On the Face of the Waters

BOOK III
CHAPTER V

SUNSET.

"What's that?"

The question sprung to every lip; yet all knew the answer. The magazine had saved itself.

But in the main-guard, not six hundred yards off, where the very ground rocked and the walls shook, the men and women, pent up since noon, looked at each other when the first shock was over, feeling that here was the end of inaction. Here was a distinct, definite challenge to Fate, and what would come of it? It was now close on to four o'clock; the day was over, the darkness at hand. What would it bring them? If Meerut, with its two thousand, was so sore bested that it could not spare one man to Delhi, what could they, a mere handful, hope for save annihilation?

Yet even Mrs. Seymour only clasped her baby closer, and said nothing. For there was no lack of courage anywhere. And Kate, with another child in her arms, paused as she laid it down, asleep at last, upon an officer's coat, to feel a certain relief. If they were to fare thus, that bitter self-reproach and agonizing doubt for vanished Sonny was unavailing. His chance might well be better than theirs.

Well indeed, pent up as they were cheek-by-jowl with four hundred unstable sepoys, and with the ominously rising hum of the unstable city on their unprotected rear. Up on the Flagstaff Tower crowning the extreme northern end of the Ridge, away from this hum, where Brigadier Graves had gathered together the remaining women and children, so as to guard them as best he could with such troops as he had remaining—many of them too unstable to be trusted cityward—they were in better plight. For they had the open country round them—a country where folk could still go and come with a fair chance of safety, since even the predatory tribes, always ready to take advantage of disorder, were still waiting to see what master the day would bring forth. And they had also the knowledge that something was being done, that they were not absolutely passive in the hands of Fate, after Dr. Batson started in disguise to summon that aid from Meerut which would not come of itself. Above all, they had the decision, they had the power to act; while down in the main-guard they could but obey orders. Not that the Flagstaff Tower did much with this advantage; for it was paralyzed by that straining of the eyes for a cloud of dust upon the Meerut road which was the damnation of Delhi. Yet even here that decisive roar, that corona of red dust brightening every instant as the sun dipped to the horizon, brought the conviction that something must be done at last. But what? Hampered by women and children, what could they do? If, earlier in the day, they had sent all the non-combatants off toward Kurnal or Meerut, with as many faithful sepoys as they could spare, arming everybody from the arsenal down by the river, they would have been free to make some forlorn hope—free, for instance, to go down en-masse to the main-guard and hold it, if they could. That was what one man thought, who, seven miles out from Delhi—returning from a reconnaissance of his own to see if help were on the way—saw that little puff of smoke, heard the roar, and watched the red corona grow to brightness.

But on the Ridge, men thought differently. The claims of those patient women and children seemed paramount, and so it was decided to get back the guns from the main-guard as a first step toward intrenching themselves for the night at the tower. But the men in the main-guard looked at each other in doubt when the order reached them. Was the garrison going to be withdrawn altogether, leaving merely a forlorn hope to keep the gate closed as long as possible against the outburst of rabble, to whom it would be the natural and shortest route to cantonments? If so, surely it would have been better to send the women away first? Still the orders were clear, and so the gate was set wide and the guns rumbled over the drawbridge under escort of a guard of the 38th. That, at any rate, was good riddance of bad rubbish; though the wisdom of sending the guns in such charge was doubtful. Yet how could the little garrison have afforded to give up a single man even of the still loyal 74th?—a company of whom had actually followed their captain to the ruins of the magazine to see if they could do anything, and returned, without a defaulter, to say that all was confusion—the dead lying about in hundreds, the enemy nowhere.

"How did the men behave, Gordon?" asked their commandant anxiously, getting his Captain into a quiet corner. And the two men, both beloved of their regiment, both believing in it, both with a fierce, wild hope in their hearts that such belief would be justified, looked into each other's faces for a moment in silence. There was a shadowing branch of neem overhead as they stood in the sunlight. A squirrel upon it was chippering at the glitter of their buckles; a kite overhead was watching the squirrel.

