Barclay of the Guides

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND

  The Fight of Bakr-Id

  It was Bakr-Id, the great day of Mohammedan sacrifice. Before dawn themaulavis and mullahs were busy with their preparations for theceremonies of their religion. From early morning the streets werethronged with the faithful; green turbans and green flags wereeverywhere seen; long-bearded preachers, in the mosques and the bazars,and at the corners of the streets, harangued the people, promising thesupreme joys of Paradise for all who should celebrate this great day bywielding the sword against the infidel; and hundreds of fanatics rangedthe town, shrieking their battle-cry, "Din! Din!" Even the king's edictthat, in deference to the prejudices of the Brahmins and Rajputs whoformed a large proportion of the sepoy army, no bulls should be slain onthis day, but only goats--even this was but a trifling check upon theenthusiasm; for the Feringhis would be utterly annihilated, and thengood Mohammedans could work their will on the Hindus, whom they hatedlittle less.

  The king held his usual darbar, and then went in solemn procession withhis courtiers to the Idgah, where with his own hands he sacrificed agoat. And having distributed new suits of clothing and strings of jewelsto the maulavis of the mosque, he returned to the palace, where heemployed himself in composing verses for the encouragement of BakhtKhan:

  "This day may all the foes of the Holy Faith be slain; Cut the Feringhis down, as the woodman fells the tree: Smite with the edge of the sword; spare not, nor refrain; And celebrate this festal day with martial ecstasy."

  While the doddering old king was wrestling with his metres, thecommander-in-chief, true to the compact made the previous night, washaving an interview with Rahmut Khan. He had summoned the old chief tohis presence, and found the conversation more amusing than he hadexpected. He began by complimenting Rahmut on his well-known prowess,and went on to say that in some quarters doubt had been thrown both uponhis military skill and his loyalty--doubt which, Bakht Khan was carefulto explain, he did not share. But since it was well to silence thesesceptics, and since, moreover, Rahmut Khan had not yet proved himself infight with the English, he was required to take part in the greatassault that was arranged for the coming night, and to lead his menagainst the breastworks of the Ridge. The particular duty assigned tohim was to drive the English from a position they had newly taken upless than half-a-mile from the Mori gate.

  Now Rahmut Khan, though he had not the cunning and capacity for intrigueof his rival, the whilom chief of Mandan, was not at all lacking inmother wit. He knew the source of this suspicion of which Bakht Khanspoke, and was prepared to meet it.

  "I am thy servant, Bakht Khan," he said. "No one is more ready than I tofight the Feringhis; have I not suffered at their hands? But, if thefavour may with humility be asked, I would beg two boons."

  "Say on. Thy humility is no less than thy valour."

  "The first of these boons is this. As thou knowest, my band of men is ofnew growth: they are all valiant fighters, but men I have gathered hereand there, as Allah gave me means. Wherefore they are not skilled in thewarfare of the sepoys, and in their ignorance may fall into error unlessthey have the fellowship of some who know the discipline of theFeringhis. I ask, then, that trained men may be sent with me--such men,to wit, as are commanded by my countryman, Minghal Khan. He burns, Idoubt not, as I myself, to strike a blow against the English; for, ifreport speak truly, fortune has given him few opportunities hitherto.That is my boon."

  Bakht Khan laughed heartily. The suggestion tickled his sense of humour.He was in no doubt as to the intention underlying it, and was notdisinclined to play off one Pathan against the other. He did not admireMinghal Khan, but he had found him useful in many ways, especiallythrough his connection with the great Maulavi. As time went on, he hadgrown more and more impatient of the drones in Delhi. With half thecourage and _esprit de corps_ that animated the English, his force couldhave carried the Ridge long ago. And among these drones Minghal Khan wasone of the worst. He had always some ingenious way of shirking activeservice. Rahmut Khan's suggestion offered him a chance too good to bemissed.

  "Thou art great in wisdom," he said. "It shall be even as thou dostdesire. And thy second boon--what is it?"

  "It is simply, excellent one, that while I am absent fighting theEnglish, thou wilt set a guard over the little serai where we dwell. Ourgoods are but scanty and of little worth; but they are our all, and itwould be hard indeed if, when we return from our glorious service, wefind them gone. Thou knowest well there are badmashes in the city."

