On the night of June the 11th a red-hot cannon-ball set fire to one of the barracks which was used as a hospital. The flames inspired the enemy’s gunners to fresh efforts and provided them with an excellent target, yet the garrison dared all perils of gun-fire and falling rafters and masonry, while they rescued the inmates. It is on record that the gallant men of the 32d, when the flames had subsided, though a heavy fusillade was still kept up by the rebels, were seen raking the ashes in order to find their lost medals, the medals they had won in the deadly fighting that preceded the fall of Sevastopol.

On the next day the sepoy army, though so boastful and vainglorious, dared to make their first attempt to carry the entrenchment by assault. By one bold charge they must have crushed the defenders, if by sheer weight of numbers alone. They advanced, with fiendish yells and much seeming confidence. But they could not face those stern warriors who lined the shattered wall. After a short but fierce struggle they fled, leaving the plain littered with corpses.

So the safer bombardment was renewed, its fury envenomed by the conscious disparity of the besiegers when they tried to press home the attack. Each day the garrison dwindled; each day the rebels received fresh accessions of strength. Of the few guns mounted in the British position, one had lost its muzzle, another was thrown from its carriage and two were so battered by the enemy’s artillery that they could not be used. The hospital fire had destroyed all the surgical instruments and medical stores, so the wounded had to lie waiting for death, while those who still bore arms eked out existence on a daily dole of a handful of flour and a few ounces of split peas.

Yet the men of Cawnpore fought on, while their wives and sisters and daughters helped uncomplainingly, making up packets of ammunition, loading rifles for the men to fire, and even giving their stockings to the gunners to provide cases for grape-shot.

There was only one well inside the entrenchment. Knowing its paramount importance, the rebels mounted guns in such wise that a constant fire could be kept up throughout the night on that special point. Yet there never was lacking a volunteer, either man or woman, to go to that well and obtain the precious water. It remains to this day a mournful relic of the siege, with its broken gear and shattered circular wall, while the indentations made by such of the cannon-balls as failed to dislodge the masonry are plain to be seen.

The sepoys spared none. Tiny children, tottering to the well in broad daylight, were pelted with musketry. Conceivably that might be war. When beleaguered people will not yield humanity must stand aside and weep. There was a deed to come that was not war, but the black horror of abomination, worthy of the excesses of a man-eating tiger, though shorn of the tiger’s excuse that he kills in order that he may live. The well in the entrenchment was the Well of Life. There was another well in Cawnpore destined to be the Well of Death.

If proof were needed of the extraordinary condition of India during the early period of the Mutiny, it was given by an incident that occurred soon after the first assault was beaten off. In broad daylight, while the garrison were maintaining the unceasing duel of cannon and small arms, they were astounded by the spectacle of a British officer galloping across the plain. He was fired at by the sepoys, of course, but horse and man escaped untouched and the low barrier was leaped without effort. The newcomer was Lieutenant Bolton of the 7th Cavalry. Sent out from Lucknow on district duty he was suddenly deserted by his men, and he rode alone towards Cawnpore, the nearest British station. Unhappily the story of that adventurous ride is lost for ever. Poor Bolton supplied Cawnpore’s last re-enforcement.

Sir Hugh Wheeler, ably seconded in the defense by Captain Moore of the 32d, sent out emissaries, Eurasians and natives, to seek aid from Lucknow and Allahabad, the one about thirty-five, the other a hundred miles distant. Lawrence wrote “with a breaking heart” that he could spare no troops from Lucknow. The messengers never even reached Allahabad.

On June 23 the Nana’s hosts again nerved themselves for a desperate attack, and again were they flung off from that tumble-down wall. Then, all their valor fled, they fell back on a foul device. A white woman, Mrs. Henry Jacobi, who had been taken prisoner early in the month, crossed the plain holding a white flag. Wheeler and Moore and other senior officers went to meet her. She carried a letter from Nana Sahib, offering safe conduct to Allahabad for all the garrison “except those who were connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie.”

Now Dalhousie resigned the vice-royalty in February, 1856. It was he who had refused to continue to Nana Sahib the Peishwa’s pension; assuredly there was none in Cawnpore responsible for the acts of a former viceroy. At any rate, whatsoever that curious reservation meant, the majority of the staff were opposed to surrender. Unfortunately Captain Moore, whose bravery was in the mouths of all, who, though wounded and ill, had been “the life and soul of the defense,” persuaded Sir Hugh Wheeler and the others that an honorable capitulation was their sole resource. Succor could not arrive, he argued, and they were in duty bound to save the surviving civilians and the women and children.

So an armistice was agreed to on June 26, and representatives of both sides met to discuss terms. It was arranged that the garrison should evacuate their position, surrender their guns and treasure, retain their rifles and a quantity of ammunition, and be provided with river transport to Allahabad.

The Nana asked that the defenders should march out that night. Wheeler refused.

“I shall renew the bombardment, and put every one of you to death in a few days,” threatened the Brahmin.

“Try it,” said the Englishman. “I still have enough powder left to blow both armies into the air.”

But the Nana meant to have no more fighting on equal terms. He signed the treaty, the guns were given up, and, on the night of June 26th, peace reigned within the ruined entrenchment.

Next morning that glorious garrison quitted the shot-torn plain they had hallowed by their deeds. And even the rebels pitied them. “As the wan and ragged column filed along the road, the women and children in bullock-carriages or on elephants, the wounded in palanquins, the fighting men on foot, sepoys came clustering round the officers they had betrayed, and talked in wonder and admiration of the surpassing heroism of the defense.”

Those men of the rank and file at least were soldiers. They knew nothing of the awful project concocted by the Nana and his chief associates, Rao Sahib, Tantia Topi, and Azim-ullah.

The procession made its way slowly towards the river, three quarters of a mile to the east. No doubt there were joyful hearts even in that sorrow-laden band. Men and women must have thought of far-off homes in England, and hoped that God would spare them to see their beloved country once more. Even the children, wide-eyed innocents, could not fail to be thankful that the noise of the guns had ceased, while the wounded were cheered by the belief that food and stores in plenty would soon be available.

