Chapter 8

“And what is the reason for this change of orders?” asked the Colonel.

“The Russians are coming down from the Hindu-Kush, and are marching down the valley of the Indus, thus taking our army in the rear. General Blood is marching south, so as not to be cut off. I am sent round to direct all detachments upon Mooltan.”

“No! is that possible? Is there not perhaps some mistake? How can the Russians cross the Hindu-Kush?”

“I have myself seen Russian infantry in the gorges of the Indus Valley, Colonel. The march upon Herat and the occupation of Cabul under General Ivanov were mainly blinds. Ivanov, with twenty thousand men under his command, and reinforced by a like number of Afghans, is advancing from Cabul upon the Khyber Pass. But the main attack will be made from the Pamirs in the direction of Rawal-Pindi and Lahore.”

“Rawal-Pindi?” exclaimed the Colonel. “If the Russians come down the Indus, they will first of all arrive at Attock, and this strong fortress will check their advance long enough.”

“Let us hope so, but we must not absolutely reckon upon it. The strength of the Russian army is not at present known to us; but their advance has evidently been magnificently planned. Their engineers must have done perfect wonders in the difficult passes of the Hindu-Kush; and these Russian soldiers are like iron.”

“Well,” said the Colonel, “we will soon show them that we are of steel.”

The adjutant handed over the written instructions, and after having read them, the Colonel replied--

“To-morrow morning early I start for Mooltan, and expect to arrive there with my detachment by tomorrow evening. The commissariat and ammunition columns will, of course, not be able to get there until a few days later, and then only in part. What in all the world can have possessed the General not to meet the enemy in Rawal-Pindi? That town is fortified and surrounded by strong forts; it is one of the greatest depots in India. Why must the General retire so far back, so far as Mooltan?”

“The General is expecting a decisive battle, and intends for the purpose to co-operate with the army of General Hunter. But both armies are, at present, equidistant from Mooltan, and the Russians would, the General thinks, hesitate to advance so far, from fear of having their left flank attacked from Lahore. In Lahore there is at present a force of ten thousand men, which is being reinforced every day from Delhi.”

With the departure of the adjutant, who, owing to the exigencies of duty, was obliged to decline the Colonel’s offer of a seat at table, the luncheon-party broke up, and the Colonel made apologies to his guest for being unable, under existing circumstances, to devote more time to him. His officers accompanied him, and soon after Mrs. Baird was also called away. Quite unexpectedly Heideck and Edith Irwin found themselves alone.

For a few moments neither spoke, as though neither wished to give expression to the feelings that filled their hearts. The young wife first broke silence.

“You were intending to go with us into the field, Mr. Heideck, and I know that your decision was prompted by a desire to assist us women with your protection. But now all the arrangements are altered, and I beg of you to abandon your intention.”

He looked at her surprisedly. “What, Mrs. Irwin? do you intend to deprive me of the pleasure I had looked forward to of accompanying you, and being your protector? And why?”

“You also have just heard that all the arrangements are altered. Had we gone to Quetta, then, as soon as our army had crossed the frontier, you would have been easily able to find another place; but if the battle takes place on Indian soil you will find yourself in constant danger.”

“In my quality as foreigner? Certainly. I should, under the circumstances, be exposed to much unpleasantness, but before I change my plans, I should like to hear from you if you, too, intend to remain with the troops under these altered conditions?”

“Since Mrs. Baird has given me permission to accompany her, yes.”

“And you believe that I shall show less courage than you, who will also certainly be exposed to serious risks?”

“How could I doubt your courage, Mr. Heideck? But that is, after all, something quite different. The place of us soldiers’ wives is at the side of our husbands, whom we have followed to India. And, moreover, we are, perhaps, nowhere safer than with the army. But you have no concern with this war and with our army. If you, now, were to leave here to take up your quarters in one of the hill stations far from the seat of war, and where you were not exposed to the risks of battle and the plague, you would be certainly allowed, as a German merchant, to remain there unmolested.”

“And why do you not yourself go to such a hill station, Mrs. Irwin? I should suggest Simla, if it were not so near to the seat of war. But do, pray, go to Poona, or into one of the other mountain stations in the south.”

The young lady shook her head.

“I expect that that would be going straight to destruction.”

“And what, may I ask, makes you think this?”

“I have already told you that in case of war English women are, here in India, only tolerably safe when in the immediate neighbourhood of soldiers. If we were to be defeated, the revenge the people would take on its oppressors would be terrible. Are you aware of the cruel instincts which slumber in these men, apparently so polite and submissive? The defenceless women and children would, without doubt, be their first victims. It was so in the Mutiny of 1857, and so it will be again under similar conditions. Nana Sahib and his crew wallowed at that time in the fiendish tortures of white women and children, and shed streams of innocent blood. And the civilisation of the lower classes has certainly since then not improved.”