"I think they hesitated, sir," said Captain Gordon quietly.

Major Abbott turned hastily, and looked through the open gate, past the lumbering guns, to the open country lying peaceful, absolutely peaceful, beyond. If he could only have got his men there—away from the disloyalty of the 38th guard, the sullen silence of the 54th—if he could only have given them something to do! If he could only have said "Follow me!" they would have followed.

And Kate Erlton, who, weary of the deadly inaction in the room above, had drifted down to the courtyard, stood close to the archway looking through it also, thinking, not for the first time that weary day, of Alice Gissing's swift, heroic death with envy. It was something to die so that brave men turned away without a word when they heard of it. But as she thought this, the look on young Mainwaring's face as he stood with others listening to her story, came back to her. It had haunted her all day, and more than once she had sought him out, not for condolence—he was beyond that—but for a trivial word or two; just a human word or two to show him remembered by the living. And now the impulse came to her again, and she drifted back—for there was no hurry in that deadly, deadly inaction—to find him leaning listlessly against a wall digging holes in the dry dust idly with the point of his drawn sword for want of something better whereupon to use it. Such a young face, she thought, to be so old in its chill anger and despair! She went over to him swiftly, her reserve gone, and laid her hand upon his holding the sword.

"Don't fret so, dear boy," she said, and the fine curves of her mouth quivered. "She is at peace."

He looked at her in a blaze of fierce reproach. "At peace! How dare you say so? How dare you think so—when she lies—there."

He paused, impotent for speech before his unbridled hatred, then strode away indignantly from her pity, her consolation. And as she looked after him her own gentler nature was conscious of a pride, almost a pleasure in the thought of the revenge which would surely be taken sooner or later, by such as he, for every woman, every child killed, wounded—even touched. She was conscious of it, even though she stood aghast before a vision of the years stretching away into an eternity of division and mutual hate.

A fresh stir at the gate roused her, a quick stir among a group of senior officers, recruited now by two juniors who had earned their right to have their say in any council of war. These were two artillery subalterns, begrimed from head to foot, deafened, disfigured, hardly believing in their own safety as yet. Looking at each other queerly, wondering if indeed they could be the Head-of-the-nine and his second in command, escaped by a miracle through the sally port in the outer wall of the magazine, and so come back by the drawbridge, as Kate Erlton had come, to join the refugees in the main-guard. Was it possible? And—and—what would the world say? That thought must have been in their minds. And, no doubt, a vain regret that they were under orders now, as they listened while Major Abbott read out those just received from cantonments. Briefly, to take back the whole of the loyal 74th and leave the post to the 38th and the 54th—about a hundred and fifty openly disloyal men.

A sort of stunned silence fell on the little group, till Major Paterson of the 54th said quietly, officially to Major Abbott. "If you leave, sir, I shall have to abandon the post; I could not possibly hold it. Some of my men who have returned to the colors here might possibly fight were we to stick together. But with retreat, and the example of the 38th before them, they would not. I have, or I should have, lives in my charge when you are gone, and I warn you that I must use my own discretion in doing the best I can to protect them."

"Paterson is right, Abbott," put in the civil officer, who had stuck to his charge of the Treasury all day, and repelled the only attack made by the enemy during all those long hours. "If I am to do any good, I must have men who will fight. I don't trust the 54th; and the 38th are clearly just biding their time. This retreat might have done six hours ago—might do now if it were general; but I doubt it."

"Anyhow," put in another voice, "if the 74th are to go, they should take the women with them—they couldn't fare worse than they are sure to do here. I don't think the Brigadier can realize——"

"Couldn't you refer it?" asked someone; but the Major shook his head. The orders were clear; no doubt there was good cause for them. Anyhow they must be obeyed.