At the foot of a tree-clad ravine leading to the Ganges were stationed a number of heavy native boats, with thatched roofs to shield the occupants from the sun. They were partly drawn up on the mud at the water’s edge to render easy the work of embarkation. Without hurry or confusion, the wounded, and the women and children, were placed on board.

Then some one noticed that the thatch on one of the boats was smoking, and it was found that glowing charcoal had been thrust into the straw. About the same time it was discovered that the boats had neither oars, nor rudders, nor supplies of food. Before the dread significance of these things became clear, a bugle-call rang out. At once, both banks of the river became alive with armed sepoys, and a murderous rifle-fire was opened on the crowded boats. Guns, hidden among the trees, belched red-hot shot and grape at them, and the smoldering straw of the thatched roofs burst into flames.

Awakened to the unspeakable treachery of their foe, officers and men rushed into the water and strove with might and main to shove the boats into deep water. They failed, for the unwieldy craft had been hauled purposely too high.

Here Ashe and Moore, and Bolton, hero of that lonely ride through the enemy’s country, fell. Here, too, men shot their own wives and children rather than permit them to fall into the hands of the fiends who had planned the massacre. Savage troopers urged their horses into the water and slashed cowering women with their sabers. Infants were torn from their mothers’ arms, and tossed by sepoys from bayonet to bayonet. The sick and wounded, lying helpless in the burning craft, died in the agony of fire, and the few bold spirits who even in that ghastly hour tried to beat off their cowardly assailants were surrounded and shot down by overwhelming numbers.

One heavily-laden boat was dragged into the stream, and a few officers and men clambered on board. The voyage they made would supply material for an epic. They were followed along the banks and pursued by armed craft on the river. They fought all day and throughout the night, and, when the ungoverned boat ran ashore during a wild squall of wind and rain at daybreak, the surviving soldiers, a sergeant and eleven men, headed by Mowbray-Thomson of the 56th, and Delafosse of the 53d, sprang out and charged some hundreds of sepoys and hostile villagers who had gathered on the bank.

The craven-hearted gang yielded before the Englishmen’s fierce onslaught. The tiny band turned to fight their way back, and found that the boat had drifted off again! Then they seized a Hindu temple on the bank and held it until the sepoys piled burning timber against the rear walls and threw bags of powder on the fire!

Fixing bayonets and leaving the sergeant dead in the doorway, they charged again into the mass of the enemy. Six fell. The remainder reached the river, threw aside their guns, and plunged boldly in. Two were shot while swimming, and one man, unable to swim any distance, coolly made his way ashore again and faced his murderers until he sank beneath their blows.

Mowbray-Thomson, Delafosse, and Privates Murphy and Sullivan, swam six miles with the stream, and were finally rescued and helped by a friendly native.

Those four were all who came alive out of the Inferno of Cawnpore. The boat, after clearing the shoal, was captured by the mutineers. Major Vibart of the 2d Cavalry, who was so severely wounded that he could not join in the earlier fighting, and some eighty helpless souls under his command, were brought back to the city of death. There, by orders of the Nana, the men were slain forthwith and the women and children were taken to a building in which they found one hundred and twenty-five others, who had been spared for the Brahmin’s own terrible purposes from the butchery at Massacre Ghât on the 27th.

Returning to Bithoor the Nana was proclaimed Peishwa amid the booming of cannon and the plaudits of his retainers. He passed a week in drunken revels and debauchery, and when, in ignorance of its fate, a small company of European fugitives from Fategarh sought refuge at Cawnpore, he amused himself by having all the men but three killed in his presence. These three and the women and children who accompanied them, were sent to a small house known as the Bibigarh, in which the whole of the captives, now numbering two hundred and eleven, were imprisoned.

Many died, and they were happiest. The survivors were subjected to every indignity, given the coarsest food, and forced to grind corn for their conqueror, who, early in July, took up his abode in a large building at Cawnpore overlooking the house in which the unhappy people were penned.

But the period of their earthly sufferings was drawing to a close. An avenging army was moving swiftly up the Grand Trunk Road from Allahabad. The Nana’s nephew and two of his lieutenants, leading a large force against the British, were badly defeated. On the 15th of July came the alarming tidings that the Feringhis were only a day’s march from the city.

The Furies must have chosen that date. The Nana, the man who thought himself fit to be a king, decided that Havelock would turn back if there were no more English left in Cawnpore! So as a preliminary to the greater tragedy, five men who had escaped death thus far—no one knows whence two of them came—were brought forth and slaughtered at the feet of the renowned Peishwa. Then a squad of sepoys were told to “shoot all the women and children in the Bibigarh through the windows of the house.”

Poor wretches—they were afraid to refuse, yet their gorge rose at the deed, and they fired at the ceiling!

Such weakness was annoying to the puissant Brahmin. He selected two Mohammedan butchers, an Afghan, and two out-caste Hindus, to do his bidding. Armed with long knives these five fiends entered the shambles. Alas, how can the scene that followed be described!

Yet, not even then was the sacrifice complete. Some who were wounded but not killed, a few children who crept under the garments of their dead mothers, lived until the morning. Not all the native soldiers were so lost to human sympathies that they did not shudder at the groans and muffled cries that came all night from the house of sorrow. Some of them have left records of sights and sounds too horrible to translate from their Eastern tongue.

But the rumble of distant guns told the destroyer that his short-lived hour of triumph was nearly sped. In a paroxysm of rage and fear, he gave the final order, and the Well of Cawnpore thereby attained its ghastly immortality. By his command all that piteous company of women and children, the living and the dead together, were thrown into a deep well that stood in the garden of Bibigarh—the House of the Woman.

It was thus that Nana Sahib strove to cloak his crime. Yet never did foul murderer flaunt deed more glaringly in the face of Heaven. Fifty years have passed, myriads of human beings have lived and died since the well swallowed the Nana’s victims, but the memory of those gracious women, of those golden-haired children, of those dear little infants born while the guns thundered around the entrenchment, shall endure forever. The Nana sought oblivion and forgetfulness for his sin. He earned the anger of the gods and the malediction of the world, then and for all time.