  Again the commander-in-chief laughed.

  "Why, friend Asadullah," he said; "did I not hear that in that littleserai of yours there is much treasure--gotten, moreover, from othersbesides the Feringhis? Surely I will set a guard over it: thou shalt notbe robbed of the little thou hast. Better were it if thou had nothing;for is it not the empty traveller that dances before robbers?"

  Rahmut went away well satisfied. Minghal was in a very different casewhen he too had had an interview with the commander-in-chief. Not a wordwas said by Bakht Khan to show that the duty he laid upon Minghal hadbeen suggested by his enemy and rival; he rather hinted that his designwas to learn from Minghal how the old chief comported himself in thefight. Minghal had, perforce, to acquiesce in the arrangement; hisposition was not so secure that he could afford to show open reluctanceto meet the enemy. Their orders were to lead an attack on the breastworkbefore the Mori gate, and then, having succeeded in that task, to workround on two sides to the ruined mosque that stood a little nearer theRidge, and slaughter all the enemy they found there.

  The attack was to be made after nightfall. Rahmut knew nothing of theground between the city walls and the breastwork, and in the afternoonhe went out with one of his men to reconnoitre. Both were mounted, andsince the ground was covered with gardens which would give them cover,they ventured to ride a good distance in the direction of the goal ofthe night's operations.

  All at once Rahmut caught sight of a man a little ahead of them, dodgingamong the trees in a stealthy manner, that suggested a keen desire toavoid observation. Rahmut was a born scout, and, without appearing tosee the man, he kept him well in view, until convinced that he wasmaking for the British lines. Then he gave chase suddenly, and the man,though he ran hard, was soon overtaken. Hauling him to the shade of sometrees, Rahmut questioned his trembling captive, and was not long inwresting from him a confession that he was indeed on his way to theRidge to give warning of the night attack.

  Rahmut had been rendered suspicious by his recent experiences in Delhi.He was not satisfied with a general statement, but pressed the man for aprecise account of his errand, and he was not greatly surprised when itcame out that the informer had been sent by Minghal Khan himself, andthat the important part of his message was the disclosure of the exactquarter on which Rahmut's attack was to be made. It was just what mighthave been expected of Minghal, as indeed of any other Pathan whohappened to bear a grudge against a fellow-countryman.

  Rahmut lost little time in arranging to counter this cunning move of hisenemy. He took the messenger back into Delhi, the man believing that hewould be handed over to the Kotwal for hanging. But Rahmut made the mantake him to his own house, and he set a guard over it, and swore to thewretch that the house and all within it should be destroyed unless hedid what was bidden him. And the bidding was, to go to the British linesand give the warning as Minghal had commanded, with one little change:the point of attack was to be, not that which had been assigned toRahmut, but that which had been assigned to Minghal. Holding theinformer's house and family as hostages, Rahmut had no doubt that theman would obey, and he went back to his serai satisfied with hisafternoon's work.

  During the day the excitement in the city had risen to fever heat. Newshad come in that Nana Sahib, on the approach of the British to Cawnpore,had massacred the two hundred women and children who had remained in hishands since that fatal day when their fathers and husbands had been shotdown on the boats. The wiser residents of Delhi were aghast: they
knewthe dreadful story of that other tragedy, at Calcutta, a century before,when a hundred of the sahibs perished in the Black Hole. They knew whatretribution had fallen on Siraj-uddaula then; what would happen now,after this far more horrible butchery of women and children? But thefanatics rejoiced in the tale of blood. The greater the excesses, themore impossible to draw back. The greater the vengeance to be feared,the more imperative to strain every nerve to crush these obstinateFeringhis on the Ridge. The protraction of the siege was already doingthem harm. Risings were taking place in many scattered districts; andeven in the Panjab, which Jan Larrens had hitherto kept quiet, therewere ominous mutterings. If the English on the Ridge could but berouted, all Northern India would be ablaze.

  And so the sepoys at sunset marched in their thousands from the gates.Amid the blare of bugles, the thunder of artillery from the walls, thestrident calls of the muezzins from the minarets of the mosques,proclaiming eternal glory for all who bled in the holy cause, the rebelsflocked out, maddened with fanatical fury and with bang, aglow with theresolve to conquer or die.