"Then as civil officer in charge of the Government Treasury, I ask for quarter-of-an-hour's law. If by then——"

The eager voice paused. Whether the owner thought once more of that expected cloud of dust, or whether he meant to gallop to cantonments in hope of getting the order rescinded is doubtful. Whether he went or stayed doubtful also. But the fifteen minutes of respite were given, during which the preparations for departure went on, the men of the 38th aiding in them with a new alacrity. Their time had come. Only a few minutes now before the last fear of a hand-to-hand fight would be over, the last chance of the master turning and rending them gone. It lingered a bit, though, for rumbling wheels came over the drawbridge once more, and voices clamored to be let in. The guns had returned. The gunners had deserted, said the escort insolently, and guns being in such case useless, they had preferred to rejoin their brethren; as for their officer, he had preferred to go on.

Kate Erlton, drawn from the inner room once again by the creaking of the gates, saw a look pass between one or two of the officers. And there stood the 74th, smart and steady, waiting for marching orders. No need to close the gates again, since time was up; the fifteen minutes had slipped by, bringing no help, just as the long hours had dragged by uselessly. So the gate stood open to the familiar, friendly landscape, all aglow with the rays of the setting sun. Close at hand, within a stone's throw, lay the tall trees and dense flowering thickets of the Koodsia gardens, where fugitives might have found cover. To the left were the ravines and rocks of the Ridge, fatal to mounted pursuit, and in the center lay the road northward, leading straight to the Punjab, straight from that increasing roar of the city. There had been no attack as yet; but every soul within the main-guard knew for a certainty that the first hint of retreat would bring it.

How could it do otherwise? The decisive answer of the magazine, with its thousand-and-odd good reasons against the belief that the master was helpless, had died away. The refuse and rabble of the city had ceased to wander awestruck among the ruins, murmuring, "What tyranny is here?"—that passive, resigned comment of the weaker brother in India. In the Palace, too, they had recovered the shock of the mean trick of the Nine, who, however, must, thank Heaven, be all dead too.

So as the gate stood open, and the sun streamed through it into the wide courtyard, glinting on the buckles and bayonets, Major Abbott's voice rose quietly. "Are you ready, Gordon?" The drawbridge was clear of the guns now, clear of everything save the slant shadows.

"All ready, sir," came the quiet reply.

"Number!" called the Commandant, but a voice at his right hand pleaded swiftly. "Don't wait for sections, Huzoor! Let us go!" And another at his left whispered, "For God's sake, Huzoor! quick; get them out quick!"

Major Abbott hesitated a second, only a second. The voices were the voices of good men and true, whom he could trust. "Fours about! Quick march!" he corrected, and a sort of sigh of relief ran down the regiment as it swung into position and the feet started rhythmically. Action at last!—at long last!

"Good-by, old chap," said someone cheerfully, but Major Abbott did not turn. "Good-by! Good-by!" came voices all round; steady, quiet voices, as the disciplined tramp echoed on the drawbridge, and a bar of scarlet coats grew on the rise of the white road outside.

"Good-by, Gordon! Good-by!"

The tall figure in its red and gold was under the very arch, shining, glittering in the sunlight streaming through it. Another step or two and he would have been beyond it. But the time for good-by had come. The time for which the 38th had been waiting all day. He threw up his arms and fell dead from his horse without a cry, shot through the heart. The next instant the gate was closed, its creaking smothered in the wild, senseless cry "To kill, to kill, to kill," in a wild, senseless rattle of musketry. For there was really no hurry; the handful of Englishmen were helpless. Major Abbott and his men might clamor for re-entry at the gate if they chose. They could not get in. Nor could the remnant of the 74th, deprived of its loyal companions, of the only two men who seemed to have controlled it, do anything. And the 54th were helpless also by their own act; for they had pushed Major Paterson through the gate before it closed.

So there was no one left even to try and stem the tide. No one to check that beast-like cry.

"Mâro! Mâro! Mâro!"

But, in truth, it would have been a hopeless task. The game was up; the only chance was flight. And two, foreseeing this for the last hour, had already made good theirs by jumping from an embrasure in the rampart into the ditch, while one, uninjured by the fall, had scrambled up the counter-scarp, and was running like a hare for those same thickets of the Koodsia.