“You speak as if you considered a defeat of your army probable.”

“I cannot get rid of my melancholy forebodings. And you, yourself, Mr. Heideck--please be straightforward with me! When the adjutant was standing there a little while ago, and when every one of his words showed the want of circumspection in our generals, I watched your face, and I read more from its expression than you have any idea of. I will not try to enter into your secrets, but I should be grateful if you would be candid with me. You are not the person for whom you here give yourself out.”

He did not hesitate for a moment to confess to her the truth.

“No, I am a German officer, and have been sent here by my superiors to study the Anglo-Indian army.”

Edith’s surprise was evidently not great.

“I had an inkling of it. And now please answer my question quite as straightforwardly. Do you believe that the British army will be victorious?”

“I would not permit myself to give an opinion on this point, Mrs. Irwin.”

“But you must have an idea. And I would give a great deal to know what it is.”

“Well, then--I believe in English bravery, but not in English victory.”

She heaved a deep sigh, but she nodded her head in assent, as if he had only expressed her own conviction. Then she gave him her hand and said softly--

“I thank you for your confidence, and as a matter of course no one shall ever learn from me who you are. But now I must insist more than ever that you leave us for your own safety’s sake.”

“And if I were to refuse? Supposing that in my position as soldier I were to consider it to be my duty not to leave you in the lurch? Would you be angry with me? Would you no longer permit me to enjoy the happiness of your society?”

Her breast heaved, but she bowed her head and was silent. Heideck plainly saw the glistening tears which stole from under her eyelids, and slowly rolled down her delicate cheek.

That was answer enough for him. He bowed, and kissing both her hands, whispered--

“I knew that you would not be so cruel as to drive me from you. Wherever fate may lead me, it will find me at your side as long as you require my protection.”

For a few seconds she let him keep her hand. She then gently withdrew it from his grasp.

“I know that I ought to forbid you for your own safety to follow me; but I have not the strength to do so. Heaven grant that you may never reproach me for having acted as I have done.”

XII

THE CAMP OF LAHORE

An unusually beautiful and dry spring favoured the advance of the Russian army through the mountains. In the north of India the temperature kept at an average of 68 degrees F., and day after day the sun streamed down from a cloudless blue sky upon the broad plains of the Punjab, through the bright green of which the Russian troops, in their white summer uniforms, pushed on like long streaks of silver.

Everything pointed to the fortune of war being on their side, for they had overcome the difficult and dreaded passage at Attock with unexpected ease.

The commander of this lofty fortress received orders not to break down the bridge across the Indus until General Blood’s army, which was directed to hold Peshawar and the Khyber Pass, had effected its retreat and had to the last man passed the river.

The bridge at Attock, which is a high structure built across the narrow bed of the Indus, which here foams down with swirling swiftness, is considered a masterpiece of engineering. It is built in two tiers, the upper of which carries the railway, while the lower forms a road for carriages, beasts of burden, and foot-passengers. On either side of the river is a fortified gate. The English commander of Attock trusted to the strength of the forts standing some 800 feet above the river, and imagined the Russians to be still far away.

The Russian vanguard had crossed the river Cabul, which joins the Indus at Attock, at a point a few miles above the city, and thus appeared simultaneously with General Blood’s troops before the fortress.

Blood’s troops were passing the bridge in endless long columns. Their movement was often checked by blocks, caused by the dislocation of the several units, and so it came about that, in the early morning, a superior Russian force had, unperceived by the English, reached the northern end of the bridge just as a gap had been caused in the English columns.

The thick fog of the morning had hidden the approach of the Russians from the English outposts. The Russians at once occupied the bridge, and so cut off the remainder of the English that were on the northern bank from their main body that had already crossed the bridge. The commander of the Russian advance guard was himself quite astounded at the success that the fortune of war had thrown into his lap: had not the fog rendered the scouting on both sides illusory, and had not chance allowed him to fall in with this gap in the English columns, the chances would, considering the narrowness of the road, have been much more favourable to the English than for him, and the battle would probably have ended with the defeat of his forces. As it was, General Ivanov, who had crossed the Khyber Pass, came upon the English rearguard, and five thousand men of the Anglo-Indian troops had to surrender after a short struggle. Two thousand English and three thousand Mohammedans fell into the hands of the Russians. As soon as the Mohammedan-Indians were informed by the victors that they were fighting for the true faith against the infidels, they went over without more ado to the Russian side.

The commander at Attock refused to surrender the fortress, and trained his guns upon the Russian columns; but, in consequence of the fog, the batteries did not inflict much damage upon the Russians, who being now in possession of the bridge continued their advance to the south.