CHAPTER VII

The tragedy of Massacre Ghât, intensified by the crowning infamy of the Well, brought a new element into the struggle. Hitherto not one European in a hundred in India regarded the Mutiny as other than a local, though serious, attempt to revive a fallen dynasty. The excesses at Meerut, Delhi, and other towns were looked upon as the work of unbridled mobs. Sepoys who revolted and shot their officers came under a different category to the slayers of tender women and children. But the planned and ordered treachery of Cawnpore changed all that. Thenceforth every British-born man in the country not only realized that the government had been forced into a Titanic contest, but he was also swayed by a personal and absorbing lust for vengeance. Officers and men, regulars and volunteers alike, took the field with the fixed intent of exacting an expiatory life for each hair on the head of those unhappy victims. And they kept the vow they made. To this day, though half a century has passed, the fertile plain of the Doab—that great tract between the Ganges and the Jumna—is dotted with the ruins of gutted towns and depopulated villages. But that was not yet. India was fated to be almost lost before it was won again.

On the night of June 4th, when the roomy budgerow carrying Winifred Mayne and her escort drifted away from the walls of the Nana’s palace at Bithoor, there was not a breath of wind on the river. The mat sail was useless, but a four-mile-an-hour current carried the unwieldy craft slowly down stream, and there was not the slightest doubt in the minds of either of the Englishmen on board as to their course of action.

Mr. Mayne was acquainted with Cawnpore and Sir Hugh Wheeler was an old friend of his.

“Wheeler has no great force at his disposal,” said he to Malcolm. “It is evident that the native regiments have just broken out here, but, by this time, our people in the cantonment must have heard of events elsewhere, and they have surely seized the Magazine, which is well fortified and stands on the river. If I can believe a word that the Nana said, the sepoys will rush off to Delhi to-night, just as they did at Meerut, Aligarh, and Etawah. I am convinced that our best plan is to hug the right bank and disembark near the Magazine.”

“Is it far?” asked Malcolm.

“About eight miles.”

“I wonder why the Begum was so insistent that we should go back along the Grand Trunk Road?”

Mayne hesitated. He knew that Winifred was listening.

“It is hard to account for the vagaries of a woman’s mind, or, shall I say, of the mind of such a woman,” he answered lightly. “You will remember that when you came to our assistance outside Meerut she was determined to take us, willy-nilly, to Delhi.”

Malcolm, who had heard Roshinara’s impassioned speech and looked into her blazing eyes, thought that her motives were stronger than mere caprice. He never dreamed of the true reason, but he feared that she knew Cawnpore had fallen and her curiously friendly regard for himself might have inspired her advice. Here, again, Winifred’s presence tied his tongue.

“Well,” he said, with a cheerless laugh, “I, at any rate, must endeavor to reach Wheeler. I am supposed to be bearing despatches, but they were taken from me when I was knocked off my horse in the village—”

“Were you attacked?” asked Winifred, and the quiet solicitude in her voice was sweetest music in her lover’s ears.

His brief recital of the night’s adventures was followed by the story of the others’ journey and detention at Bithoor. It may be thought that Mr. Mayne, with his long experience of India, should have read more clearly the sinister lesson to be derived from the treatment meted out that night to a British Officer by the detachment of sowars, amplified, as it was, by their open references to the Nana as a Maharajah. But he was not yet disillusioned. And, if his judgment were at fault, he erred in good company, for Sir Henry Lawrence, Chief Commissioner at Lucknow, was even then resisting the appeals, the almost insubordinate urging, of the headstrong Martin Gubbins that the sepoys in the capital of Oudh should be disarmed.

Meanwhile the boat lurched onward. Soon a red glow in the sky proclaimed that they were nearing Cawnpore. Though well aware that the European houses were on fire, they were confident that the Magazine would be held. They helped Akhab Khan, Chumru, and the two troopers to rig a pair of long sweeps, and prepared to guide the budgerow to the landing-place.

Winifred was stationed at the rudder. As it chanced the three sowars took one oar and Chumru helped the sahibs with the other, and the two sets of rowers were partly screened from each other by the horses. Malcolm was saying something to Winifred when the native bent near him and whispered:

“Talk on, sahib, but listen! Your men intend to jump ashore and leave you. They have been bitten by the wolf. Don’t try to stop them. Name of Allah, let them go!”

Frank’s heart throbbed under this dramatic development. He had no reason to doubt his servant’s statement. The faithful fellow had nursed him through a fever with the devotion of a brother, and Malcolm had reciprocated this fidelity by refusing to part with him when he, in turn, was stricken down by smallpox. In fact, Frank was the only European in Meerut who would employ the man, whose extraordinary appearance went against him. Cross-eyed, wide-mouthed, and broken-nosed, with a straggling black beard that ill concealed the tokens on his face of the dread disease from which he had suffered, Chumru looked a cut-throat of the worst type, “a hungry, lean-fac’d villain, a mere anatomy.” Aware of his own ill repute, he made the most of it. He tied his turban with an aggressive twist, and was wont to scowl so vindictively at the mess khamsamah that his master, quite unconsciously, always secured the wing of a chicken or the best cut of the joint.

Yet this gnome-like creature was true to his salt at a time when he must have felt that his sahib, together with every other sahib in India, was doomed; his eyes now shot fiery, if oblique, shafts of indignation as he muttered his thrilling news.

Malcolm did not attempt to question him. He glanced at the sowars, and saw that their carbines were slung across their shoulders. Chumru interpreted the look correctly.

“Akhab Khan prevented those Shia dogs from shooting you and Mayne-sahib,” went on the low murmur. “They said, huzoor, that the Nana wanted the miss-sahib, and that they were fools to help you in taking her away, but Akhab Khan swore he would fight on your honor’s side if they unslung their guns. They do not know I heard them as I was sitting behind the mast, and I took care to creep off when their heads were turned toward the shore.”