"Come on! Come on!" cried others, seeing their success. And then? And then the cries and piteous screams of women reminded them of something dearer than life, and they ran back under a hail of bullets to that upper room which they had forgotten for the moment. And somehow, despite the cry of kill, despite the whistling bullets, they managed to drag its inmates to the embrasure. But—oh! pathos and bathos of poor humanity! making smiles and tears come together—the women who had stared death in the face all day without a wink, stood terrified before a twenty-feet scramble with a rope of belts and handkerchiefs to help them. It needed a round shot to come whizzing a message of certain death over their heads to give them back a courage which never failed again in the long days of wandering and desperate need which was theirs ere some of them reached safety.

But Kate neither hesitated nor jumped. She had not the chance of doing either. For that longing look of hers through the open gates had tempted her to creep along the wall nearer to them; so that the rush to close them jammed her into a corner against a door, which yielded slightly to her weight. Quick enough to grasp her imminent danger, she stooped instantly to see if the door could be made to yield further. And that stoop saved her life, by hiding her from view behind the crowd. The next moment she had pushed aside a log which had evidently rolled from some pile within, and slipped sideways into a dark outhouse. She was safe so far. But was it worth it? The impulse to go out again and brave merciful death rose keen, until with a flash, the memory of that escape through the crowd came back to her; she seemed to hear the changing ready voice of the man who held her, to feel his quick instinctive grip on every chance of life.

Chance! There was a spell in the very word. A minute after logs jammed the door again, and even had it been set wide, none would have guessed that a woman, full of courage, ay! and hope, crouched behind the piles of brushwood. So she lay hidden, her strongest emotion, strange to say, being a raging curiosity to know what had become of the others, what was passing outside. But she could hear nothing save confused yells, with every now and again a dominant cry of "Deen! Deen!" or "Jai Kali ma!" For faith is one of the two great passions which make men militant, The other, sex. But as a rule it has no cry; it fights silently, giving and asking no words—only works.

So fought young Mainwaring, who, with his back to that same wall against which Kate had found him leaning, was using his sword to a better purpose than digging holes in the dust; or rather had adopted a new method of doing the task. He had not tried to escape as the others had done; not from superior courage, but because he never even thought of it. When he was free to choose, how could he think of leaving those devils unpunished, leaving them unchecked to touch her dead body, while he lived? He gave a little faint sob of sheer satisfaction as he felt the first soft resistance, which meant that his sword had cut into flesh and blood; for all his vigorous young life made for death, nothing but death. Was not she dead yonder?

So, after a bit, it seemed to him there was too little of it there—that it came slowly, with his back to the wall and only those who cared to go for him within reach—for the crowd was dense, too dense for loading and firing. Dense with a hustling, horrified wonder, a confused prodding of bayonets. So, without a sound, he charged ahead, hacking, hewing, never pausing, not even making for freedom, but going for the thickest silently.

"Amuk! Sayia! A-muk!" The yell that he was mad, possessed, rang hideously as men tumbled over each other in their hurry to escape, their hurry to have at this wild beast, this devil, this horror. And they were right. He was possessed. He was life instinct with death; filled with but one desire—to kill, or to be killed quickly.

"Saiya! Amuk! Saiya!—out of his way—out of his way! Amuk! Saiya! Fate is with him! The gods are with him. Saiya! Amuk!"

So, by chance, not method; so by sheer terror as well as hacking and hewing, the tall figure found itself, with but a stagger or two, outside the wooden gates, out on the city road, out among the gardens and the green trees. And then, "Hip, hip, hurray!" His ringing cheer rose with a sort of laugh in it. For yonder was her house!—her house!

