Part 27

To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late, And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers And the temples of his gods.

When the eighty-five condemned men were consigned to the gaol they were placed under the care of a native guard only, and the prisoners exclaimed to their guard: ‘Are you countrymen of ours that you can calmly see us thus treated and disgraced by these accursed Feringhees?’ And the taunt was taken up and carried from man to man, and it ran like wildfire through the native regiments, and through the bazaars, and through the villages. And it was borne down the rivers and up the rivers, and over the dusty plain to Delhi men sped with the cry on their lips. And when the sinking sun was reddening the rolling waters of the Ganges, native eyes in Delhi were turning anxiously towards Meerut for the flaming signal in the sky, that should announce to them that fire and sword were doing their deadly work on the European residents in the great cantonment.

While the white men were sleeping the natives were acting. They surged to the prison, civilians and soldiers alike. Some of the latter were in uniform, some in their stable dress. Some were fully accoutred, and bestrode their chargers all ready for war. Others rode their steeds with only watering-rein and horse-cloth; but every soldier was armed with sabre and pistol, and hundreds of the rabble had pistols and guns of some sort. They met with no opposition at the prison. If the guard did not help they looked on passively. The cells were forced open, the prisoners brought forth, and native smiths were at hand to strike off the shackles. Then the erstwhile prisoners mounted behind their comrades and rode to the lines for more horses and arms, and Hindoos and Mohammedans, high caste and low caste, women and children, joined in one mighty shout, ‘Death to the Feringhees!’--‘Deen, deen!’ which means ‘Death’--and was to become their rallying cry throughout the great struggle. Forth they rushed like a destroying whirlwind. Wherever a white soldier was met he was mercilessly slaughtered. Such Europeans as were driving or riding were shot down, men, women, and children, without mercy, without pity. And from the dens of infamy, and the slums, and the bazaars, poured a stream of human beings pitiless as the fabled ghouls, and all bent on plundering and burning. As the moon rose it looked on an appallingly weird scene of horror and cruelty. The blazing bungalows of the English officers roared and hissed, and English women and English children, gashed and mutilated out of all recognition, lay dead in the streets. One of the first bungalows to be attacked was that of the colonel as he rode out to harangue his men. His wife fell, shot through the heart, as she tried to shield her child. Faithful to her trust, the old ayah endeavoured to carry the child off from its dead mother and place it in a place of safety, if there was such a place. But she was cut down with a sabre, and she and the sweet little girl were slashed to pieces. Then the house was looted and given to the flames.

Blanche Merton would have fallen a victim at that first outbreak of fury. But fearing the worst, she had not waited for the house to be attacked. She was moved by an impulse to die with her lover no less than to warn him and his comrades in Delhi, and, being a superb horsewoman, she rushed to the stables, having first seized the colonel’s military cloak, which was hanging in the hall. With her own hands she saddled his favourite riding-horse, and, concealing her face with a black veil, she rode towards the river undetected, and having gained the highway beyond the Goomtee, she gave her horse the rein.

That night was a night of horror in Meerut, the parallel for which could hardly be found in history. The whole town seemed to be a swirling furnace of many-coloured flames. The air was sultry. There was not a breath of wind, and the stupendous column of smoke spread itself out over the doomed town like a funeral pall. The shrieks of horses and cattle as they were burned in their stables mingled with the gloating cries of the infuriated natives; while the roar of the musketry made itself heard above all, and proclaimed the carnage that was going on. Women and children and non-combatants cried to God for pity, and endeavoured to find shelter in the gardens, outhouses, stables, under the trees, but all without avail. The black demons searched them out, and shot them or hacked them to pieces. The streets were deluged with blood; the river ran red.

Many a heroic deed that has gone unrecorded was done that night by white men; and many a half-maddened mother, with a prayer on her lips, threw away her life in her fruitless endeavours to save the lives of her little ones.