“Here we are,” cried Mayne, who little guessed what Chumru’s mumbling portended. “There is the ghât.[9] If it were not for the mist we could see the Magazine just below, on the left.”

Assuredly, Frank Malcolm’s human clay was being tested in the furnace that night. He had to decide instantly what line to follow. In a minute or less the boat would bump against the lowermost steps, and, if Akhab Khan and his companions were, indeed, traitors, the others on board were completely at their mercy. Mayne was unarmed, Chumru’s fighting equipment lay wholly in his aspect, while Malcolm’s revolvers were in the holsters, and his sword was tied to Nejdi’s saddle, its scabbard and belt having been thrown aside while Abdul Huq was robbing him.

The broad-beamed budgerow presented a strangely accurate microcosm of India at that moment. The English people on her deck were numerically inferior to the natives, and deprived by accident of the arms that might have equalized matters. Their little army was breathing mutiny, but was itself divided, if Chumru were not mistaken, seeing that all were for revolt, but one held out that the Feringhis’ lives should be spared. And, even there, the cruel dilemma that offered itself to the ruler of every European community in the country was not to be avoided, for, if Malcolm tried to obtain his weapons his action might be the signal for a murderous attack, while, if he made no move, he left it entirely at the troopers’ discretion whether or not he and Mayne should be shot down without the power to strike a blow in self-defense.

Luckily he had the gift of prompt decision that is nine tenths of generalship. Saying not a word to alarm Mayne, who was still weak from the wound received an hour earlier, he crossed the deck, halting on the way to rub Nejdi’s black muzzle.

The sowars were watching him. With steady thrust of the port sweep they were heading the budgerow toward the ghât.

He went nearer and caught the end of the heavy oar.

“Pull hard, now,” he said encouragingly, “and we will be out of the current.”

He was facing the three men, and his order was a quite natural one under the circumstances. Obviously, he meant to help. Stretching their arms for a long and strong stroke, they laid on with a will. Instantly, he pressed the oar downwards, thus forcing the blade out of the water, and threw all his strength into its unexpected yielding. Before they could so much as utter a yell, Akhab Khan and another were swept headlong into the river, while the third man lay on his back on the deck with Frank on top of him. The simplicity of the maneuver insured its success. Neither Mayne nor Winifred understood what had happened until Malcolm had disarmed the trooper, taken his cartridge pouch, and thrown him overboard to sink or swim as fate might direct. He regretted the loss of Akhab Khan, but he recalled the queer expression on the man’s face when he read Bahadur Shah’s sonorous titles.

“Light of the World, Renowned King of Kings, Lord of all India, Fuzl-Ilahi, Panah-i-din!”

That appeal to the faith was too powerful to be withstood. Yet Malcolm was glad the man had been chivalrous in his fall, for he had taken a liking to him.

Chumru, of course, after the first gasp of surprise, appreciated the sahib’s strategy.

“Shabash!” he cried, “Wao, wao, huzoor![10] May I never see the White Pond of the Prophet if that was not well planned.”

“Oh, what is it?” came Winifred’s startled exclamation. It was so dark, and the horses, no less than the sail, so obscured her view of the fore part of the boat, that she could only dimly make out Malcolm’s figure, though the sounds of the scuffle and splashing were unmistakable.

“We are disbanding our native forces—that is all,” said Frank. “Press the tiller more to the left, please. Yes, that is right. Now, keep it there until we touch the steps.”

The shimmering surface of the river near the boat was broken up into ripples surrounding a black object. Malcolm heard the quick panting of one in whose lungs water had mixed with air, and he hated to think of even a rebel drowning before his eyes. Moved by pity, he swung the big oar on its wooden rest until the blade touched the exhausted man, whose hands shot out in the hope of succor. After some spluttering a broken voice supplicated:

“Mercy, sahib! I saved you when you were in my power. Show pity now to me.”

“It is true, then, that you meant to desert, Akhab Khan?” said Frank sternly.

“Yes, sahib. One cannot fight against one’s brothers, but I swear by the Prophet—”

“Nay, your oaths are not needed. You, at least, did not wish to commit murder. Cling to that oar. The ghât is close at hand.”

“Then, sahib, I can still show my gratitude. If you would save the miss-sahib, do not land here. The Magazine has been taken. The cavalry have looted the Treasury. All the sahib-log have fallen.”

“Is this a true thing that thou sayest?”

“May I sink back into the pit if it be not the tale we heard at Bithoor!”

By this time Mayne was at Frank’s side.

“I fear we have dropped into a hornets’ nest,” said he. “There is certainly an unusual turmoil in the bazaar, and houses are on fire in all directions.”

Even while they were listening to the fitful bellowing of a distant mob bent on mad revel a crackle of musketry rang out, but died away as quickly. The budgerow grounded lightly when her prow ran against the stonework of the ghât. Again did Malcolm make up his mind on the spur of the moment.

“I will spare your life on one condition, Akhab Khan,” he said. “Go ashore and learn what has taken place at the Magazine. Return here, alone, within five minutes. Mark you, I say ‘alone.’ If I see more than one who comes I shall shoot.”

“Huzoor, I shall not betray you.”

“Go, then.”

He drew the man through the water until his feet touched the steps. Climbing up unsteadily, Akhab Khan disappeared in the gloom. Then they waited in silence. The heavy breath of the bazaar was pungent in their nostrils, and, for a few seconds, they listened to the trooper’s retreating footsteps. Frank leaped ashore and pushed the boat off, while Mayne held her by jamming the leeward oar into the mud. It was best to make sure.

They did not speak. Their ears were strained as their tumultuous thoughts. At last, some one came, a man, and his firm tread of boot-shod feet betokened a soldier. It was the rebel who had become their scout.

“Sahib,” said he, “it is even as I told you. Cawnpore is lost to you.”

“And you, Akhab Khan, do you go or stay?”

There was another moment of tense silence.

“Would you have me draw sword against the men of my own faith?” was the despairing answer.

