Part 2

Once there, we were safe from being burnt out, and indeed from successful attack of any kind by the cowardly crew with which we had to deal. The interior space was very small, probably about ten feet square. In front was the narrow doorway; and in the massive walls were slits like loopholes through which we could observe if any attempts were made to approach the place. Every now and then our troopers brought us news of what was going on. The night had not long closed in when they told us that apparently the whole body of mutineers, horse and foot, had marched away to Delhi. Their attack on the European lines, if they had made one, had clearly failed; and the only marauders remaining in Meerut were the butchers and other scum of the city and bazars. Presently one of our men went over to the opposite house, which by this time was burnt nearly to the ground. He returned with awful news. He had found the dead body of its occupant, a lady, whose husband at the outbreak of the mutiny was absent in the European quarter. She had been most cruelly and brutally murdered, her unborn infant sharing her pitiable fate. He showed us, in confirmation of his story, a portion of her dress reeking with blood. Not far from us, another lady, while attempting to escape, disguised as an ayah, was recognised as a European, and murdered. Two veterinary-surgeons, attached to the regiment, had been killed--one of them with his wife--under circumstances of ghastly horror. They were both sick in bed with small-pox when the uproar of the mob startled them; and they came, in their night clothes, into the verandah, he carrying a gun loaded with shot, which he discharged at the crowd, only further enraging it. He was instantly shot dead. His wife met with a worse fate. The cowardly demons, afraid to touch her because of the danger of infection, threw lighted brands at her. Her dress caught fire; and she perished thus miserably. My own house-comrade, a fine young officer, had been mobbed on his way to church, and so hacked to pieces that but for his length--he was very tall--and the rags of his uniform which still clung to him, his remains would have been unrecognisable when they were subsequently recovered. A poor little girl, daughter of one of the British Non-Commissioned Officers of the regiment, had been slaughtered by a blow of a sword which cut her skull in two. Scenes like the above had been enacted all over Meerut; but I will spare the reader further details. If he is sickened by what I have already written, I can only say that mere generalities, however graphic, are insufficient to place before him a true picture of what English men, women, and children suffered at the hands of the mutineers, not only in Meerut, but almost everywhere through the North-West of India.

In these days of agitation for the repeal of the Arms Act, it is well to remind home-staying Englishmen of what once occurred, and what may again occur if a wave of political discontent or religious fanaticism should unhappily once more sweep over the "land of regrets."

Anxiously did we now listen for the rattle of horses' hoofs, the rumble of guns, or the tramp of feet coming to our help--but none came! Hour after hour passed--and still the mob were left undisturbed in their work of destruction and murder. We heard afterwards that a strong mounted party had been sent to clear the cantonments and rescue any survivors of the massacre; but--incredible to relate--it had been misled by the Staff Officer who was detailed to guide it, and never reached its intended destination. Among the troopers with us were one or two traitors, whose sole object in remaining was to undermine the loyalty of the rest. A young recruit who had, not long previously, passed through riding school in the same squad with myself, presently came to me as I was standing among a group of the men outside our stronghold (for Craigie and I now took it in turns to try and re-assure them by mixing with them), and warned me to be beware of the Havildar-Major, who had, he said, at that moment, been urging the others to kill me. It may be well imagined that I took very good care afterwards to keep a watchful eye on that Non-Commissioned Officer, and to let him see by a touch of my hand on the hilt of my sword that I was quite ready for any suspicious movement on his part. Soon afterwards he and a few others rode out of the gate, and we saw them no more. They had not long gone when a servant of Craigie's, a Hindu bearer, came up to us in great excitement with the news that a crowd of _budmashes_ was coming in at the gate. He implored us to give him one of the guns, and let him go and fire at them. Whether wisely or not, we did so; and almost immediately afterwards we heard a report, followed by yells and groans. In a few moments the bearer returned, and gave us back the gun, saying that he had fired into "the brown" of the advancing mob, and brought one of them down, and the rest had fled.

