With Clive in India Part 9

"Shure, yer honor, the sight of such bastes is enough to turn a Christian man's blood."

"The spider had no idea of attacking you, Kelly," Peters said, laughing. "It might possibly bite you in the night, though I do not think it would do so; or if you took it up in your fingers."

"The saints defind us, yer honor! I'd as soon think of taking a tiger by the tail. The corporal, he's an Englishman, and lives in a country where they've got snakes and reptiles; but it's hard on an Irish boy, dacently brought up within ten miles of Cork's own town, to be exposed to the like.

"And do ye know, yer honor, when I went out into the town yesterday, what should I see but a man sitting down against a wall, with a little bit of a flute in his hand, and a basket by his side. Well, yer honor, I thought maybe he was going to play a tune, when he lifts up the top of the basket and then began to play. Ye may call it music, yer honor, but there was nayther tune nor music in it.

"Then all of a suddint two sarpents in the basket lifts up their heads, with a great ear hanging down on each side, and began to wave themselves about."

"Well, Tim, what happened then?" Charlie asked, struggling with his laughter.

"Shure it's little I know what happened after, for I just took to my heels, and I never drew breath till I was inside the gates."

"There was nothing to be frightened at, Tim," Charlie said. "It was a snake charmer. I have never seen one yet, but there are numbers of them all over India. Those were not ears you saw, but the hood. The snakes like the music, and wave their heads about in time to it. I believe that, although they are a very poisonous snake and their bite is certain death, there is no need to be afraid of them, as the charmers draw out their poison fangs when they catch them."

"Do they, now?" Tim said, in admiration. "I wonder what the regimental barber would say to a job like that, now. He well nigh broke Dan Sullivan's jaw, yesterday, in getting out a big tooth; and then swore at the poor boy, for having such a powerful strong jaw. I should like to see his face, if he was asked to pull out a tooth from one of them dancing sarpents.

"I brought ye in some fruits, yer honors. I don't know what they are, but you may trust me, they're not poison. I stopped for half an hour beside the stall, till I saw some of the people of the country buying and ating them. So then I judged that they were safe for yer honors."

"Now, Tim, you'd better go and lie down and get a sleep, if the spiders will let you, for you will have to be under arms all night, as it is possible that we may be attacked."

The first part of the night pa.s.sed quietly. Double sentries were placed at each of the angles of the walls. The cannons were loaded, and all ready for instant action. Doctor Rae and his two subalterns were upon the alert, visiting the posts every quarter of an hour to see that the men were vigilant.

Towards two o'clock a dull sound was heard and, although nothing could be seen, the men were at once called to arms, and took up the posts to which they had already been told off on the walls. The noise continued. It was slight and confused, but the natives are so quiet in their movements, that the doctor did not doubt that a considerable body of men were surrounding the place, and that he was about to be attacked.

Presently one of the sentries over the gateway perceived something approaching. He challenged, and immediately afterwards fired. The sound of his gun seemed to serve as the signal for an a.s.sault, and a large body of men rushed forward at the gate, while at two other points a force ran up to the foot of the walls, and endeavoured to plant ladders.

The garrison at once collected at the points of attack, a few sentries only being left at intervals on the wall, to give notice should any attempt be made elsewhere. From the walls, a heavy fire of musketry was poured upon the ma.s.ses below; while from the windows of all the houses around, answering flashes of fire shot out, a rain of bullets being directed at the battlements. Doctor Rae himself commanded at the gate; one of the subalterns at each of the other points a.s.sailed.

The enemy fought with great determination. Several times the ladders were planted and the men swarmed up them, but as often these were hurled back upon the crowd below. At the gate the a.s.sailants endeavoured to hew their way, with axes, through it; but so steady was the fire directed, from the loopholes which commanded it, upon those so engaged, that they were, each time, forced to recoil with great slaughter. It was not until nearly daybreak that the attack ceased, and the a.s.sailants, finding that they could not carry the place by a coup de main, fell back.

The next day, the main body of the British force returned with the convoy. News arrived, the following day, that the enemy were approaching to lay siege to the place.