“It would not be for the first time,” said Malcolm coldly. “But I could never trust thee again. Yet hast thou chosen wrongly, Akhab Khan. When thy day of reckoning comes, may it be remembered in thy favor that thou didst turn most unwillingly against thy masters!”

Akhab Khan raised his right hand in a military salute. Suddenly, his erect form became indistinct, and faded out of sight. The boat was traveling down stream once more. Around her the river lapped lazily, and the solemn quietude of the mist-covered waters was accentuated by the far-off turmoil in the city.

The huge sail thrust its yard high above the fog bank, and watchers on the river side saw it. Some one hailed in the vernacular, and Chumru replied that they came from Bithoor with hay. Prompted by Malcolm he went on:

“How goes the good work, brother?”

“Rarely,” came the voice. “I have already requited two bunniahs to whom I owed money. Gold is to be had for the taking. Leave thy budgerow at the bridge, friend, and join us.”

The raucous, half-drunken accents substantiated Akhab Khan’s story. The unseen speaker was evidently himself a boatman. He was rejoicing in the upheaval that permitted debts to be paid with a bludgeon and money to be made without toil.

Mayne caught Frank by the arm.

“We are drifting towards the bridge of boats that carries the road to Lucknow across the river,” he said, in the hurried tone of a man who sees a new and paralyzing danger. “There is a drawbridge for river traffic, but how shall we find it, and, in any event, we must be seen.”

“Are there many houses on the opposite bank?” asked Malcolm.

“Not many. They are mostly mud hovels. What is in your mind?”

“We might endeavor to cross the river before we reach the bridge. By riding boldly along the Lucknow Road we shall place many miles between ourselves and Cawnpore before day breaks.”

“That certainly seems to offer our best chance. We have plenty of horses and we ought to be in Lucknow soon after dawn.”

“What if matters are as bad there?”

“Impossible! Lawrence has a whole regiment with him, the 32d, and plenty of guns. Poor Wheeler, at Cawnpore, commanded a depôt, mostly officials on the staff, and invalids. At any rate, Malcolm, we must have some objective. Lucknow spells hope. Neither Meerut nor Allahabad is attainable. And what will become of Winifred if we fail to reach some station that still holds out?”

The girl herself now came to them.

“I refuse to remain alone any longer,” she said. “I don’t know a quarter of what is going on. I have tied the tiller with a rope. Please tell me what is happening and why a man shouted to Chumru from the bank.”

She spoke calmly, with the pleasantly modulated voice of a well-bred Englishwoman. If aught were wanted to enhance the contrast between the peace of the river and the devildom of Cawnpore it was given in full measure by her presence there. How little did she realize the long drawn-out agony that was even then beginning for her sisters in that ill-fated entrenchment! It was the idle whim of fortune that she was not with them. And not one was destined to live—not one among hundreds!

But it was a time for action, not for speech. Malcolm asked her gently to go back to the helm and keep it jammed hard-a-starboard until they arrived at the left bank. Then he took an oar and Mayne and Chumru tackled the other. The three men pulled manfully athwart the stream. They could not tell what progress they were making, and the Ganges ran swiftly in mid-channel, being five times as wide as the Thames at London Bridge. Yet they toiled on with desperate energy. They had crossed the swirl of deep water when a low, straight-edged barrier appeared on the starboard side, and, before they could attempt to avert the calamity, the budgerow crashed against a pontoon and drove its bows under the superstructure. It was locked there so firmly that a score of men had to labor for hours next day ere it could be cleared.

Nevertheless, that which they regarded as a misfortune was a blessing. The shock of the collision alarmed the horses, and one of them climbed like a cat on to the bridge. Frank sprang after him and caught the reins before the startled creature could break away. And that which one horse could do might be done by seven. Bidding Chumru arrange some planks to give the others better foothold, he told Winifred and Mayne to join him and help in holding the animals as they gained the roadway. A couple of natives who ran up from the Lucknow side were peremptorily ordered to stand. Indeed, they were harmless coolies and soon they offered to assist, for the deadly work in Cawnpore that night was scarcely known to them as yet. In a couple of minutes the fugitives were mounted, each of the men leading a spare horse and advancing at a steady trot; though the bridge swayed and creaked a good deal under this forbidden pace, they soon found by the upward grade that they were crossing the sloping mud bank leading to the actual highway.

Thirty-five miles of excellent road now separated them from Lucknow. The hour was not late, about half past ten, so they had fully six hours of starlit obscurity in which to travel, because, though the month was June, India is not favored with the prolonged twilight of dawn and eve familiar to other latitudes.

They clattered through the outlying bazaar without disturbing a soul. Probably every man, woman and child able to walk was adding to the din in the great city beyond the river. Pariah dogs yelped at them, some heavy carts drawn across the road caused a momentary halt, and a herd of untended buffaloes lying patiently near their byre told the story of the excitement that had drawn their keeper across the bridge.

Soon they were in the open, and a fast canter became permissible. They passed by many a temple devoted to Kali or elephant-headed Buddha, by many a sacred mosque or tomb of Mohammedan saint, by many a holy tree decorated with ribbons in honor of its tutelary deity. Now they were flying between lanes of sugarcane or tall castor-oil plants, now traversing arid spaces where reh, the efflorescent salt of the earth, had killed all vegetation and reduced a once fertile land to a desert.

Five miles from Cawnpore they swept through the hamlet of Mungulwar. They saw no one, and no one seemed to see them, though it is hard to say in India what eyes may not be peering through wattle screen or heavy barred door. In the larger village of Onao they met a group of chowkidars, or watchmen, in the main street. These men salaamed to the sahib-log, probably on account of the stir created by the horses. Without drawing rein, they pushed on to Busseerutgunge, crossed the river Sai and neared the village of Bunnee.

If only men could read the future, how Malcolm’s soldier spirit would have kindled as Mayne told him the names of those squalid communities! Each yard of that road was destined to be sprinkled with British blood, while its ditches would be choked with the bodies of mutineers. But these things were behind the veil, and the one dominant thought possessing Malcolm now was that unless Winifred and her uncle obtained food of some sort they must fall from their saddles with sheer exhaustion. He and his servant had made a substantial meal early in the evening, but the others had eaten nothing owing to the alarm and confusion that reigned at Bithoor.

