds of disaffection which religious fanatics were beginning to sow among them.

The possibility of a general rising caused grave disquiet to a few of the more thoughtful of the British authorities--those who knew the natives best, and were aware of the lengths to which superst.i.tion might drive them. But the great majority were blind to what was pa.s.sing under their eyes, and disregarded the warnings of the keener-sighted. Even when, on February 27, the 19th Native Infantry at Barhampur rose in mutiny, impelled by a panic fear that the greased cartridges were to be forced on them at the muzzles of our guns, the incident was regarded as an isolated eruption instead of a symptom of general uneasiness, and a strange lack of firmness was shown in dealing with it. "A little fire is quickly trodden out which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench."

Major Lumsden felt that he could trust the Guides. They were not affected by many of the matters that agitated the other native regiments. Their officers had shown such tact and wisdom in respecting their religious scruples that the men had no fears of enforced conversion to the Christian faith. Peculiar ties of personal loyalty and devotion bound officers and men together; the latter had "eaten the sahibs' salt," and had developed a singular pride in the honour of the corps. They had, further, a vast contempt for the sepoys of the native regiments of the line. The latter a.s.sumed insufferable airs of superiority towards the Sikhs, Panjabis, and hill-men, from whom the Guides were mainly recruited, and turned the cold shoulder on such of them as enlisted in their own regiments. But though Lumsden had this confidence in his men's loyalty, he was not blind to the necessity of watchfulness. At the first hint of trouble he gave orders that any wandering fakir who might be discovered in the neighbourhood of the fort should be intercepted and severely dealt with.

A few weeks after news arrived of the rising at Barhampur, Lumsden left Hoti-Mardan at the head of his mission to Kabul. Among the officers who accompanied him was Dr. Bellew. The command of the Guides during his absence was given by Sir John Lawrence to Captain Daly, commander of the 1st Panjab Cavalry. The Guides awaited with considerable curiosity the arrival of their new commander. He reached Hoti-Mardan at sunset on the 28th of April, and the genial manner of his address to the men on the parade-ground next day, coupled with his reputation as a gallant soldier, won their instant confidence.

"Daly Sahib is a good man," said Sherdil to Ahmed, "though in truth he has not so much hair as Lumsden Sahib."

Thus he alluded to his new commander's premature baldness. Sherdil was rejoicing in the rank of naik, to which Lumsden had promoted him before leaving the fort. The good fellow was perfectly convinced that he owed his new dignity not merely to his merits, but to the broad hint he had given his commander, and suggested that Ahmed should look out for an opportunity to make a similar suggestion to Daly Sahib.

"I must wait until I have been in the corps as long as you," replied Ahmed, with a laugh.

Daly had been but a fortnight in his command when he received grave news in a letter from Colonel Edwardes at Peshawar. Edwardes had heard by telegraph that on Sunday, the 10th of May, the sepoys at Meerut had mutinied. Five days before, when cartridges were served out to the men of the 3rd Native Light Cavalry for the parade ordered for the next morning, eighty-five troopers refused to receive them. They were tried for this breach of discipline by a court-martial of native officers, and condemned to various terms of imprisonment. On the evening of the following Sunday, when the bells were tolling for church, the sepoys of the 11th and 20th line regiments and the 3rd Cavalry broke out of their lines, and while some set fire to the bungalows of the Europeans, others hastened to the prison, loosened the gratings of the cells, and dragged out their manacled comrades. Their fetters were struck off; then the mutineers set off on a mad riot of destruction, burning houses, smas.h.i.+ng furniture, ma.s.sacring every white man and woman whom they met.

General Hewitt had with him at Meerut a regiment of cavalry, the 60th Rifles, and a large force of artillery. With incredible lack of enterprise he kept them at bivouac during the night, allowing the mutinous sepoys to set off unmolested on the thirty-six miles' march to Delhi. Horse and foot made all haste through the darkness, reached the Jumna at sunrise, crossed by the bridge of boats, and entered the gates of Delhi exultant. Their arrival was the signal for a general rising.

They ma.s.sacred without mercy all the English people upon whom they could lay hands, men, women and children, and the streets of the ancient city were a scene of plunder and butchery.

With this terrible news Daly received orders to march for Delhi with the Guides. The men had been fasting all day: it was Ramzan, the Mohammedan Lent; but at six o'clock the same evening they set off, five hundred strong, a hundred and fifty being cavalry, on their long march of five hundred and eighty miles. At midnight they reached Nowshera, the first stage of their journey, and were up again at daybreak. It was the hottest season of the year; the sun beat mercilessly down upon them; and the burning march to Attock, the next stage, taxed their endurance to the uttermost. But not a man fell out, and after resting until two o'clock next morning they were on foot again, springing up with cheerful alacrity at the sound of the bugle. A dust-storm swept upon them as they started; they plodded steadily through it, marched for thirty-two miles with only the briefest halts, rested during the day at Boran, and were off again soon after midnight on the next stage of thirty-two miles to Jani-ki-sang.

