CHAPTER XXIII.
A STRAY SHOT.
----A barren strand, A petty fortress and a dubious hand----
The expedition, though in no way distinguishable from twenty others, didnot prove such a mere promenade as Sutton had anticipated. The wholecountry-side was in a nasty, excitable mood. The news of Blunt'sinjudicious proceedings had spread far and wide, and the prospect ofendangered rights turned the wavering scale with wild clans, whoseloyalty at the best of times was anything but proof against a seemingdanger or a fancied wrong.
Every landholder whose title Blunt had impugned proved a centre ofdisaffection; and even where there was no reason for hostility theexample of unruliness was infectious. Many a stalwart hillsman, coercedfor years into uncongenial tranquillity, felt the old pulses throbwithin him, and his heart beating high at the prospect of a fight;unearthed some primitive weapon--sword or matchlock or lance--from itshiding-place beneath the floor of his hut, mounted on a wiry pony andmade his way over the mountains to the scene of action. Several moreoutrages, of which the District officers knew the significance too well,had already been reported. Everything predicted a storm, and a prettysevere one.
Indian life is like a strange, dark sea, full of invisible currents,strange tides, unsuspected and unexplained influences. The waters, whichlook so smooth and lifeless, may be stealing silently along and hurryingthe hapless vessel to its doom. Magnetic streams, inappreciable to thenicest scrutiny, pour this way or that and disturb the most accuratecalculations. Storms gather and lower and burst when all looks mostserene; a little cloud rises in the quarter where danger is leastexpected, and in a few minutes the ship is tossing, a crushed andstaggering wreck, in the midst of a tornado.
Just before the great outbreak of 1857 the ruler of India had occasionto remark on the absolute tranquillity of the Empire and on the peacefulprospects of a reign which stood, as the facts proved, on the verycrisis of its fate, and whose annals were presently to be written incharacters of blood. Men who live in such a world as this becomesensitive to its symptoms, and adept at interpreting them. Themagistrates knew well enough--they could scarcely have said why--thatmischief was at work. Police officers on remote stations wrote uneasilyand hinted at the advisability of reinforcements. Strange, weird beings,whose unkempt locks and half-crazy visages bespoke for them the_prestige_ of especial sanctity, thronged about the bazaars, the wells,the spreading tree where travellers halted for rest and talk. A famousFakir went through the District haranguing excited audiences on thekindred duties of piety and rebellion against an impious ruler. Then thefirst drops of the storm began to fall. One morning the collector of aneighbouring town was sitting in his verandah; in front a pair ofsaddled horses were being led up and down; by his side was a tea-table,with letters, business papers and the frugal repast which ushers in theIndian official's day. At his feet two little children sat at play. Frominside a lady's voice cried that she would be ready for a start in twominutes. Presently an animated bundle of rags, hair and dirt, camegrovelling up with a petition. The misery of the creature was itspassport, and the sentry who stood by, at a signal from the officer, letit pass. Then came a whining, rambling, unintelligible story ofgrievance; and then, as the listener's eye for a moment wandered fromthe speaker, a sudden rush--the flash of a concealed dagger--a groan--aheavy fall, and the Englishman lay dead on the ground with a cruelPathan knife-wound through his heart. The assassin stood fiercely atbar, exulting in his accomplished vow to slay a 'Feringhee,' and tryinghis best to stab the sentry who approached him. They cut him down as hestood; and before noon that day rumour had whispered in a hundredvillages that Allah's will had been done, and that the Jehad, or SacredWar, was forthwith to commence.
To strike quickly, effectually, and with an air of absolute confidencein the result, is in such cases the safest policy. A symptom ofhesitation, an hour's delay, would ensure disaster. The spark, which onemoment might be stamped under foot, the next would be a consuming fire,forbidding all approach.
Sutton's business was, he well understood, to teach these lawlessspirits (which no conqueror has ever yet succeeded in taming) a sternlesson of obedience, and to teach it them quickly, sharply, and in themode most likely to impress the popular imagination. If all went wellthe business would be over in a week, and the refractory clansmen ourgood friends and subjects till temper, forgetfulness, or an officialblunder produced another outburst. If things went ill--but this is acontingency upon which the administrators of British India cannot affordto calculate and which Sutton's temperament and good fortune alike hadlong accustomed him to ignore.