The news of the capture of Arcot had produced the effect which Clive had antic.i.p.ated from it. It alarmed and irritated the besiegers of Trichinopoli, and inspired the besieged with hope and exultation. The Mahratta chief of Gutti and the Rajah of Mysore, with whom Muhammud Ali had for some time been negotiating, at once declared in his favour. The Rajah of Tanjore and the chief of Pudicota, adjoining that state, who had hitherto remained strictly neutral, now threw in their fortunes with the English, and thereby secured the communications between Trichinopoli and the coast.

Chunda Sahib determined to lose not a moment in recovering Arcot, knowing that its recapture would at once cool the ardour of the new native allies of the English; and that, with its capture, the last hope of the besieged in Trichinopoli would be at an end. Continuing the siege, he despatched three thousand of his best troops, with a hundred and fifty Frenchmen, to reinforce the two thousand men already near Arcot, under the command of his son Riza Sahib. Thus the force about to attack Arcot amounted to five thousand men; while the garrison under Clive's orders had, by the losses in the defence of the fort, by fever and disease, been reduced to one hundred and twenty Europeans, and two hundred Sepoys; while four out of the eight officers were hors de combat.

The fort which this handful of men had to defend was in no way capable of offering a prolonged resistance. Its walls were more than a mile in circ.u.mference, and were in a very bad state of repair. The rampart was narrow and the parapet low, and the ditch, in many places, dry. The fort had two gates. These were in towers standing beyond the ditch, and connected with the interior by a causeway across it. The houses in the town in many places came close up to the walls, and from their roofs the ramparts of the forts were commanded.

On the 23rd September Riza Sahib, with his army, took up his position before Arcot. Their guns had not, however, arrived, with the exception of four mortars; but they at once occupied all the houses near the fort, and from the walls and upper windows kept up a heavy fire on the besieged.

Clive determined to make an effort, at once, to drive them from this position, and he accordingly, on the same afternoon, made a sortie. So deadly a fire, however, was poured into the troops as they advanced, that they were unable to make any way, and were forced to retreat into the fort again, after suffering heavy loss.

On the night of the 24th, Charlie Marryat, with twenty men carrying powder, was lowered from the walls; and an attempt was made to blow up the houses nearest to them; but little damage was done, for the enemy were on the alert, and they were unable to place the powder in effective positions, and with a loss of ten of their number the survivors with difficulty regained the fort.

For the next three weeks the position remained unchanged. So heavy was the fire which the enemy, from their commanding position, maintained, that no one could show his head for a moment, without running the risk of being shot. Only a few sentinels were kept upon the walls, to prevent the risk of surprise, and these had to remain stooping below the parapet. Every day added to the losses.

Captain Clive had a series of wonderful escapes, and indeed the men began to regard him with a sort of superst.i.tious reverence, believing that he had a charmed life. One of his three remaining officers, seeing an enemy taking deliberate aim at him through a window, endeavoured to pull him aside. The native changed his aim, and the officer fell dead. On three other occasions sergeants, who accompanied him on his rounds, were shot dead by his side. Yet no ball touched him.

Provisions had been stored in the fort, before the commencement of the siege, sufficient for sixty days; and of this a third was already exhausted when, on the 14th of October, the French troops serving with Riza Sahib received two eighteen-pounders, and seven smaller pieces of artillery. Hitherto the besiegers had contented themselves with hara.s.sing the garrison night and day, abstaining from any attack which would cost them lives, until the arrival of their guns. Upon receiving these, they at once placed them in a battery which they had prepared on the northwest of the fort, and opened fire.

So well was this battery placed, and so accurate the aim of its gunner, that the very first shot dismounted one of the eighteen-pounders in the fort. The second again struck the gun and completely disabled it. The besieged mounted their second heavy gun in its place, and were preparing to open fire on the French battery, when a shot struck it also and dismounted it. It was useless to attempt to replace it, and it was, during the night, removed to a portion of the walls not exposed to the fire of the enemy's battery. The besiegers continued their fire, and in six days had demolished the wall facing their battery, making a breach of fifty feet wide.

Clive, who had now only the two young subalterns serving under him, worked indefatigably. His coolness and confidence of bearing kept up the courage of his little garrison, and every night, when darkness hid them from the view of the enemy's sharpshooters, the men laboured to prepare for the impending attack. Works were thrown up inside the fort, to command the breach. Two deep trenches were dug, one behind the other; the one close to the wall, the other some distance farther back. These trenches were filled with sharp iron three-pointed spikes, and palisades erected extending from the ends of the ditches to the ramparts, and a house pulled down in the rear to the height of a breastwork, behind which the garrison could fire at the a.s.sailants, as they endeavoured to cross the ditches.