  But behind the breastworks waited British officers, cool, unemotional,with their men, British and native, seasoned warriors, disciplined, thebest soldiers in the world. They watched the advancing horde as it cameamong the gardens, the moonbeams making a strange play of light andshade. On they came, and the great guns thundered, and the musketscrackled, and shouts and yells mingled with the brazen blare of bugles.Time after time the dusky warriors hurled themselves against the lowbreastworks that defended the circuit of the Ridge, coming within ascore paces of them. Hour after hour the din continued, the sky blazingwith the constant discharge of artillery, a shifting wall of smokemaking strange patterns in the moonlight. The moon sank, and still thefiring did not cease; it was not until next day's sun was mounting thesky that the survivors of the night shambled back, a discomfited mob, tothe rose-red walls of the city.

  What had they gained by this tremendous fusillade and bombardment?Nothing. Their ammunition had been expended by cart-loads; thousandsupon thousands of rounds had been fired; but all the time they had neverseen their enemy, who, behind their entrenchments, waited until they sawthe whites of the rebels' eyes, and then sent them reeling back withwithering volleys. Hundreds of forms lay motionless in the eye of therising sun, some in red coats, some in white dhotis, some in the chogahsof hill-men, with turbans of many colours, amid muskets and swords andbugles, and everywhere the green flag of the Prophet. And on the Ridgethere was great rejoicing; for this bitter lesson to the Pandies hadcost their masters no more than a dozen men.

  Nowhere did the fight rage more fiercely on that night than at thebreastworks before the Flagstaff Tower. But though fierce, the fight wasshort, for Rahmut Khan was no fanatic; and when he found, after a brieftrial, that he was opposed, not by warriors with whom his men couldcontend in equal fight, but by solid ramparts which burst into flame,though behind it no men were seen, he concluded that this was fightinghe did not understand, and drew off his men. And Minghal Khan,approaching with his regiment the spot from which, as he fondly hoped,most of the Feringhis had been withdrawn to meet the attack againstwhich he had warned them, was met by a crashing volley so terrible thata third of his men were stricken down, and he himself barely escapedwith his life. A bullet grazed his cheek, ploughing a red furrow throughit, and carrying away the lobe of his ear; a spent bullet struck hisbrow, and he staggered half-unconscious to the ground. And when heregained the city, and learnt that his enemy, Rahmut, had come unscathedthrough the battle, and, moreover, that the men he had left to raidRahmut's serai during his absence had been beaten off with great loss bya guard posted there, for some incomprehensible reason, by Bakht Khanhimself, he boiled with insensate fury, heaping curses on the heads ofthose who had betrayed him.

  Nor was his rage abated when he was summoned to the palace to answer thecharge of instigating the attack on Rahmut's quarters. The king wasseated in the hall of public audience, surrounded by a glitteringcompany. The total failure of the night's operations had not yet beenfully reported; Bakht Khan was not in attendance; and when the kingrecited the verses he had composed the day before, the courtiersacclaimed him as the Pearl of Poets and declared that nothing more waswanted to ensure success. But then the commander-in-chief came with hispitiful tale, and the king, with the petulance of dotage, flew into arage and cried, "You will never take the Ridge; all my treasure isexpended; the Royal Treasury is without a pice. And men tell me now thatthe soldiers are day by day departing to their homes. I have no hope ofvictory. My desire is that you all leave the city and make some otherplace the heart of the struggle. If you do not, then will I take suchsteps as may seem to me advisable."

  And while the officers were trying to cheer the miserable old man,declaring that by Allah's help they would yet take the Ridge, MinghalKhan came in answer to the summons. Upon him the king poured out thevials of his wrath, demanding that he should instantly restore to thetreasury the money he had been granted two days before, and orderingBakht Khan once more to proclaim that heavy penalties should beinflicted on any who broke the peace of the city. And when Minghal beganto protest, Mirza Akbar Sultan, the prince who was party to the scheme,plucked him by the sleeve and in a whisper bade him be silent. The kingwas beside himself with rage, he said, and it was not a propitiousmoment for appeals. The prince accompanied him home, and, over a bottleof spirits sent for in haste from one of the merchants, they laid theirheads together, devising a plan by which they might still achieve theirdesigns against Rahmut Khan.