Winifred, indeed, in response to a question, said faintly that she thought she could keep going if she had a drink of milk. Such an admission, coming from her brave lips, warned Frank that he must call a halt regardless of loss of time. Assuredly, this was an occasion when the sacrifice of a few minutes might avoid the grave risk of a breakdown after daybreak. So when they entered Bunnee they pulled up, and discussed ways and means of getting something to eat.

It was then that Malcolm gave evidence that his devotion to the soldier’s art had not been practised in vain. Mr. Mayne thought they should rouse the household at the first reputable looking dwelling they found.

“No,” said Frank. “Mounted, and in motion, we have some chance of escape unless we fall in with hostile cavalry. On foot, we are at the mercy of any prowling rascals who may be on the warpath. Let us rather look out for a place somewhat removed from the main road. There we do not court observation, and we are sufficiently well armed to protect ourselves from any hostile move on the part of those we summon.”

The older man agreed. Rank and wealth count for little in the great crises of life. Here was a Judicial Commissioner of Oudh a fugitive in his own province, and ready to obey a subaltern’s slightest wish!

Chumru quickly picked out the house of a zemindar, or land-owner, which stood in its own walled enclosure behind a clump of trees. A rough track led to the gate, and Frank knocked loudly on an iron-studded door.

He used the butt end of a revolver, so his rat-tat was imperative enough, but the garden might have been a graveyard for all the notice that was taken by the inhabitants. He knocked again, with equal vehemence and with the same result. But he knew his zemindar, and after waiting a reasonable interval he said clearly:

“Unless the door is opened at once it will be forced. I am an officer of the Company, and I demand an entry.”

“Coming, sahib,” said an anxious voice. “We knew not who knocked, and there are many budmashes about these nights.”

The door yielded to the withdrawal of bolts, but it was still held on a chain. A man peeped out, satisfied himself that there really were sahib-log waiting at his gate, and then unfastened the chain, with apologies for his forgetfulness. Three men servants, armed with lathis, long sticks with heavy iron ferrules at both ends, stood behind him, and they all appeared to be exceedingly relieved when they heard that their midnight visitors only asked for water, milk, eggs, and chupatties, on the score that they were belated and had no food.

The zemindar civilly invited them to enter, but Frank as civilly declined, fearing that the smallness of their number, the absence of a retinue, and the cavalry accouterments of the horses, might arouse comment, if not suspicion.

Happily the owner of the house recognized Mr. Mayne, and then he bestirred himself. All they sought for, and more, was brought. Chairs were provided—rare luxuries in native dwellings at that date—and, this being a Mohammedan family, some excellent cooked meat was added to the feast. Before long Winifred was able to smile and say that she had not been so disgracefully hungry since she left school.

The zemindar courteously insisted that they should taste some mangoes on which he prided himself, and he also staged a quantity of lichis, a delicious fruit, closely resembling a plover’s egg in appearance, peculiar to India. Nor were the horses forgotten. They were watered and fed, and if by this time the nature of the cavalcade had been recognized, there was no change in the man’s hospitable demeanor.

Not for an instant did Frank’s watchful attitude relax. While Mr. Mayne and the zemindar discoursed on the disturbed state of the country he snatched the opportunity to exchange a few tender words with Winifred. But his eyes and ears were alert, and he was the first to hear the advent of a large body of horses along the main road.

He stood up instantly, blew out a lantern which was placed on the ground for the benefit of himself and the others, and said quietly:

“A regiment of cavalry is approaching. We do not wish to be seen by them. Let no man stir or show a light until they have gone.”

He had the military trick of putting an emphatic order in the fewest and simplest words. A threat was out of the question, after the manner in which the party had been received, but it is likely that each native present felt that his life would not be of great value if he attempted to draw the attention of the passers-by to the presence of Europeans at the door of that secluded zemindari.

The tramp of horses’ feet and the jingle of arms and trappings could now be distinguished plainly. At first Winifred feared that they were troops sent in pursuit of them by the Nana, and she whispered the question:

“Are they from Cawnpore, Frank?”

“No,” he answered, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I cannot see them, but their horses are walking, so they cannot have come our way. They are cavalry advancing from the direction of Lucknow.”

“Perhaps they are marching to the relief of Cawnpore?”

“Let us hope so. But we must not risk being seen.”

“Your words are despondent, dear. Do you think the whole native army is against us?”

“I scarcely know what to think, sweetheart. Things look black in so many directions. Once we are in Lucknow, and able to hear what has really happened elsewhere, we shall be better able to judge.”

The ghostly squadrons clanked past, unseen and unseeing. When the road was quiet again Winifred and her small bodyguard remounted. The zemindar was not a man who would accept payment, so Mr. Mayne gave his servants some money. It may be that this Mohammedan gentleman wondered if he had acted rightly when the emissaries of the Nana scoured the country next day for news of the miss-sahib and two sahibs who rode towards Lucknow in the small hours of the morning. Being a wise man he held his peace. He had cast his bread upon the waters, and did not regret it, though he little reckoned on the return it would make after many days.

Reinvigorated by the excellent meal, the travelers found that their horses had benefited as greatly as they themselves by the food and brief rest.

They had no more adventures on the way. Winifred did not object to riding astride while it was dark, but she did not like the experience in broad daylight, and when they met a Eurasian in a tikka-gharry, or hired conveyance, in the environs of Lucknow, she was almost as delighted to secure the vehicle as to learn that the city, though disturbed, was “quite safe from mutiny.”

That was the man’s phrase, and it was eloquent of faith in the genius of Henry Lawrence.

“Quite safe!” he assured them, though they had only escaped capture by a detachment of rebel cavalry by the merest fluke three hours earlier.

They were standing opposite the gate of a great walled enclosure known as the Alumbagh, a summer retreat built by an old nawab for a favorite wife. And that was in June! In six short months Havelock would be lying there in his grave, and men would be talking from pole to pole of the wondrous things done at Lucknow, both by those who held it and those who twice relieved it.