But the scene of the story must shift. When the hellish work in Meerut had been finished the mutineers sped away to Delhi. But before they reached it the brave Blanche Merton had arrived. At such a pace had she ridden that her horse died soon after she had dismounted at Lieutenant Shelton’s quarters, and she was so excited and so exhausted that she could scarcely speak. As soon as she got her voice she told them that mutiny had broken out in Meerut, and the English were being massacred. There was corroboration of her report in the flame-coloured sky away to the north-east where the bungalows were burning, but otherwise Shelton was disposed to think that her fears had led her to exaggerate the extent of the revolt. Glad he was to see her, and as he kissed her fondly he said:

‘You are safe here, anyway, my darling, and I do not think there is any danger of the tide of mutiny flowing thus far.’

He was hopeful and sanguine, but it was different with others to whom the news was speedily communicated. They knew how weak the little force was in Delhi, and that they could offer but small resistance if the mutineers should get the upper hand in Meerut and attack Delhi.

The great magazine and fort, with its tremendous stores of war material, was no great distance from the palace; that superb home of the Moghul kings that lifted its proud domes and turrets above the Jumna. The entire place was under the charge of Willoughby, and he had with him two other lieutenants--officers of the Bengal Artillery, and six European conductors and commissariat sergeants, one of them being an Irishman named Scully. There were nine in all. Nine only to defend their precious charge! To us now it seems inconceivable that the authorities could have been so fatuous as to leave so important a place as Delhi unguarded. But so it was, save by a mere handful of men. Lieutenant Willoughby, however, was of the stuff that makes all Englishmen proud. Calling his little band together, he told them the news, and said that it was certain the mutineers would attempt a dash for the magazine, for they could do little without ammunition. But he added:

‘We will hold the place, boys, against a host. The black devils may have a brief triumph in Meerut, and come here; but the garrison of Meerut, which is a strong one, will soon recover, and will send us succour; though, should the worst come to the worst, comrades, not a shell, not a gun, nor an ounce of powder, if we can help it, shall fall into the hands of the rebels, for we will blow the whole place into ruins, and find our graves beneath them.’

A tremendous cheer was the answer he received, and then the gallant band set to work to be prepared for whatever might happen. The outer gate was closed, and strongly barricaded. Guns were brought out and loaded with double charges of grape and canister, and placed in such a position that they commanded the approaches.

While these preparations were developing Shelton received orders to do all in his power to hold a house which had been used as a Government depôt, and contained accoutrements and other stores, besides a number of rifles. He procured an ample supply of ammunition from the magazine, and he had with him a sergeant and a corporal. Blanche would have refused to have left him, even supposing he had wished it, but he knew there was nowhere he could send her to where she was likely to be safer than there. And so she insisted on being furnished with a revolver--which she had learned to use since her arrival in India--and she vowed that she would stand by his side to the death.

The morning sun was rising in a glory of crimson splendour when the mutineers, stained with blood and dust and grimed with powder, swarmed over the Jumna and clattered into Delhi. Under the windows of the palace they surged, and called for the king--that white-haired, treacherous old villain, who believed that his hour of triumph had struck, and that the house of Moghul would be restored to its ancient splendour. The rebels were admitted by the Mohammedan guard, and then they almost shook the wall with a thunderous shout of ‘Glory to the Padishah and death to the Feringhees!’

Swelled now by their comrades of the palace they swarmed into the town, cutting down every European they met, and a detachment rushed for the house held by Shelton and his sweetheart and his two other companions. The lower doors and windows had been barricaded; and from the upper windows a well-delivered fire checked for a moment the onrush of the mutineers. But it was only for a moment. Some of their number had gone down into the dust, but that only served to still further madden the survivors, who stormed the house, to be beaten back, however, once more by the defenders’ fire. Recovering themselves, they fired a volley at the windows, and one of the bullets struck the corporal dead.

Shelton saw now that it would be impossible to hold the place for many minutes, and he turned with anxious gaze to the beloved woman at his side. Her face was pale as death, but she was calm, and in her hand she still grasped the smoking revolver. Every barrel was empty, and she had sent at least four of the rabble to their account.