It was now about midnight. The uproar was quieting down; and we determined on making our escape, if possible. So, with our own hands--the _syces_ (grooms) having bolted--we harnessed Craigie's horses to his carriage; placed the ladies and the Carabineer inside with the three guns; made a native boy who usually rode postillion, and who fortunately had not gone off with the syces, mount one of the horses and set off, Craigie and I riding with drawn swords beside the carriage. This was a critical moment. A knot of the troopers, evidently wavering in their intentions, occupied the avenue before us, loudly talking and gesticulating. The postillion hesitated; but, on our threatening to run him through the body if he did not at once gallop on, he took heart of grace, lashed his horses, and in a moment we had charged through and scattered the impeding group, and were racing along the avenue at full speed over the body of the man who had been killed by the faithful bearer, and who was afterwards identified as a Musalman butcher, a class of men who were among the most blood-thirsty actors on that night. Turning out of the gate to our left we made along the road to the regimental parade-ground, from which a nearly unbroken plain stretched to the European lines. We found the plain deserted; and rapidly made our way till we reached a short length of straight road which ran to the stables of the Carabineers. At the far end of it we saw a light, which we rightly took to be a portfire. Making the postillion slacken speed, Craigie and I galloped forward, shouting "Friend! Friend!" at the utmost stretch of our lungs; and well was it we did so; for we found at a point where a bridge crossed a nullah a piquet with a gun trailed up the road; and the subaltern in command told us he was on the point of firing at our rapidly approaching group when our voices reached him. At last--with deep gratitude--we felt that our dear ones were once more safe among our own countrymen. The wife of a Sergeant of the Carabineers very kindly gave the ladies shelter for the rest of the night; and Craigie and I shifted for ourselves, _al fresco_.

To revert to the adventures of the regimental Quartermaster-Sergeant after he left me. Covered with blood from the wound in his lip and carrying his gun in one hand and his sword in the other, he presented a sufficiently startling spectacle as he burst into a room of a neighbouring bungalow occupied by two young officers, and warned them--still unconscious--of what was taking place. Not a moment did they lose in buckling on their swords and rushing to the stables. As they did so they saw one of their own syces running away with a saddle on his head. They could only find two other saddles; but fortunately bridles for three horses were hanging on their usual pegs. Rapidly slipping them on, they mounted, giving the Sergeant a bare-backed animal, and they made for a gate. It was blocked by mutineers. They turned to the other: that also was blocked. Their lives seemed lost, when one of their servants, a sweeper, the lowest and most despised caste of Indian domestics, heedless of the certainty that his own life would be sacrificed to the fury of the mob disappointed of its prey, implored them to follow him. Running before them he led them to the back of the out-houses, and showed them a gap in the "compound"[2] wall which the servants had made for their own convenience. Through this gap they filed, and galloped off, escaping the hurried shots which were fired after them, and eventually reaching in safety the barracks of the 60th Rifles. The sweeper fell a victim to the rage of the pursuers. He was hacked to pieces. No more beautiful deed ever brightened the dark days of the "'57" than the self-sacrifice of this obscure and nameless hero.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Rascals.

[2] The name given to the enclosed grounds of a house in the North-Western Provinces.

II. SKIRMISHING.

Before continuing my narrative, I wish to draw particular attention to a circumstance which, so far as I know, has been overlooked by every historian of the Mutiny. This is the fact that as I was at the time informed, the military authorities, in view of the lengthening days and the increasing heat of the season, had caused, on May 10th, 1857, the evening church parade to take place half an hour later than formerly. In my firm belief, this change saved us from an awful catastrophe. In those days British troops attended divine service practically unarmed, for they did not take with them their rifles or carbines and ammunition. Their only weapons were their side-arms. The mutineers were, of course, unaware of this change. They broke into revolt half an hour too soon. Had they waited till the 60th Rifles were securely gathered into the church, what could have prevented them from overpowering the small guards over the rifles and the guns, and utterly destroying the defenceless crowd of soldiers penned, like sheep, within four walls. Providence befriended us. When the first scouts of the cavalry came galloping down to the European lines, they found the white soldiers falling into their places on parade. Once the alarm was given, all attempt at surprise was out of the question, and the hope of achieving an easy massacre was changed into fear of the awful retribution which they thought the European troops, now on the alert, would not fail speedily to exact. This fear altered all their plans, and hastened their flight to Delhi, so graphically described by Sir John Kaye; but, alas! no swift retribution followed.

The European troops, 1,500 strong, were paralysed by the irresolution of their chief. Had the gallant Hearsey or Sidney Cotton occupied Hewett's place at Meerut, it is safe to say that, in spite of the wings which fear lent to the mutineers on their flight to Delhi, few of them would ever have reached that haven of their hopes. The shrapnel of the artillery and the swords of the Carabineers would have annihilated them. It is true that Generals Hewett and Archdale Wilson, late in the evening, moved the troops over the open plain of the infantry parade-ground and that they caused a few rounds to be fired, in the dark, at some belated stragglers of the cavalry, which said rounds, by the way, nearly killed an officer, Lieutenant Galloway, of my regiment, who had taken refuge in an out-house in the line of fire; but General Hewett, instead of even then detaching the Carabineers and a battery of horse artillery in pursuit of the flying mutineers, acted on the ill-starred advice of his Brigadier to withdraw the whole force to the European lines. No greater mistake from any point of view was ever committed.