When he rode into the camp he found everything in readiness andeverybody in the highest spirits. Boldero had impressed a fine array ofcamels and bullock-carts, and had organised a commissariat train morethan sufficient for the wants of the expedition. The mule battery hadarrived in perfect order. The little knot of officers who were to jointhe expedition gave a hearty welcome to a leader whose very presenceseemed to them the best guarantee of success. In a minute the newsspread through the camp that the 'Colonel Sahib' had arrived, and themen, whom he had led so often to victory, glowed at the thought that thewell-loved and well-trusted leader was once again in the midst of themand that something stirring was certainly at hand. The little force wasto encamp that night at the bottom of the pass along which for the nexttwo days their route would lie; then they would come to a high leveltable-land, where the enemy was (so the scouts said) entrenched, andwhere the serious part of the business might be expected to begin.
Occasions such as these were the parts of Sutton's life in whichhitherto he had felt himself most at home, and which he had, in fact,enjoyed the most keenly. He had been very successful, and had, he knew,been not undeserving of success. This was the thing in life which hecould do pre-eminently well, and the doing it gave him a thrill ofpleasure, which lasted all through the duller parts of his existence.Yet now things seemed changed to him. He had looked forward to thisexpedition with enthusiasm; it had taken in every way the shape which hewished; and now, when the hour was come, it had brought no sense ofpleasure with it. Sutton was startled at his own lack of zeal. The ladswho were having their first apprenticeship in actual soldiering, were,he felt, far more soldier-like about it than he was. He could not sleepthat night, and strolled about the camp amid all the old accustomedsights and sounds; the long array of human sleeping forms, each onemotionless and corpse-like; the lines of tethered horses; the sentinelspacing stolidly up and down and challenging the passer-by in the still,clear air; the bullocks encamped by their carts, serenely chewingthrough the peaceful hours undisturbed by the thought of pokes andshoves which awaited them on the morrow. It was all very familiar, andbrought back many a like occasion of former years; and yet there was,Sutton knew, a difference: the world was no longer the same; a newcurrent of thought and feeling had set in and disturbed all the oldassociations. His afternoon ride had metamorphosed his entire being.Maud's sweet impassioned air as she had wished him farewell; herserious, soft, pathetic tones; her last look as she turned to go, thesort of earnest rapture which her eyes bespoke; the unspoken pledgewhich had been exchanged between them; these were the matters whichpreoccupied his thoughts and left but scant room in them for thebusiness which he had in hand. He found himself, accordingly,uninterested, unenthusiastic, and, for the first time in his life,completely sceptical as to the usefulness of his employment. Every man,philosophers tell us, is seized at some period of his career with amisgiving as to whether his life-task is not a delusion. Is it worth thelong, painful endeavour, the patient waiting, the resolute hopefulnesswhich a successful career demands? Life seems, as it did to the sailorsof Ulysses, a wearisome, endless affair,
For ever climbing up the climbing wave;
Is it certain that the end for which we struggle so earnestly is goodfor ourselves or for any one? Sutton had such a mood just now strongupon him. He had been all his life soldiering; a hundred time-honouredphrases had declared it the finest profes
sion in the world; but what didit come to? To be chasing a pack of lawless savages about a countryscarcely less savage than themselves, and inflicting a chastisementwhich no one supposed would be more than temporarily effectual. To drilla handful of freebooters into something sufficiently like discipline torender them effectual as an instrument of destruction; to march up apass and stamp out the first germs of civilised life by burning a fewwretched crops and crumbling hovels; to fire at an enemy always well outof reach, and then march down again; what was there in all this todeserve the thought, the devotion, the sacrifice of life itself, whichmen so freely gave in its pursuit? Had not life something better worthliving for than this? Were not the civilians right who sneered atsoldiering as a meet occupation for brainless heads and hands for which,if not kept thus wholesomely employed, Satan was sure to find some lessdesirable occupation? Thus it came to pass that of all the men whomarched in the expedition its leader was the one who was least in lovewith it.