One of the three field pieces Clive had brought with him he mounted on a tower, flanking the breach outside. Two he held in reserve, and placed two small guns, which he had found in the fort when he took it, on the flat roof of a house in the fort commanding the inside of the breach.

From the roofs of some of the houses around the fort the besiegers beheld the progress of these defences; and Riza Sahib feared, in spite of his enormously superior numbers, to run the risk of a repulse. He knew that the amount of provisions which Clive had stored was not large, and thinking that famine would inevitably compel his surrender, shrank from incurring the risk of disheartening his army, by the slaughter which an unsuccessful attempt to carry the place must entail. He determined, at any rate, to increase the probability of success, and utilize his superior forces, by making an a.s.sault at two points, simultaneously. He therefore erected a battery on the southwest, and began to effect a breach on that side, also.

Clive, on his part, had been busy endeavouring to obtain a.s.sistance. His native emissaries, penetrating the enemy's lines, carried the news of the situation of affairs in the fort to Madras, Fort Saint David, and Trichinopoli. At Madras a few fresh troops had arrived from England, and Mr. Saunders, feeling that Clive must be relieved at all cost, however defenceless the state of Madras might be, despatched, on the 20th of October, a hundred Europeans and a hundred Sepoys, under Lieutenant Innis. These, after three days' marching, arrived at Trivatoor, twenty-two miles from Arcot.

Riza Sahib had heard of his approach; and sent a large body of troops, with two guns, to attack him. The contest was too unequal. Had the British force been provided with field pieces, they might have gained the day; but, after fighting with great bravery, they were forced to fall back; with a loss of twenty English and two officers killed and many more wounded, while the Sepoys suffered equally severely.

One of Clive's messengers reached Murari Reo, the Mahratta chief of Gutti. This man was a ferocious free-booting chief, daring and brave himself, and admiring those qualities in others. Hitherto, his alliance with Muhammud Ali was little more than nominal, for he had dreaded bringing upon himself the vengeance of Chunda Sahib and the French, whose ultimate success in the strife appeared certain. Clive's march upon Arcot, and the heroic defence which the handful of men there were opposing to overwhelming numbers, excited his highest admiration. As he afterwards said, he had never before believed that the English could fight, and when Clive's messenger reached him, he at once sent back a promise of a.s.sistance.

Riza Sahib learned, almost as soon as Clive himself, that the Mahrattas were on the move. The prospects of his communications being hara.s.sed, by these daring hors.e.m.e.n, filled him with anxiety. Murari Reo was encamped, with six thousand men, at a spot thirty miles to the west of Arcot; and he might, at any moment, swoop down upon the besiegers. Although, therefore, Riza Sahib had for six days been at work effecting a new breach, which was now nearly open to a.s.sault, he sent on the 30th of October a flag of truce, with an offer to Clive of terms, if he would surrender Arcot.

The garrison were to be allowed to march out with their arms and baggage, while to Clive himself he offered a large sum of money. In case of refusal, he threatened to storm the fort, and put all its defenders to the sword. Clive returned a defiant refusal, and the guns again opened on the second breach.

On the 9th of November, the Mahrattas began to show themselves in the neighbourhood of the besieging army. The force under Lieutenant Innis had been reinforced, and was now under the command of Captain Kilpatrick, who had a hundred and fifty English troops, with four field guns. This was now advancing.

Four days later the new breach had attained a width of thirty yards, but Clive had prepared defences in the rear, similar to those at the other breach; and the difficulties of the besiegers would here be much greater, as the ditch was not fordable.

The fifty days which the siege had lasted had been terrible ones for the garrison. Never daring to expose themselves unnecessarily during the day, yet ever on the alert to repel an attack; labouring at night at the defences, with their numbers daily dwindling, and the prospect of an a.s.sault becoming more and more imminent, the work of the little garrison was terrible; and it is to the defences of Lucknow and Cawnpore, a hundred years later, that we must look to find a parallel, in English warfare, for their endurance and bravery.