But, however, before the march that had thus been so successfully begun was continued, the Russian commander-in-chief collected, not far from Attock, all the troops that had crossed the Hindu-Kush in small detachments, and united them with the army corps advancing from Afghanistan, so that he now disposed of an army of seventy thousand men.

It was a blood-stained road upon which this host travelled behind the retreating English army. This was the road upon which Alexander the Great in days of yore entered India. Here, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Afghan sovereign Ibrahim Lodi had fought with the Grand Mogul Baber; here, a few decades later, Mohammed Shah Adil, the generallissimo of the Afghans, when at the head of fifty thousand horse, five hundred elephants, and innumerable infantry, was defeated by the youthful Grand Mogul Akbar. Still more bloody was the battle, which about the middle of the eighteenth century the Afghan Sultan Ahmed Shah Durani fought with the great Mahratha princes, Holkar Sindhia, Gaekwar and the Peschwas; and here, once again, all the horrors of war raged, when in the year 1857, the English Generals Havelock, Sir James Outram, Sir Colin Campbell, Sir Hugh Rose, Sir John Lawrence, and Sir Robert Napier, crushed with pitiless severity the dangerous sepoy mutiny. East and West had, in gigantic struggles, fought together on this spot so full of legends, this the cradle of mankind. Hundreds of thousands of human lives had been sacrificed on this blood-drenched soil, and yet again was a decisive battle impending, destined to be engraved with a steel pencil on the tablets of the world’s history.

The movements of the Russian army had upset the plan of the English generals. The English corps which had collected at Mooltan were quickly pushed on to Lahore, as soon as the Russians’ intention to proceed to the south-east became clear. The time which General Ivanov required for concentrating his troops at Attock rendered it possible for the English to reach Lahore. Here their forces were considerably increased by the strong garrison, and each day new regiments came in from Delhi and Lucknow, which brought the strength of the army commanded by Sir Bindon Blood up to the number of one hundred thousand combatants.

The English prepared for a decisive battle, for already the head of the Russian columns was no further than ten English miles north of the mausoleum of the Emperor Jahangir at Shah Dara, a military station scarcely eight English miles north-west of Lahore.

The English troops advanced in their concentrated formation in single line; their left wing occupied the Shah Dara plantations and the pontoon bridge across the river Ravi that flows close to Lahore. It extended thence five English miles further eastwards to a canal which flows past the Shalimar Park towards the south. This park and a place called Bhogiwal, lying next to it, formed the right wing. Before their front stretched a tributary of the sinuous Ravi with its marshy banks. To the rear of their position lay the fortress of Lahore with its brick wall, fifteen feet in height, pierced by thirteen gates.

The Ravi, a tributary of the Indus, had at this time but little water. The bed of the river was for the most part dry, and only consisted of rapid, irregular rivulets, which here and there exposed between them larger and smaller, but for the most part, muddy islands. The bed of this river formed the chief obstacle to the Russian attack, for they had to pass it before reaching the English front and the city of Lahore.

Heideck occupied a small tent that he had brought with him from Chanidigot. Morar Gopal’s horse had carried it on its back during the march from Mooltan to Lahore, for the lancers, whom Heideck had joined as being a friend of their officers, had not covered the distance by railway. They were now encamped in the Shalimar Park, an extensive enclosure surrounded by a wall and full of the most beautiful mango trees, and among them many small fountains and pretty pavilions. As Heideck wore a khaki suit and a cork helmet, he looked, in spite of his having no distinctive military dress, quite like an English officer, the resemblance being increased by his martial bearing.

During the march and during his stay in the camp he had had an opportunity of closely observing the British system of campaigning. But he took good care not to mention it to the English officers, for they were not very favourable conclusions at which he had arrived. He had gained the impression that the troops were neither well led, nor displayed any special knowledge of campaigning. The men both in bivouac and in camp were often in want, and, indeed, frequently suffered real distress, because the necessary material was not always at hand, and their food was not regularly supplied; the greatest confusion reigned in the commissariat department.

Not alone there, but also in the tactical units serious confusion was everywhere apparent, in consequence of the unpractical and heterogeneous composition of the detachments. First of all, the regiments which were to make up the army corps in Peshawar and Quetta were all jumbled up together, because as soon as ever they appeared to be ready to march, they were separately taken away from their garrisons and placed upon the railway. Concentration upon Mooltan and the hurried march to Lahore had resulted in downright inextricable confusion.

Heideck found himself in the middle of an army which had never engaged in a great war and certainly never in one against regular troops. It is true that the English were accustomed to fighting, for they had been constantly obliged to measure themselves with barbarous and semibarbarous peoples. They had made expensive expeditions and gained dearly purchased victories; but it was always the undisciplined, dark-skinned, and black hordes with whom they had had to deal. The experiences of the Boer War had not entered into the flesh and blood of the troops. The personal bravery of the individual had almost always been regarded as the main thing, and it was easy to understand why all the officers should be puffed up with vanity. They looked down with contempt upon all foreigners, because they had, as a matter of fact, almost always gained their victories over superior numbers.