Two days later Sutton had warmed into his work and was in betterspirits. The march had been delightful. The splendid military road,which coiled in and out among the folds of the mountain, robbed thejourney alike of anxiety and fatigue. Nothing gives a pleasanter senseof power and triumph over nature than these great engineering exploits.You canter along a splendid road with easy gradients, a scarcelyperceptible ascent; there is a precipice above, a precipice below, andno spot anywhere on which, till the hand of science came to make it, ahuman foot could rest. Every now and then a distant vista reminds youthat you are climbing some of the wildest and steepest hill sides in theworld. The mountaineers may well cower and fly before a foe who beginswith so impressive an achievement, and who cuts his way--resistless asfate itself--across the rocky brow of barriers which it seems half-mad,half-impious to try to scale.
The expedition, Sutton found, was in every way complete. His ownregiment was always ready to march at twenty minutes' notice, and theGeneral at Dustypore seemed to have been equally well prepared. The air,despite the hot sun, was fresh and exhilarating; the men were in thevery mood for brilliant service. Besides, a peasant who had just beenbrought in from the district told them that, ten miles across the plainwhich now stretched away in gentle undulations before them, the enemywas entrenched in strength and intended to show fight. The village hadbeen fortified, the man said, with a wall of earth and stones, and thefighters would be found behind it.
'Then, gentlemen,' cried Sutton, who was standing with a knot ofofficers at his tent door when the news arrived, 'I propose that weattack them to-night. If we let them have a day to do it in, thesescoundrels will give us the slip.'
In half an hour the whole force was on the march. The day wasdelightfully fresh; the mountain-mists gathered overhead and formed awelcome shelter from the blazing sky. Sutton had his troopers on eitherflank; then came the tiny battery, looking more like playthings than thegrim realities the Armstrongs proved; in the midst of a long line ofNative Infantry. The men marched with a will and with the excitingconsciousness that in the afternoon there was to be a fight. At noon,when there was a halt to rest the force, the outline of the village wallmight be clearly seen, and those who had telescopes could make out anoccasional figure creeping stealthily about. There was a little risingground some half-mile from the village, and here Sutton determined toestablish his battery. The tiny telescope-like tubes soon did theirwork, and the main gate of the village fell inwards with a crash; themud wall crumbled and fell wherever it was touched, and a thick cloud ofdust showed where each ball had lodged. In ten minutes the village wasin flames, and Sutton's little army was advancing on it at a run.Presently they got within musket-shot, and bullet after bullet camesinging through the air. Sutton was riding, with a trumpeter on theright, half-a-dozen yards in advance of his men; the ground, though firmand safe, grew rougher as they neared the village; and the troops' linewas somewhat broken. By this time they could make out the mud wall whichhad been thrown up in front of the village and measure the paces betweenit and them. It was a mere nothing, but the men were going at it fasterthan they should. Two horses were struck and fell heavily just as theirriders were pulling them together for the jump. Half-a-dozen morerefused: then came the usual scene of rearing, plunging, and dismountedmen. There was an instant's check, but only an instant's, for Sutton andthe trumpeter were over, and the first dozen men who followed them hadknocked the wall level with the ground. Sutton had speedily disposed oftwo of the hillsmen, who fired their pistols in his face and made at himwith their swords; and had galloped up to help the trumpeter, who washaving a hard time of it with a Sawar, mounted on a nimble little horseand evidently a competent and practised swordsman. The man turned on hisnoble antagonist and made a cut which left a deep dent on Sutton'ssword-handle. The native had, however, met with more than his match. Theothers got over just in time to see Sutton cut him down, and his horsegallop wildly off with an empty saddle. The men gave a shout andgalloped forward. Then some one from a neighbouring window took a luckyshot. Sutton was at the moment giving an order and pointing with hissword in the direction indicated. His sword flew out of his hand, hisarm fell powerless, and his horse, rearing up, fell back upon him. Hisnative aide-de-camp dragged him out from under the horse, which waslying shot through the heart across him. Half-a-dozen men carried him tothe rear. Ten minutes later, when the village had been cleared and thetroop returned from the pursuit, they found him lying in a crimson pool,insensible, with a broken arm and a bullet-wound in his side, the redstream from which the surgeon, kneeling beside him, was endeavouring invain to staunch.