‘My beloved,’ he exclaimed in a tone of despair, ‘I fear that hope of saving you has passed.’

‘Yes, darling,’ she said, quietly. ‘Hope for us in this world has gone; but we shall be united in the next. Load the revolver again.’

He quickly thrust a cartridge into each barrel, and returned it to her, and at the same moment he saw his brave and only remaining soldier companion go down, shot through the head. Then he kicked in the head of a barrel of powder he had taken the precaution to have brought up, and passing his arm round Blanche’s waist he was about to fire his revolver into the powder, when he suddenly changed his mind, and said hurriedly:

‘Darling, I believe we can escape and find safety in the fort.’

‘Where you go, I will go,’ she answered.

Hurriedly fixing a few feet of slow match to the powder barrel he lighted the loose end; then taking Blanche’s hand they hurried down the stairs, revolvers in hand. They gained the back door, which led into the garden, and by almost superhuman effort they removed the barricading of the door and rushed out and cleared the garden before their escape was discovered. But at that moment there was a tremendous explosion, and the house they had just left crumbled to ruins. For some minutes the mutineers were scattered by the shock, and it seemed as if the brave Shelton and the equally brave Blanche would gain shelter. But they were seen, and a swarm of mounted soldiers sped after them. Placing Blanche against a wall Shelton stood in front of her, and emptied his revolver at the advancing horsemen, and two of their number pitched from their saddles, but the next moment the faithful lovers fell, clasped in each other’s arms, and riddled with bullets. In life they had loved and hoped, and in death they were not divided; their hopes would become fruition in a better and a brighter world.

In the meantime how fared it with the brave defenders of the fort?

Baffled in their attempt to obtain possession of the house the mutineers rushed to the magazine with their rallying cry of ‘Deen, deen!’ Willoughby and his noble band were prepared for them. They had concentrated their nine-pounder guns, and behind them had piled up as much ammunition as they had had time to procure. A few yards away was a heap of powder, and a train carried from it into the magazine itself, where the heads had been knocked out of many of the barrels and the powder scattered, with loaded shells placed in it. There were tons of powder, shells, and explosives of all kinds; and when further defence was found to be impossible the train was to be fired.

While the howling troopers on horse and foot were speeding to the fort, mounted messengers were sent from the king to demand from Willoughby the surrender of the place.

‘Back to your royal master, slaves,’ was the haughty and defiant answer, ‘and tell him to come himself and we will surrender the ruins, together with our corpses, to him.’

The messenger made known this defiant answer to the mutineers, who were now clamouring round in a surging, jostling mass, and a determined rush was made for the gate. But they fell back as a withering storm of grape shot tore through them. That storm was most destructive in its effects; but the soldiers and the rabble that had joined them from the slums and dens of the city were too strongly bent on slaying the Feringhees to allow themselves to be defeated by the slaughter of some of their number. So gathering themselves together again, they howled ‘Deen, deen!’ and made another rush, but once more they were hurled back by the blast of fire and shot.

Seldom in the annals of warfare has there been a more stubborn, more heroic, defence made by a handful of men against a host of trained soldiers than was made by Willoughby and his comrades; for, be it remembered that they were fighting regiments of soldiers who had been trained and drilled in the art of warfare by the English themselves, and, as often proved before and since, the Sepoy makes almost as good a fighting-man as his white brother, although he perhaps lacks in that stubbornness and unconquerable determination which are peculiarly characteristic of the Englishman. But in the case we are dealing with the Sepoys were stubborn enough. They knew, indeed, that it was death or victory with them. And they quite believed that if they could but obtain the immense accumulation of ammunition stored in the Delhi arsenal, not only could they hold the city of the Moghuls against all the armies of England, but that they could actually conquer India. For it was big guns and shot and shell they wanted, and from nowhere else could they obtain them save Delhi. It was, therefore, their only hope, and it may safely be asserted that not one amongst them deemed it possible that the stores would not fall into their hands, as it was well known that only nine men held the fort. But what they did not know was that those nine men were unconquerable.