“Quite safe!”

It was high time men ceased to use that phrase in India.

CHAPTER VIII

His guess was only too accurate. Not only had Nana Sahib long been in treaty with the disaffected Oudh taluqdars, but Lucknow itself was writhing in the first stages of rebellion. Although by popular reckoning the mutiny broke out at Meerut on May 10, there was trouble in Lucknow in April with the 48th Infantry, and again on May 3, when Lawrence’s firm measures alone prevented the 7th Oudh Irregulars from murdering their officers. There was little reason to hope that this, the third city in India, should not yield readily to sedition-mongers. The dethroned King of Oudh, with his courtiers and ministers, still maintained a sort of royal state in his residence at Calcutta, and his emissaries were active in the greased cartridge propaganda, telling Hindus that the paper wrappers were dipped in the fat of cows, while, for the benefit of Mohammedans, a variant of the story was supplied by the substitution of pig’s lard.

It is believed too, that the passing of a chupatty, or flat cake, from village to village in the Northwest Provinces early in January was set on foot by one of these agitators as a token that the Government was plotting to overthrow the religions of the people. The exact significance of that mysterious symbol has never been ascertained. Like the “snowball” petition of the West, once started, it soon lost its first meaning. Many natives regarded it merely as the fulfilment of a devotee’s vow, but in the majority of instances it had an unsettling effect on the simple folk who received it, and this was precisely what its originator desired.

Lucknow was not only the natural pivot of a rich agricultural district, but it hummed with prosperous trade. Every type of Indian humanity gathered in its narrow streets and lofty houses, and excitement rose to fever heat when the local trouble with the sepoys was given force to by the isolation of the Meerut white garrison, the seizure of Delhi and the sacking of many European stations in the Northwest. On May 30, the 71st Native Infantry had the impudence to fire on the 32d Foot, and were severely mauled for their pains. They ran off, but not until they had murdered Brigadier-General Handscombe and Lieutenant Grant, one of their own officers. The standard of the Prophet was raised in the bazaar and a fanatical mob rallied round it. They killed a Mr. Menpes, who lived in the city, and were then dispersed by the police.

Unfortunately the 7th Cavalry deserted when Lawrence marched to the race-course next day to punish the mutinous sepoys who had gathered there. But despite the lack of a mounted force, a number of prisoners were taken and hanged in batches on a gallows erected on the Muchee Bhowun, a fortress palace situated near the Residency.

Thus Lawrence had scotched the snake, but like Wheeler at Cawnpore and many another in India at that time, he refused to kill it by disarming the native regiments under his command. Nevertheless they feared him. They dared not show their fangs in Lucknow. They stole away in companies and squadrons, glutting their predatory instincts by slaughter and pillage elsewhere before they headed for Delhi or joined one of the numerous pretenders who sprang into being in emulation of Nana Sahib. It was one of these rebel detachments that passed the four fugitives from Cawnpore on the outskirts of Bunnee. Scattered throughout the province they proved as merciless and terrible to wealthy natives as to the Europeans whom they met in flight along the main roads.

The chaos into which the whole country fell with such extraordinary swiftness is demonstrated by the varying treatment meted out to different people. Winifred and her uncle, under Malcolm’s bold leadership, reached Lucknow with comparative ease. Poor little Sophy Christian, aged three, having lost her mother in the massacre of Sitapore, was taken off into the jungle by Sir Mountstuart Jackson, his sister Madeline, a young officer named Burnes, and Surgeon-Major Morton. They fell in with Captain and Mrs. Philip Orr and their child, refugees from Aurungabad, and the whole party experienced almost incredible sufferings during nine months. Mrs. Orr, her little girl and Miss Jackson did not escape from their final prison at Lucknow until the end of March, 1858. Sophy Christian, who was always asking pathetically “why mummie didn’t come,” died of the hardships she had to endure, while the men were shot in cold blood by the sepoys on November 16.

Yet in many instances the rebels either told their officers to go away or escorted them to the nearest European station, while the villagers, though usually hostile, sometimes treated the luckless sahib-log with genuine kindness and sympathy.

Mr. Mayne of course had his own house in the cantonment, which was situated north of the city, across the river Goomtee. Malcolm wished to see uncle and niece safely established in their bungalow before he reported himself at the Residency, but the older man thought they should all go straight to the Chief Commissioner and tell him what had happened at Cawnpore.

Threading the packed bazaar towards the Bailey Guard—that gate of the Residency which was destined to become for ever famous—they encountered Captain Gould Weston, the local Superintendent of Police, and his first words undeceived them as to the true position of affairs.

“You left Cawnpore last night!” he cried. “Then you were amazingly lucky. Wheeler has just telegraphed that he expects to be invested by the rebels to-day. Not that you will be much better off here in some respects, as we are all living in the Residency. I suppose you know your house has gone, Mayne?”

“Gone! Do you mean that it is destroyed?”

“Burnt to the ground. There is hardly a building left in the cantonment.”

“But what were the troops doing? At any rate, you are not besieged here yet.”

“We are on the verge of it. Unfortunately the Chief won’t bring himself to disarm the sepoys, and the city is drifting into a worse condition daily. Half of the native corps have bolted, and the rest are ripe for trouble at the first opportunity. The fires are the work of incendiaries. We have caught and hanged a few, but they are swarming everywhere.”

“You say Wheeler has been in communication with you this morning,” said the perplexed civilian. “Are you sure? It is true we escaped in the first instance from Bithoor, but Cawnpore was in flames last night and the Magazine in possession of the mutineers.”

“Oh, yes. We know that. The one thing these black rascals don’t understand is the importance of cutting the telegraph wires. Wheeler has thrown up an entrenchment in the middle of a maidan. I am afraid he is in a tight place, as he is asking for help which we cannot send. Well, good-by! Hope to see you at tiffin. Miss Mayne must make herself as comfortable as she can in the women’s quarters, and pray, like the rest of us, that this storm may soon blow over.”