There can be no doubt that the offer of Captain Rosser, of the 6th Dragoon Guards, to take a squadron and a couple of guns in pursuit, was really made and declined; for it was well known and much discussed at the time. It is true that intimation of this offer never reached the Colonel Commanding the Regiment; but it is equally certain that somebody blundered in not taking immediate steps to bring it to the notice of Colonel Custance. The prompt punishment which even such a small body could have inflicted would have been of the utmost value as a lesson both to the rebels and to the faint-hearted among ourselves; but the opportunity was wilfully thrown away; and the magnificent brigade of British troops of all arms, which afterwards covered itself with glory at the Hindun Nuddee, at Delhi, at Lucknow, and wherever its members met the enemy, was marched back to Meerut, and condemned for a period to the humiliating _rôle_ of passive inaction.

Difficult as it is to understand, and impossible to excuse the motives which paralysed the nerves of General Hewett, it can only be hoped that all our officers have laid to heart the lesson so frequently learned in the great school of the Sepoy Mutiny that, in dealing with an Oriental enemy, _l'audace! et toujours l'audace_ is not only the most soldierlike but the surest road to success. "Strike promptly and strike hard" should be their motto. Over and over again have small bodies of Englishmen, under the most desperate circumstances, and against the most fearful odds, by acting on this maxim, "plucked the flower safely from the nettle danger." When the day comes, as come it will, that we Englishmen will once more have to fight for the preservation of our Indian Empire, the issue will only be doubtful if timid and irresolute counsels prevent us from putting forth the whole of our strength at the first serious symptoms of internal disaffection or external menace.

During the next few days the Meerut garrison lay inert. Far from undertaking any distant reconnaisances or making any active efforts to restore to quiet the surrounding districts, not even was punishment inflicted on the city or the bazars, which had poured forth their swarms of murderers and robbers on the night of the 10th. A few individual marauders were, it is true, caught and hanged; but there retributive measures ceased. Native houses, choked with plunder, were left unsearched, and their occupants were allowed unmolested to swagger about in the sight of all men, and to boast among themselves of the shame and havoc they had wrought on the "Feringhi."

Our women and children and unarmed civilian refugees were given shelter in the "Dumdama," an often-described walled enclosure. The Generals and their staffs and many other officers took refuge in a barrack, over which a guard was duly mounted. Piquets, inlying and outlying, were told off; and every precaution was taken to prevent the cantonments being rushed by the "budmashes" of the "Burra Bazar" or the Goojars of the neighbouring villages!

As a comic element is never absent from the most tragic events, I may interpolate here a little story _anent_ Colonel Blank. That gallant officer rejoiced in a long and scanty moustache, which up to the moment of the Mutiny had retained the glossy black of youth. A few days afterwards, an officer who met me asked me if I had observed the terrible effect which late events had evidently wrought on the Colonel. "Poor fellow!" said he, "his hair has turned perfectly white!" My irreverent laughter amazed and shocked him. He little knew that the blanching of the old gentleman's moustache was due to his not having had the time or the presence of mind to bring with him in his hurried flight from the mutineers his trusty bottle of hair-dye.

A very few nights after the Generals and other officers had taken up their quarters in the barrack already mentioned, they suffered from a scare which, if it did not whiten their hair, might easily have proved a very serious matter to its innocent cause. This was how it happened. It must be premised that a row of beds lined each wall of the long barrack-room, each bed containing a General, a staff, or at the least a field officer, every one of whom reposed his head on a pillow under which lay a revolver, while his sword was either resting on a chair beside him or hanging on the wall. Outside was a guard of British soldiers, and in the immediate vicinity were some fifteen or sixteen hundred more. Altogether as secure and well-guarded a dormitory as it is possible to conceive, and one in which the most timid and nerve-shaken creature might placidly entrust himself to the arms of Morpheus. Not so, thought one of its warrior occupants. Were there not three Hindu punkah-coolies in the verandah, and were not all their lives at the mercy of these miscreants? It behoved one at least to remain on the alert, and, with a watchful eye on the coolie toiling at the punkah rope at one end of the room, to safeguard the lives of all the careless sleepers. He should be that one! So, ostentatiously snoring, and pretending to be wrapped in slumber, he devoted himself to his task. A couple of hours passed without incident; but at last his vigilance was justified and rewarded. The ruffian at the rope who, while there remained a chance that any of his proposed victims might be still awake, had pulled with steady cadence the heavy punkahs, now began to simulate slumber, and at intervals to cease pulling. Evidently this was a deep and artful ruse to discover if the cessation of the fanning breeze might, peradventure, rouse any of the sleepers; but none of them stirred. The moment for action had clearly arrived. So the blood-thirsty coolie coughed a smothered cough once or twice as a signal to his two confederates in the verandah; but as no response came, he prepared to go and personally warn them. As a precautionary measure, however, he noiselessly laid down the rope, and, approaching the nearest sleepers, bent over them to satisfy himself that they were really unconscious. As he repeated this performance over our watchful friend, whose hair was now standing on end with horror, he found himself suddenly clutched in the embrace of a pair of arms nerved with the strength of panic fear, while loud shouts of "I've got him! I've got him!" echoed through the room. Breathless with excitement, the bold captor told his thrilling tale, and demanded that the three villains should be led to instant execution. He laughed to scorn the plausible story of his captive, to the effect that he had been left at the punkah rope longer than his rightful turn, that he had coughed to attract the attention of his "budlee" or relieving coolie, that on this signal failing he had then determined to go and fetch him; but _dur ki maree_, "the fear of being beaten," had induced him to make sure, before doing so, that none of the "sahibs" was likely to jump up, and, _more Anglo-Indico_, chastise him. Fortunately for the wretched coolie his explanation was accepted, not without much laughter, and he escaped the gallows; but nothing could ever convince his gallant captor that he had not by his courage and presence of mind averted a dreadful massacre.