Another night march brought them to Rawal Pindi. There they heard how the mutiny was spreading--a terrible tale of rapine, incendiarism and ma.s.sacre; and--a little light amid the darkness--how native princes in various parts were showing a n.o.ble loyalty, and placing their swords at the service of the British. There, too, Sir John Lawrence reviewed the corps, gave the men unstinted praise for their patience and endurance under fatigue, and did all he could for their comfort. He spoke to many men personally as he pa.s.sed down the lines, and, halting before Ahmed, said in his gruff voice--

"Where did I see you last, young man?"

"At Peshawar, sahib, when I spoke to your honour about my father, Rahmut Khan."

"Ah yes, I remember. I am glad to see you in such good company."

And he pa.s.sed on, leaving Ahmed in a glow of pleasure.

Night after night the march continued. Sometimes the troopers dozed on their horses and had to dismount and go on foot in order to keep themselves awake. Even that remedy failed, and once Ahmed slept as he walked, and still trudged on when the rest halted, until Sherdil took him by the shoulder and shook him into wakefulness.

Early in the morning of June 6, when the corps had been marching for more than three weeks, they arrived at Karnal, about three days' march from Delhi, their goal. They had scarcely halted when Mr. Le Bas, the magistrate, came to Captain Daly with a request that he would destroy two or three villages in the neighbourhood whose inhabitants had proved very troublesome and were threatening the lines of communication. Daly was loath to delay; there was sterner work before him than the operations of a police officer; but the magistrate being very pressing, he at last consented to devote a day to the work required. After a few hours' rest a portion of the Guides marched out to the villages in question, forced their way into them with the loss of one man killed and three wounded, and set fire to the houses.

A party of about a dozen Guides, Ahmed among them, with Sherdil at their head, set off to ride down a body of armed villagers mounted on hardy country-bred ponies. The Guides' horses were feeling the strain of the previous three weeks' marching, while the villagers' mounts were fresh; but it was a point of honour with the Guides never to let their enemy escape, and Sherdil pushed on for mile after mile, gradually overhauling the fugitives. Captain Daly's orders were that no prisoners were to be taken; not one of the hapless villagers escaped.

As the little party was returning at a foot pace to rejoin their comrades, they caught sight of a group of bearers carrying a palki, and escorted by a couple of hors.e.m.e.n. Thinking it probable that the palki contained a village headman endeavouring to escape in a vehicle ordinarily used only by native ladies, Sherdil decided to give chase; it would be a notable feather in his cap if he could march into Karnal and hand over to Captain Daly the ringleader in the recent troubles.

"Daly Sahib will make me a dafadar at once," he said, with a chuckle, to Ahmed. "True, the palki may hold no person at all, but only treasure; I know their ways. But we shall have something for our pains, Ahmed-ji."

The men carrying the palki could not go quickly, but they were more than a mile distant, and the Guides' horses were so done up that they were incapable of more than a canter. Still, unless the quarry should be able to hide, they might be overtaken in the course of a quarter of an hour.

Sherdil led the way, the sowars following in a scattered line. They had scarcely ridden three or four hundred yards when they came suddenly to a deep nullah. Sherdil attempted to leap his horse over it, but the animal was too wearied for the effort; it failed to clear the gully, and fell with its rider. The trooper next behind his leader met with the same mishap. Then came Ahmed. Being a little in the rear of the others, he had had time to prepare for the leap, and his horse Ruksh, besides being superior to the rest, was less fatigued through having had to carry a lighter weight. He took the leap gamely and landed safely on the other side, although with only an inch or two to spare.

Being safely over, Ahmed pulled up his horse and called down to Sherdil to hear if he was hurt.

"A sprained ankle, no more, Allah be praised," his friend replied.

"And the horse?"

"I am feeling his joints. Do not wait, Ahmed-ji; ride after the sons of perdition. Hai! It will not be I that am made a dafadar, but you a naik.

It is fate. Go on; we will follow."

Ahmed at once set his horse to a gallop. The palki-wallahs were out of sight now, hidden by a slight wooded undulation of the ground. Eager that they should not escape him, and fired with the excitement of the chase, Ahmed did not wait to see how the rest of his comrades fared, but pressed on as fast as he could. He glanced round once and saw that the troopers had halted on the further side of the nullah; but he had no doubt that they would soon find a means of crossing or skirting it and follow at his heels.

As he reached the crest of the rising ground, he saw the fugitives hurrying across the plain not more than half-a-mile distant. Apparently they were aware of the chase, for they were straining every effort, and the hors.e.m.e.n every now and then plied the flats of their swords vigorously on the bearers' backs to encourage them. Again they disappeared from Ahmed's view, entering a small copse. He gave Ruksh a touch of the spur, followed the party through the copse, and caught sight of them again, now no more than two hundred yards away.

The two hors.e.m.e.n were at some little distance apart. They were both somewhat corpulent, and there was no look of the warrior about them. One of them turned, and, catching sight of the figure in khaki coming at speed, he shouted to his companion and then dug his spurs into his horse and rode with all haste towards a patch of woodland beyond. Ahmed set him down as a cowardly Hindu, yet felt some surprise at his flight.

Surely six men might have the courage to try conclusions with a single horseman. If he had had time to think he might have concluded that the runaway was not aware that his pursuer was for the moment alone; but having previously seen the whole party of Guides, feared that they were close behind. Whatever his thoughts may have been, his companion was made of sterner stuff. He disregarded the other's warning shout; at the very instant when his companion fled, he wheeled his horse and stood to face the attack.