"Hip, hip, hurray!" As he ran, as he had run in races at school, his young face glad, the fingers on the triggers behind him wavered in sheer superstitious funk, and two troopers coming down the road wheeled back as from a mad dog. The scarlet coat with its gold epaulettes went crashing into a group red-handed with their spoil, out of it impartially into a knot of terrified bystanders, while down the lane left behind it by the hacking and hewing came bullet after bullet; the fingers on the triggers wavered, but some found a billet. One badly. He stumbled in the dust and his left arm fell oddly. But the right still hacked and hewed as he ran, though the crowd lessened; though it grew thin, too thin for his purpose; or else his sight was failing. But there, to the right, the devils seemed thicker again. "Hip, hip, hooray!" No! trees. Only trees to hew—a garden—perhaps the garden about her house—then, "Hip, hip——"

He fell headlong on his face, biting the soft earth in sheer despite as he fell.

"Don't touch him, brothers!" said one of the two or three who had followed at a distance, as they might have followed a mad dog, which they hoped others would meet and kill. "Provoke him not, or the demon possessing him may possess us. 'Tis never safe to touch till they have been dead a watch. Then the poison leaves them. Krishnjee, save us! Saw you how he turned our lead?"

"He has eaten mine, I'll swear," put in another sepoy boastfully, pointing gingerly with his booted foot to a round scorched hole in the red coat. "The muzzle was against him as I fired."

"And mine shall be his portion too," broke in a new arrival breathlessly, preparing to fire at the prostrate foe; but the first speaker knocked aside the barrel with an oath.

"Not while I stand by, since devils choose the best men. As 'tis, having women in our houses 'twere best to take precautions." He stooped down as he spoke, and muttering spells the while, raised a little heap of dust at the lad's head and feet and outstretched arms—a little cross of dust, as it were, on which the young body lay impaled.

"What is't?" asked a haughty-looking native officer, pausing as he rode by.

"'Tis a hell-doomed who went possessed, and Dittu makes spells to keep him dead," said one.

"Fool!" muttered the man. "He was drunk, likely. They get like that, the cursed ones, when they take wine." And he spat piously on the red coat as he passed on. So they left the lad there lying face down in the growing gloom, hedged round by spells to keep him from harming women. Left him for dead.

But the scoffer had been right. He was drunk, but with the Elixir of Life and Love which holds a soul captive from the clasp of Death for a space. So, after a time, the cross of dust gave up its victim; he staggered to his feet again; and so, tumbling, falling, rising to fall again, he made his way to the haven where he would be, to the side of a dead woman.

And the birds, startled from their roosting-places by the stumbling, falling figure, waited, fluttering over the topmost branches for it to pass, or paused among them to fill up the time with a last twittering song of goodnight to the day; for the sun still lingered in the heat-haze on the horizon as if loath to take its glow from that corona of red dust above the northern wall of Delhi, mute sign of the only protest made as yet by the master against mutiny.

And now he had left the city to its own devices. The rebels were free to do as they liked. The three thousand disciplined soldiers, more or less, might have marched out, had they chose, and annihilated the handful of loyal men about the Flagstaff Tower. But it was sunset—sunset in Rumzân. And the eyes of thousands, deprived even of a drop of water since dawn, were watching the red globe sink in the West, hungrily, thirstily; their ears were attuned but to one sound—the firework signal from the big mosque that the day's fast was over. The very children on the roofs were watching, listening, so as to send the joyful news that day was done, in shrill voices to their elders below, waiting with their water-pots ready in their hands.

Then, in good truth, there was no set purpose from one end of the city to another. From the Palace to the meanest brothel which had belched forth its vilest to swell the tide of sheer rascality which had ebbed and flowed all day, the one thought was still, "What does it mean? How long will it last? Where is the master?"

So men ate and drank their fill first, then looked at each other almost suspiciously, and drifted away to do what pleased them best. Some to the Palace to swell the turmoil of bellicose loyalty to the King—loyalty which sounded unreal, almost ridiculous, even as it was spoken. Others to plunder while they could. The bungalows had long since been rifled, the very church bells thrown down and broken; for the time had been ample even for wanton destruction. But the city remained. And while shops were being looted inside, the dispossessed Goojurs were busy over Metcalfe House, tearing up the very books in their revenge. The Flagstaff Tower lay not a mile away, almost helpless against attack. But there was no stomach for cold steel in Delhi on the 11th of May, 1857. No stomach for anything except safe murder, safe pillaging. Least of all was it to be found in the Palace, where men had given the rein to everything they possessed—to their emotions, their horses, their passions, their aspirations. Stabling some in the King's gardens, some in dream-palaces, some in pigstyes of sheer brutality. Weeping maudlin tears over heaven-sent success, and boasting of their own prowess in the same breath; squabbling insanely over the partition of coming honors and emoluments.

