The Cannons of Lucknow, page 13
Tom Vibart stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment and then gave vent to an excited exclamation. “That’s simply wonderful! Bless your heart, sir—I’m truly grateful, believe me. I … may I know your name, sir? You didn’t mention it and I—”
He had earlier avoided making any mention of his name or of his connection with the Cawnpore garrison for the boy’s sake, Alex recalled, but he gave his name, expecting a spate of questions, and was relieved to see that his latest recruit appeared to attach no significance to it. They had their drink together in a virtually deserted mess tent, and then Tom Vibart excused himself in order to seek out his commanding officer and obtain the required permission to transfer to the Volunteers.
When he had gone, Alex ordered lunch and the khitmatgar was serving his coffee by the time the other members of the mess returned from the Bibigarh. He listened in silence to their comments on the unpleasant spectacle they had all been compelled to witness, thankful that, with three or four exceptions, they condemned the blood-cleansing as barbaric and likely, when the details became known to the populace at large, to do more harm than good. Appealed to for his opinion by a stout, red-faced captain in one of the Queen’s regiments who had defended the principle of savage punishment for all mutineers, Alex endeavoured to evade the question, but the Queen’s officer persisted.
“Oh, come now, Colonel Sheridan! I’d respect your view. You were with Wheeler’s garrison—you were present when the Nana’s troops betrayed your friends at the ghat. You saw them brutally and treacherously murdered—would you advocate mercy for the Pandies, damn it?”
“No, I would not,” Alex returned shortly. “But I would advocate justice.”
“Justice?” the captain exclaimed. “What do you mean, sir? Wasn’t it justice that we saw being done today at that ghastly prison house, where over two hundred of our women and children were butchered?”
“Perhaps justice was done to the jullad but not, in my view, to the sepoys.”
“Why not to the sepoys, for God’s sake? They’re all tarred with the same brush, aren’t they?”
Several others joined in, and the discussion was becoming heated when the captain, his plump face redder than ever, grasped Alex’s arm and said aggressively, “I asked for your opinion, Colonel Sheridan.”
Reluctantly and choosing his words with care, Alex said quietly, “The punishment for mutiny is death; the rebels know that and accept it. There’s no question of showing mercy to men who betray their salt, and any sepoy who bears arms against us is aware of what he may expect if he is captured. But to go further—to defile a Brahmin before hanging him is, in my considered opinion, gentlemen, to defile ourselves as Christians and to deny the principles of justice and humanity by which we have sought to govern an alien race. We shall deserve to lose India and our own lives if we permit such things to be done.”
There was a stunned silence, and then a dark-faced Fusilier subaltern said angrily, “They are a conquered race! We govern by right of conquest, sir.”
Alex was suddenly angry. “Our conquests were made with sepoy armies. The blood they shed gained us India.”
“And yet now they’ve betrayed us,” the Fusilier lieutenant objected. “Virtually the whole Bengal Army is disloyal, if not in open rebellion against us!”
“We commanded their loyalty in the past by respecting their religious customs and scruples,” Alex told him. “It is the fear that we have ceased to do so that has brought about this mutiny. The fear is real—the sepoys believe that we have set out deliberately to destroy their caste system, thereby compelling them to abandon their own faith and embrace ours. What was done here today will lend credence to that belief and rouse the peasants as well as the sepoys to rebellion. Indeed if—”
“You Company officers are all the same!” the stout captain put in resentfully. “Right up to the moment when the sepoys held their muskets to your heads, you and others of your kidney wouldn’t hear of the possibility that they would mutiny, Colonel Sheridan. ‘Our men will never betray us,’ you said. And ‘We must show no mistrust of our loyal sepoys and all will be well.’ Poor old Wheeler trusted the swine, didn’t he? He was a sepoy general, for God’s sake … and they hacked him to pieces in flagrant betrayal of the terms of surrender they had sworn to keep!” He spluttered indignantly and then returned, like an angry bull, to the attack, ignoring all attempts to interrupt him. “Yet when a vigorous and farsighted commander like General Neill repays them in their own filthy coin, you squeal about justice and humanity and try to tell us that we must respect their religious scruples! You blame us for causing the mutiny … you, sir, whose bones—but for the grace of God—would now be whitening on the riverbank with those of our countrymen and women who did not escape!”