Heideck noticed with astonishment that the tactical rules and instructions in the British army were still often at variance with modern armament, particularly in the case of the infantry; volley firing was habitually employed as the general way of engaging the enemy. The men were drilled at the word of command to open and keep up a steady even fire and then in close ranks to rush with the bayonet on the enemy. This powerful nation was, in fact, too listless to utilise the most modern experiences of the science of war: proud Albion blindly believed everything English to be good and despised everything new and foreign. Or did the English perhaps only avoid advancing in loose order in action because they were afraid that they would otherwise not be able to control their Indian soldiers?

The environs of Lahore, particularly to the north of the city between the wall and the camp, presented a very lively scene. The innumerable camels which had served as baggage animals and formed the major portion of the transports afforded a very peculiar spectacle. They were either lying on the ground closely packed together or solemnly paced along, while the shrill yells of the drivers filled the air. Moreover, there was here congregated a huge crowd of men belonging to the army in one or other capacity without being combatants, and the eye fond of picturesque impressions could feast with delight on the gay, ever-changing kaleidoscopic effects of the wide plain; while the distant scenery was also interesting enough in itself. Between the widely scattered villages and suburbs of the city, which contained 180,000 inhabitants, beautiful parks and gardens shone in fresh green foliage, mostly surrounding the burial-place of a sultan or a famous Mohammedan saint. Towards the south-east there stretched away the great encampments of the cavalry and artillery in which were included many elephant batteries.

The city itself was choked full of military and the families of the officers. Almost all the women and children of the garrisons lying to the north-west of Lahore had fled here at the advance of the troops. Mrs. Baird, too, with her two little daughters and Mrs. Irwin were also in the city, where they were lodged in the Charing Cross Hotel. Although the city was packed to a most alarming degree and the military situation was decidedly critical, Heideck did not anywhere observe any particular excitement.

The English preserved their peculiarly calm demeanour, and the natives kept silence out of fear: upon the latter the fully unexpected and incomprehensible change in the situation had probably had a certain bewildering effect.

When Heideck, shortly before sunset, went from the camp to the city to visit the ladies, he only became more firmly convinced, as he passed through the surging crowd outside the walls, that the position of the army had been very badly selected. Far too large a number of men and animals had been crowded within a comparatively small space. If Russian shrapnel were to fall among this dense mass a terrible panic was inevitable. The proximity of the fortified city was sure to induce the soldiers to take refuge behind its walls. Heideck had hitherto not gained the impression that resolute courage was to be expected of the native soldiers. In the street which led from the Shalimar Park to the railway station in the suburb of Naulakha, Heideck had constantly to go out of his way to allow the long columns of heavily laden camels and ox-waggons which came towards him to pass, and he therefore took nearly two hours to reach his goal. The Charing Cross Hotel was full up to the attics, and the two ladies had, with the children, to be content with a small room on the third floor which had been let to them at an enormous price.

Mrs. Baird, a lady of small, delicate build, but of energetic spirits and genuine English pride, appeared perfectly collected and confident. She did not utter a single word about her own evidently very uncomfortable position and of the privations which, under the existing circumstances, her children had to suffer, but only about the victory of the British arms, that she was convinced would immediately take place. The march from Mooltan to Lahore was, in her eyes, an advance, and she did not entertain the smallest doubt that the Russian insolence would in a short time meet with terrible chastisement.

“It is terrible to think,” she said to Heideck, “that a nation that calls itself Christian should dare attack us in India. What was this unhappy land before we took pity on it? England has freed it from the hands of barbarous despots and brought it happiness! The Indian cities have grown in prosperity because our laws have paved the way for free development of commerce and intercourse. It is in the highest sense of the word a mission of civilisation that our nation has here fulfilled. If Heaven gives Russia the victory, this now so happy land will be hurled back into the blackness of barbarism.” She appeared to wait for a word of assent from Mrs. Irwin, but the latter sat in serious silence.

“You ought not to be so silent, dearest Edith, and ought not to pull such a melancholy face,” said the Colonel’s wife, turning to her with a gentle reproach. “I perfectly understand that the sad events of your private life are distressing you. But all personal sorrow should now be merged into the general grief. What is the fate of the individual, when his country is exposed to such danger? I know that you are as good a patriot as any Englishwoman, but it appears to me that it is necessary to prove it in these hours of danger. Anxiety and moroseness have at such times upon one’s surroundings the effect of a contagious disease.”

“But possibly I am not the good patriot you take me for.”

“Ah! What do you mean by that?”