He rode off, followed by an escort of mounted police. Malcolm, who had taken no part in the conversation, listened to Weston’s words with a sinking heart. He had failed doubly, then, in the mission entrusted to him by Colvin. Not only were his despatches lost, but he was mistaken in believing that the Cawnpore garrison was overpowered. He had turned back at a moment when he should have strained every nerve to reach his destination. That was intolerable. The memory of the hawk-nosed, steel-eyed officer who rode from Kurnaul to Meerut in twenty-four hours smote him like a whip. Would Hodson—the man who was prepared to cross the infernal regions if duty called—would he have quitted Cawnpore without making sure that Sir Hugh Wheeler was dead or a prisoner?

The answer to that unspoken question brought such a look of pain to Frank’s face that Winifred, watching him from the carriage window, wondered what was wrong. She, too, had heard the policeman’s statement and was greatly relieved by it. Why should her lover be so perturbed, she wondered? Was it not good news that the English in Cawnpore were at least endeavoring to hold Nana Sahib at bay? It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what sudden cloud had fallen on him when the carriage swung through a gateway and she found herself inside the Residency. The breathless greetings exchanged between herself and many of her friends among the ladies of the garrison drove from her mind the misery she had seen in Frank’s stern-set features. But the thought recurred later and she spoke of it.

Now Malcolm had already visited Sir Henry Lawrence and told him the exact circumstances. The Chief Commissioner exonerated him from any blame and, as a temporary matter, appointed him an extra A.D.C. on his staff. But the sore rankled and it was destined in due time to affect the young officer’s fortunes in the most unexpected way.

Above all else he did not want Winifred to know that solicitude in her behalf had drawn him from the path of duty. So he fenced with her sympathetic inquiries, and she, womanlike, began to search for some shortcoming on her own part to account for her lover’s gloom. Thus, not a rift, but an absence of full and complete understanding, existed between them, and each was conscious of it, though Malcolm alone knew its cause.

But that little cloud only darkened their own small world. Around them was the clash of arms and the din of preparation for the “fortnight’s siege” which Lawrence thought the Residency might withstand if held resolutely! In truth, there never was a fortification, with the exception of that four-foot mud wall at Cawnpore, less calculated to repel the assault of a determined foe than the ill-planned defenses which provided the last English refuge in Oudh.

Winifred soon proved that she was of good metal. The alarms and excursions of the past three weeks were naturally trying to a girl born and bred in a quiet Devon village. But heredity, mostly blamed for the transmission of bad qualities, supplies good ones, too, whether in man or maid. Descended on her father’s side from a race of soldiers and diplomats, her mother was a Yorkshire Trenholme, and it is said on Hambledon Moor that there were Trenholmes in Yorkshire before there was a king in England. In spite of the terrific heat and the discomfort of her new surroundings she made light of difficulties, found solace herself by cheering others, and quickly attained a prominent place in that small band of devoted women whose names will live until the story of Lucknow is forgotten.

She met Frank only occasionally and by chance, their days being full of work and striving. A smile, a few tender words, perhaps nothing more than a hurried wave of the hand in passing, constituted their love idyll, for Lawrence fell ill and his aides were kept busy, day and night, in passing to and fro between the bedside of the stricken leader and the many posts where his counsel was sought or the hasty provision of defense lagged for his orders.

The Chief was so worn out with anxiety and sleepless labor that on June 9 he delegated his authority to a provisional council. Then the impetuous and chivalric Martin Gubbins, Financial Commissioner of Oudh, saw a means of attaining by compromise that which he had vainly urged on Lawrence—he persuaded the commanding officers of the native regiments in Lucknow to tell their men to go home on furlough until November.

This was actually done, but Lawrence was so indignant when he heard of it that he dissolved the council on June 12 and sent Malcolm and other officers to recall the sepoys. Five hundred came back, vowing that they would stand by “Lar-rence-sahib Bahadur” till the last. They kept their word; they shared the danger and glory of the siege with the 32d and the British Artillery.

Gubbins, a born firebrand, then pressed his superior to attack a rebel force that had gathered at the village of Chinhut, ten miles northeast of Lucknow. Unfortunately Lawrence yielded, marched out with seven hundred men, half of whom were Europeans, and was badly defeated, owing to the desertion of some native gunners at a critical moment.

A disastrous rout followed. Colonel Case of the 32d, trying vainly with his men to stop the native runaways, was shot dead. For three miles the enemy’s horse artillery pelted the helpless troops with grape, and the massacre of every man in the small column was prevented only by the bravery of a tiny squadron of volunteer cavalry, which held a bridge until the harassed infantry were able to cross.

Lawrence, when the day was lost, rode back to prepare the hapless Europeans in the city for the hazard that now threatened. The investment of the Residency could not be prevented. It was a question whether the mutineers would not surge over it in triumph within the hour.

From the windows of the lofty building which gave its name to the cluster of houses within the walls, the despairing women saw their exhausted fellow-countrymen fighting a dogged rear-guard action against twenty times as many rebels. Some poor creatures, straining their eyes to find in the ranks of the survivors the husband they would never see again, clasped their children to their breasts and shrieked in agony. Others, like Lady Inglis, knelt and read the Litany. A few, and among them was Winifred, ran out with vessels full of water and tended the wants of the almost choking soldiers who were staggering to the shelter of the veranda.

She had seen Lawrence gallop to his quarters, and his drawn, haggard face told her the worst. He was accompanied by two staff officers, but Malcolm was not with him. The pandemonium that reigned everywhere for many minutes made it impossible that she should obtain any news of her lover’s fate. While the soldiers were flocking through the narrow streets that flanked or enfiladed the walls, the native servants and coolies engaged on the defenses deserted en masse. The rebel artillery was beginning to batter the more exposed buildings; the British guns already in position took up the challenge; sepoys seized the adjoining houses and commenced a deadly musketry fire that was far more effective than the terrifying cannonade; and the men of the garrison who had not taken part in that fatal sortie rushed to their posts, determined to stem at all costs the imminent assault of the victorious mutineers.