Alex faced him, white to the lips and momentarily bereft of words. Of what use was it, he asked himself wearily, to try to explain to Neill or to this man that, simply because he had been in the Cawnpore garrison, he did not want vengeance on any, save those whose guilt was proven? Had the Nana himself been captured—or Bala Bhat or Azimullah or any of the arch-traitors who had plotted the massacre—he would have watched them die unmoved, would even have watched their defilement without a word of protest, considering it justly deserved. And the ordinary citizens of Cawnpore, who had suffered severely under the Nana’s tyrannical rule, would have called out also for their blood. They …
“Well, sir?” the big captain prompted scornfully.
“You have no need to remind me of whose bones lie here,” Alex assured him, with conscious bitterness. “Or of the debt I owe to my Creator.”
There was something of an uproar as several of the other officers endeavoured vainly to come to his support, but the stout captain was not to be diverted from his argument. “Then perhaps, sir,” he suggested hoarsely, quoting Neill, “you require to be reminded that they were Christians, denied Christian burial?”
“I am not likely to forget that either,” Alex said, an icy chill about his heart, “since my wife and son were among them. But my experience here, during and after the siege, leads me to fear for our countrymen and women now under siege in Lucknow. Should we—which God forbid—fail to bring them relief, what was done with such savagery here may be repeated in Lucknow with greater savagery. Reprisals by one side demand still more terrible reprisals by the other. But if we adhere faithfully to the rule of law, if we punish the guilty and spare the innocent, then there’s at least a chance that we shall not have to contend with a nationwide rebellion and—”
“Your wife and son … good God, man, how can you stand there expressing such—damn it, such weak-kneed, pacifist sentiments? We shall relieve Lucknow—your brave sepoys won’t stand up to us. They’ll run at the first sight of British bayonets!” The florid face was thrust into his, and Alex, dismayed by the turn the discussion had taken, retreated a pace, to find Jeremiah Brasyer beside him. The white-haired old Sikh commander laid a hand on his arm and said, lowering his voice, “Your Sergeant Mahoney is outside, Colonel, asking for you—on a matter of some urgency, he says.”
“Mahoney? Right, I’ll go and see what he wants. But I …” Alex hesitated and Brasyer grinned, jerking his head in the direction of the Queen’s officer.
“Don’t worry about that gentleman. It will be my pleasure to join battle with him. He was one of the leaders of the Allahabad necktie party—amateur hangmen, who boasted of how many black swine they’d sent to eternity without the formality of a trial. I’ve been awaiting an opportunity to cut him down to size, so you may safely leave him to me.”
Judging by the sound of raised and angry voices which followed him to the entrance of the mess tent, Brasyer was not alone in this desire, Alex realised, his own anger evaporating. He halted in front of the open tent flap and the tall Mahoney, who was standing to his horse’s head a few yards away, came smartly to attention at the sight of him, looking relieved.
“What is it, Mahoney?” Alex asked. “Is there something wrong?”
The sergeant nodded. “It’s Cullmane, sir—he’s been drinking.”
“Drinking?” Corporal Cullmane’s conduct had been exemplary since his promotion but, recalling General Havelock’s stern order governing the supply of liquor to the men of the column, Alex’s heart sank. Each man was permitted a daily issue of grog or porter from the commissariat, a ration so small that, even if he hoarded his entire week’s supply, it would be insufficient to render him intoxicated. “Do you mean that he’s drunk, Sergeant?”
“As full as the Boyne, sir,” Mahoney said glumly. “I noticed he was looking—well, a trifle flushed when we went to the cookhouse for our meal but I didn’t think anything of it. He’s been running a temperature with that arm of his and, beyond asking him if he was suffering any pain, which he denied, I didn’t trouble him. I wish to God I had, sir, but I was busy getting our kit packed for the crossing and it never occurred to me that he’d got hold of any liquor.”
“It’s not your fault, Mahoney,” Alex interrupted impatiently. He shouted for his syce and asked, as the man came running with his horse, “Where is he now?”