Both Charlie Marryat and Peters had been wounded, but in neither case were the injuries severe enough to prevent their continuing on duty. Tim Kelly had his arm broken by a ball, while another bullet cut a deep seam along his cheek, and carried away a portion of his ear. With his arm in splints and a sling, and the side of his face covered with strappings and plaster, he still went about his business.

"Ah! Yer honors," he said one day to his masters; "I've often been out catching rabbits, with ferrits to drive 'em out of their holes, and sticks to knock 'em on the head, as soon as they showed themselves; and it's a divarshun I was always mightily fond of, but I never quite intered into the feelings of the rabbits. Now I understand them complately, for ain't we rabbits ourselves? The officers, saving your presence, are the ferrits who turn us out of our holes on duty; and the n.i.g.g.e.rs yonder, with their muskets and their matchlocks, are the men with sticks, ready to knock us on head, directly we show ourselves. If it plase Heaven that I ever return to the ould country again, I'll niver lend a hand at rabbiting, to my dying day."

Chapter 8: The Grand a.s.sault.

The 14th of November was a Mohammedan festival, and Riza Sahib determined to utilize the enthusiasm and fanatic zeal, which such an occasion always excites among the followers of the Prophet, to make his grand a.s.sault upon Arcot, and to attack at three o'clock in the morning. Every preparation was made on the preceding day, and four strong columns told off for the a.s.sault. Two of these were to attack by the breaches, the other two at the gates. Rafts were prepared to enable the party attacking by the new breach to cross the moat, while the columns advancing against the gates were to be preceded by elephants, who, with iron plates on their foreheads, were to charge and batter down the gates.

Clive's spies brought him news of the intended a.s.sault, and at midnight he learned full particulars as to the disposition of the enemy. His force was now reduced to eighty Europeans, and a hundred and twenty Sepoys. Every man was told off to his post, and then, sentries being posted to arouse them at the approach of the enemy, the little garrison lay down in their places, to get two or three hours' sleep before the expected attack.

At three o'clock, the firing of three sh.e.l.ls from the mortars into the fort gave the signal for a.s.sault. The men leaped up and stood to their arms, full of confidence in their ability to resist the attack. Soon the shouts of the advancing columns testified to the equal confidence and ardour of the a.s.sailants.

Not a sound was heard within the walls of the fort, until the elephants advanced towards the gates. Then suddenly a stream of fire leaped out from loophole and battlement. So well directed and continuous was the fire, that the elephants, dismayed at the outburst of fire and noise, and smarting from innumerable wounds, turned and dashed away, trampling in their flight mult.i.tudes of men in the dense columns packed behind them. These, deprived of the means upon which they had relied to break in the gates, turned and retreated rapidly.

Scarcely less prolonged was the struggle at the breaches. At the first breach, a very strong force of the enemy marched resolutely forward. They were permitted, without a shot being fired at them, to cross the dry ditch, mount the shattered debris of the wall, and pour into the interior of the fort. Forward they advanced until, without a check, they reached the first trench bristling with spikes.

Then, as they paused for a moment, from the breastwork in front of them, from the ramparts, and every spot which commanded the trench, a storm of musketry was poured on them; while the gunners swept the crowded ma.s.s with grape, and bags of bullets. The effect was tremendous. Mowed down in heaps, the a.s.sailants recoiled; and then, without a moment's hesitation, turned and fled. Three times, strongly reinforced, they advanced to the attack; but were each time repulsed, with severe slaughter.

Still less successful were those at the other breach. A great raft, capable of carrying seventy, conveyed the head of the storming party across the ditch; and they had just reached the foot of the breach, when Clive, who was himself at this point, turned two field pieces upon them, with deadly effect. The raft was upset and smashed, and the column, deprived of its intended means of crossing the ditch, desisted from the attack.

Among those who had fallen, at the great breach, was the commander of the storming party; a man of great valour. Four hundred of his followers had also been killed, and Riza Sahib, utterly disheartened at his repulse at all points, decided not to renew the attack. He had still more than twenty men to each of the defenders; but the obstinacy of their resistance, and the moral effect produced by it upon his troops; the knowledge that the Mahratta horse were hovering in his rear, and that Kilpatrick's little column was close at hand; determined him to raise the siege.