Abool-Bukr, drunk as a lord, lurched about asserting his intention of being Inspector-General of the King's cavalry, and not leaving man, woman, or child of the hell-doomed alive in India. For he had been right when he had warned Newâsi to leave him to his own life, his own death; when he had shrunk from the inherited bloodstains on his hands, the inherited tinder in his breast. It had caught fire with the first spark, and there was fresh blood on his hands: the blood of a Eurasian boy who had tried to defend his sister from drunken kisses. Someone in the melée had killed the girl and finished the boy: the Prince himself being saved from greater crime by tumbling into the gutter and setting his nose a-bleeding, a catastrophe which had sent him back to the Palace partially sobered.

But Princess Farkhoonda Zamâni, safe housed in the rooms kept for honored visitors, knew nothing of this, knew little even of the disturbances; for she had been a close prisoner since noon—a prisoner with servants who would answer no questions, with trays of jewels and dresses as if she had been a bride. She sat in a flutter, trying to piece out the reason for this kidnaping. Was she to be married by force to some royal nominee? But why to-day? Why in all this turmoil, unless she was required as a bribe. The arch-plotter was capable of that. But who? One thing was certain, Abool-Bukr could know nothing of this—he would not dare—and suddenly the hot blood tingled through every vein as she lay all unconsciously enjoying the return to the easeful idleness and luxury she had renounced. But if he did dare? if it was not mere anger which brought bewilderment to heart and brain, as she hid her face from the dim light which filtered in through the lattice—the dim, scented, voluptuous light from which she had fled once to purer air?

And not a hundred yards away from where she was trying to steady her bounding pulse, Abool-Bukr himself was bawling away at his favorite love-song to a circle of intimates, all of whom he had already provided with places on the civil list. His head was full of promises, his skin as full of wine as it could be, and he not be a mere wastrel unable to enjoy life. For Abool-Bukr gave care to this; since to be dead drunk was sheer loss of time.

Here his effort to combine gesture with song nearly caused him to fall off the steps, and roused a roar of laughter from some sepoys bivouacking under the trees hard by. But Mirza Moghul, passing hastily to an audience with the King, frowned. To-day, when none knew what might come, the Queen might have her way so far; but this idle drunkard must be got rid of soon. He would offend the pious to begin with, and then he could not be trusted. Who could trust a man who had been known to lure back his hawk because a bird's gay feathers shone in the sunshine?

But Ahsan-Oolah, dismissed from feeling the royal pulse once more, by the Mirza's audience, paused as he passed to recommend a cooling draught if the Inspector-General of Cavalry wanted to keep his head clear. It was the physician's panacea for excitement of all kinds. But an exhibition of steel would have done better on the 11th of May.

There was no one, however, to administer it to Delhi, and even the refugees in the Flagstaff Tower were beginning to give up hope of its arriving from Meerut. Those in the storehouse at Duryagunj still clung to the belief that succor must come somehow; but Kate Erlton, behind the wood-pile, knew that her hope lay only in herself.

For how could Jim Douglas, as he more than once passed through the now open and almost deserted Cashmere gate, in the hope, or rather the fear, of finding some trace of her, know that she was hidden within a few yards of him? or, how could she distinguish the sound of his horse's hoofs from the hundreds which passed?

She must have escaped with the others, he concluded, as he galloped toward the cantonments to see if she were there. But she was not. He had failed again, he told himself; failed through no fault of his own; for who could have foretold that madness of retreat from the gate?

So now, there was nothing to be done in Delhi save gather what information he could, give decent burial—if he could—to Alice Gissing's body, and, if no troops arrived before dawn, leave the city.

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