“I put him under arrest, sir,” the sergeant answered, to his relief. “I was afraid the provos would pick him up or those new civil police. They caught a native gunner trying to steal from the commissariat stores a couple of days ago and they say—I don’t know if it’s true, sir—that he’s to be hanged.”
It was probably only too true, Alex thought grimly. The order had been clear enough … He swore under his breath and swung himself onto his horse. “Where did Cullmane get his liquor, do you know? He didn’t steal it, did he?”
Mahoney shook his head. “He told me he bought it from one of the Sikhs, sir. And I believe him—I don’t think he’d be such a fool as to risk stealing it.” They put their horses to a trot and he added, glancing at Alex anxiously, “Cullmane’s a good N.C.O., sir, one of the best I’ve served with, but I suppose he’ll have to lose his stripes now, won’t he, sir?”
“Yes, he will,” Alex confirmed. “Unfortunately … and he’ll be lucky if that’s all he gets, because I shall have to report him to Captain Barrow. If he’d still been with his own regiment, he would have been flogged.” Mahoney’s attitude puzzled him a little. British Army discipline was harsh, even in peacetime; on active service it was, of necessity, harsher still and Mahoney, as senior N.C.O., was only doing his duty in reporting Cullmane’s misconduct. On the other hand, he could have dealt with it himself and if he liked Cullmane, as he appeared to, by so doing could have avoided making an official issue of the matter. “Where have you got him, Mahoney?” he asked.
“In the horse lines, sir, out of sight. I …” The sergeant again looked anxiously across at him, as if seeking to read his thoughts, and Alex waited without impatience for an explanation. Finally it came; red of face, Mahoney said unhappily, “I would not have brought you into it, sir, if I could have helped it, you understand … but Corporal Cullmane was seen. Seen and heard, sir.”
“Seen and heard—doing what, Sergeant, for heaven’s sake?” Alex demanded. “And by whom?”
The young sergeant swallowed hard. “He mounted his horse, sir, and galloped around like a madman, shouting out ‘Tally-ho’ and making out he was following hounds. When he wasn’t hollering and hallooing, he was singing ‘God save Ireland’ at the top of his voice. It was the white-bearded officer who saw him, sir—the Sikhs’ Commanding Officer. He was riding past and I spotted he was making for your mess tent, sir, and I knew he’d tell you about it, so I came after him. I had to, sir, or you’d have thought I was failing in my duty.”
Jeremiah Brasyer, Alex thought, relief flooding over him. The Sikhs’ commander had had more than his share of trouble over his own men’s drinking and, since he had not mentioned the incident in the mess just now, it seemed probable that be had deliberately turned a blind eye to it. He found himself smiling at the droll picture Mahoney’s description had conjured up; after the horror of the Bibigarh executions and the unpleasant scene in the mess, it was good to have reason for amusement, however short-lived.
He said, with careful gravity, suppressing the smile, “You did the right thing, Sergeant Mahoney. I—er—I’ll have a word with Captain Brasyer as soon as I can. If he’s willing to overlook Cullmane’s misconduct, I will overlook it also—this time. But it will be up to you to make sure that nothing of the kind happens again. Deal with Corporal Cullmane yourself and as you see fit. Officially I know nothing about his behaviour, so he’ll keep his stripes, but you can warn him, unofficially, that if he takes another drop above his daily grog ration, I’ll have the hide off him.”
“Thank you very much, sir.” Mahoney responded. He added grimly, “I’ll deal with him—there won’t be a next time I can promise you that, sir.”
Alex reined in; the sergeant saluted and cantered on toward the Cavalry Lines. By three-fifteen, the troop was lined up by the landing stage, a very sober and chastened Corporal Cullmane among them, his red and blistered face and the chafe marks on his wrists mute evidence of the “pegging out” by means of which he had been restored to sobriety. In silence but with his accustomed efficiency, he prepared to supervise the embarkation of the first six horses, as the pontoons which were to carry them were hauled close into the bank. At three-thirty an advance party of Sikhs marched down, ready to cross, and at a quarter to four—when Alex had almost given up hope of him—Ensign Vibart made his appearance on a lathered horse, to take his place, a trifle breathlessly, with the Volunteer recruits.