It is really difficult to exaggerate the demoralisation which at that period seemed to overcome the nerves of certain of the more weak-kneed among us. Every native was to their excited imagination a "Pandy." My own faithful bearer, Sheodeen, owed to the natty twist of his turban and the martial way in which he habitually curled up his moustaches, a very close interview with the hangman. He was, during my absence, arrested, and would undoubtedly have been given a short shrift if an officer who knew him had not sent for me in hot haste. My earnest advice to him after that grim experience was to roll his "puggrie" anyhow, to take the curl out of his moustaches, to drop his jaunty swaggering gait, and generally to look as mean and dirty as possible.

On the night of the 11th an adventure happened to myself, which at the time I was rather shy of mentioning, but which I may now relate. I had taken it on myself to do a little patrolling on my own account; and as I was starting from near the main gate of the "Dumdama," I came across a Eurasian Trumpeter named Murray, of my own regiment. As he was mounted I asked him to accompany me. This he did. We had not gone far before we saw, indistinctly, through the dusk, what appeared to be a small group of the rebels, cautiously creeping towards where a tree, growing close to the wall, gave them a fair chance of successfully scaling it. "Will you stick by me, Murray, and charge them?" I whispered. "That I will, sir," replied he: "I will stand by you to the last drop of my blood." So, drawing our swords, and moving quietly forward for a few yards, we suddenly clapped spurs to our horses and charged--to the bewilderment and complete demoralisation of a speckled cow, over whose body we narrowly escaped "coming to grief," and who, as soon as she could recover her senses, dashed off into the darkness. "Never mind, Murray," said I. "It might have been the Pandies, you know. We'll just say nothing about this--yet a while." Poor fellow! he was killed not many days afterwards, bravely fighting, at the Hindun Nuddee.

On the evening of the 15th May the native Sappers and Miners from Roorkee marched into Meerut. Next afternoon it so happened that a small party of the faithful remnant of the 3rd Light Cavalry, which was about to proceed under my command to the support of the civil authorities in a neighbouring station, was paraded, mounted, for the General's inspection, close to the barrack where he had taken up his quarters, when I heard the report of a single shot, rapidly followed by two or three more, from the direction of the Sapper Camp; and presently saw that a scene of confusion and uproar was going on there. A rumour reached me--how I do not remember--that the Sappers had mutinied, had killed Alfred Light, the artillery officer who afterwards became so distinguished, and were about to fly into the jungle. Naturally I lost no time in dismounting and running in to the barrack to inform General Hewett, whom I found in the dishabille of shirt and pyjamas.

While I was making my report to the bewildered General, Brigadier Archdale Wilson pushed up to us, buckling on his sword-belt, and ordered me to mount at once and follow the Sappers and keep them in sight till he could come up with some of the Carabineers and guns. By this time the Sappers, who, I firmly believe, had at first no intention whatever of mutinying, but had been seized by sudden panic through groundless fear of an attack by the European troops, were swarming in flight over the plain, some in uniform, some in native clothes, but all armed with their muskets.

The shot which I had heard had been fired, as I subsequently learnt, by an Afghan, and had killed the Commanding Officer, Major Fraser. The action of this one man compromised all his comrades. However loyally disposed they might have been, they must have felt that now appearances were so fatally against them that no quarter could be hoped for from the enraged European troops who surrounded them; and that instant flight offered the only slender chance of escape from destruction.