“Down ye get, sorr,” Cullmane bade him, taking his rein. “And Oi’ll cool t’at animal of yours off for ya. She’ll catch her death if she has to swim for ut, so she will, t’e state she’s in.” He led the sweating mare past Jeremiah Brasyer, his face half-hidden behind her foam-flecked neck but, in spite of this, the white-bearded Sikh commander recognised him and, meeting Alex’s gaze, closed one eye in an elaborate wink.
At four-thirty, in a renewed deluge of rain, the Burrampootra steamed slowly across the flooded Ganges toward the Oudh shore, towing boats and pontoons behind her. She broke down twice during the hours of darkness, but at dawn the following morning, her overworked engines restored to order and clouds of black smoke pouring from her funnel, the last of the Lucknow Relief Force, a company of the Madras Fusiliers, clambered aboard to huddle damply wherever they could find space on her deck. The men were cold and dispirited; they did not cheer when their late Commanding Officer mounted the battlements of his newly constructed entrenchment at the river’s edge to watch their departure, and by the time the little river steamer reached the Oudh shore, half a dozen of them were prostrate and writhing in the terrible agony of a cholera attack.
CHAPTER FIVE
ON THE EVENING of Tuesday, 28th July, in the mud-walled native hut at Mungalwar, six miles from the river, in which he had established his battle headquarters, Brigadier-General Henry Havelock issued orders for the advance on Lucknow.
His Movable Column, a bare twelve hundred Britons and three hundred Sikhs, had a formidable task before of them, as Havelock was well aware. Forty-three miles of hostile, flooded countryside separated them from their objective; a river—the Sai —a canal, and a number of fortified villages and towns constituted the main physical obstacles, and an army of mutineers, estimated at between 25,000 and 30,000, was besieging Lucknow itself. In addition, the Nana Sahib, with a force of several thousand, was reliably reported to be hovering in the Oudh jungles, with the avowed intention of harassing the rear of the Column and, when it advanced, cutting off its communications with Cawnpore.
In a despatch to the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Patrick Grant, Havelock did not minimise the odds against him. He wrote:
The difficulties of an advance to the relief of Lucknow are excessive. The enemy has entrenched and covered with guns the bridge across the Sai at Bunni and has made preparations for destroying it if the bridge is forced. I have no means of crossing the canal near Lucknow, even if successful at Bunni, where a direct attack might cost me a third of my force. I might turn it by Mohan, unless the bridge there were also destroyed. I have this morning received a plan of Lucknow from Major Anderson, Engineer in the garrison, and much valuable information in two memoranda, which escaped the enemy’s outpost troops and were partly written in Greek characters. These communications and much information orally derived from spies convince me of the extreme danger and difficulty of any operation to relieve Colonel Inglis, now commanding in Lucknow.
It shall be attempted, however, at every risk. Our losses from cholera are becoming serious and extend to General Neill’s force as well as my own. I earnestly hope that the 5th and the 90th Regiments can be pushed on to me entire and with all despatch and every disposable detachment of the regiments now under my command be sent for. My whole force only amounts to 1,500 men and ten guns, imperfectly equipped and manned.
In spite of these misgivings, Havelock sent the brave courier Ungud, who had delivered Major Anderson’s letter, back once more on his perilous way to Lucknow, with a note which ended optimistically,
We hope to meet you in five or six days.
To Colonel Tytler, who had penned his orders for the advance, he said. “Every mile we can win on the way to Lucknow will afford them some relief, I think. And if Grant will only send on those two regiments he has promised me—or even if he’ll make our strength up to two thousand immediately, with a battery of horsed guns, we’ll smash every rebel force, one after the other … and the troops coming up in the rear can settle the country.”
Left alone with his son Harry, now acting as his Deputy Assistant adjutant-general in place of Stuart Beatson, General Havelock was silent, his eyes closed in prayer. Opening them at last, he said quietly, “Our force is woefully inadequate for the task it must undertake. But if the worst comes to the worst, Harry my dear lad, we can but die with our swords in our hands. God, in His infinite goodness, has enabled us to come thus far and I would not have it written as my epitaph that I had failed to put my best endeavours into bringing relief to Lucknow. If with God’s help and guidance it is possible, then we will do it … because there must not be a second Cawnpore!”
