The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny

“Blessed be Kali!” he cried. “I saw five female ghosts with goats’ heads in a tree last night, and my wife said it betokened a journey and wealth. Not only can I bring you by the shortest road, huzoor, but my brother has a budgerow moored at the ghât, meaning to carry my castor-oil seeds to Mirzapur. I am not ready for him yet for three weeks or more, and he will ask no better occupation than to drop down stream with you and your camp.”

“I have no camp,” said Malcolm, “but I pay the same rates for the boat.”

“The sahib means that his camp marches by road,” put in Chumru, severely. “Didst not hear him say that we have mislaid the track?”

The ryot apologized for his stupidity, and Frank recognized that his retainer disapproved very strongly of such strict adherence to the truth. On the plea that they must hasten if the midday heat were to be avoided, they cut short the halt to less than an hour. When they came to tighten the girths again they found that Chumru’s horse had fallen lame. As Nejdi, too, was showing signs of stiffness, Malcolm mounted one of the spare animals and led the Arab. Chumru and the ryot bestrode the third horse, and under the guidance of one who knew every path, they set out for the Ganges.

There are few features of the landscape so complex in their windings as the foot-paths of India. Owing to the immense distances between towns – the fertile and densely populated Doab offers no standard of comparison for the remainder of a vast continent – roads were scarce and far between in Mutiny days. The Grand Trunk Road and the rivers Ganges and Jumna were the main arteries of traffic. For the rest, men marched across country, and the narrow ribands of field tracks meandered through plowed land and jungle, traversed nullah and hill and wood, and intersected each other in a tangle that was wholly inextricable unless one traveled by the compass or by well-known landmarks, where such were visible.

The ryot, of course, familiar with each yard of the route, practically followed a straight line. After a steady jog of an hour and a half they saw the silver thread of the Ganges from the crest of a small ridge that ran north and south. The river was then about three miles distant, and they were hurrying down the descent when they came upon an ekka, a little native two-wheeled cart, without springs, and drawn by a diminutive pony. Alone among wheeled conveyances, the ekka can leave the main roads in fairly level country, and this one had evidently brought a zemindar from a river-side village.

The man himself, a portly, full-bearded Mohammedan, was examining a growing crop, and his behavior, no less than the furtive looks cast at the newcomers by his driver, warned Malcolm that here, for a certainty, the Mutiny was a known thing. The zemindar’s face assumed a bronze-green tint when he saw the European officer, and the sulky-looking native perched behind the shafts of the ekka growled something in the local patois that caused the ryot sitting behind Chumru to squirm uneasily.

The other glanced hastily around, as though he hoped to find assistance near, and Chumru muttered to his master:

“Have a care, sahib, else we may hop on to a limed twig.”

The boldest course was the best one. Malcolm rode up to the zemindar, who was separated some forty paces from the ekka.

“I come from Lucknow,” he said. “What news is there from Fattehpore and Allahabad?”

The man hesitated. He was so completely taken aback by the sight of an armed officer riding towards him in broad daylight – for Malcolm having lost his own sword had taken Chumru’s – that he was hardly prepared to meet the emergency.

“There is little news,” he said, at last, and it was not lost on his questioner that the customary phrases of respect were omitted, though he spoke civilly enough.

“Nevertheless, what is it?” demanded Frank. “Has the Mutiny spread thus far, or is it confined to Cawnpore?”

“I know not what you mean,” was the self-contained answer. “In this district we are peaceable people. We look after our crops, even as I am engaged at this moment, and have no concern with what goes on elsewhere.”

“A most worthy and honorable sentiment, and I trust it will avail you when we have hanged all these rebels and we come to inquire into the conduct of your village. I want you to accompany me now and place my orderly and myself on board a boat for Allahabad.”

“That is impossible – sahib – ” and the words came reluctantly – “there are no boats on the river these days.”

“Why not?”

“They are all away, carrying grain and hay.”

“What then, are your crops so forward? This one will not be ready for harvesting ere another month.”

“You will not find a budgerow on this side. Perchance they will ferry you across at the village in a small boat, and you will have better accommodation at Fattehpore.”

“Are we opposite Fattehpore?”

“Yes – sahib.”

All the while the zemindar’s eyes were looking furtively from Frank to the lower ground. It was a puzzling situation. The man was not actively hostile, yet his manner betrayed an undercurrent of fear and dislike that could only be accounted for by the downfall of British power in the locality. Thinking Chumru could deal better with his fellow-countryman, Malcolm called him, breaking in on a lively conversation that was going on between his servant and the ekka-wallah.

Chumru, who had told the ryot to dismount, came at once.

“Our friend here says that things are quiet on the river, but there are no boats to be had,” explained Malcolm. Chumru grinned, and the zemindar regarded him with troubled eyes.

“Excellent,” he said. “We shall go to his house and wait while his servants look for a boat.”

This suggestion seemed to please the other man.

“I will go on in front in the ekka,” he agreed, “and lead you to my dwelling speedily.”

Chumru edged nearer his master while their new acquaintance walked towards the ekka.

“Jump down and tie both when I give the word, sahib,” he whispered. “There has been murder done here.”

Malcolm understood instantly that his native companion had found the ekka-wallah more communicative. In fact, Chumru had fooled the man by pretending a willingness to slay the Feringhi forthwith, and the sheep-like ryot was now livid with terror at the prospect of witnessing an immediate killing.

When the zemindar was close to the ekka, Chumru whipped out one of the Brahmin’s cavalry pistols.

“Now, sahib!” he cried. Malcolm drew his sword and sprang down. The zemindar fell on his knees.

“Spare my life, huzoor, and I will tell thee everything,” he roared.

Were he not so worn with fatigue, and were not the issues depending on the man’s revelations so important, Malcolm could have laughed at this remarkable change of tone. The flabby, well-fed rascal squealed like a pig when the point of the sword touched his skin, and the Englishman was forced to scowl fiercely to hide a smile.

“Speak, sug,”16 he said. “What of Fattehpore and Allahabad, and be sure thou has spent thy last hour if thou liest.”

“Sahib, God knoweth that I can tell thee naught of Allahabad, but the budmashes at Fattehpore have risen, and Tucker-sahib is dead. They killed him, I have heard, after a fight on the roof of the cutcherry.”

Malcolm guessed rightly that Mr. Tucker was the judge at that station, but he must not betray ignorance.

“And the others – they who fled? What of them?” he said, knowing that the scenes enacted elsewhere must have had their counterpart at Fattehpore.

“Wow!” The kneeling man flinched as the sword pricked him again. “There are two mems17 in a house near the ghât. They alone remain of those who crossed. And I saved them, sahib. I swear it, by the Kaaba, I saved them.”

“They are young, doubtless, and good-looking?”

A new fear shone in the Mohammedan’s eyes, and he did not answer. Frank’s gorge rose with a deadly disgust, and it is hard to say that his sword would not have gone home in another instant had not Chumru interfered:

“Kill him not yet, sahib. He may be useful. Bind him and the other slave back to back. Then I shall help you to truss them properly.”

Chumru soon showed that he meant business. When he was free to replace the pistol in the holster, which he did all the more readily since he had never used a firearm in his life, he gagged master and man with skill, tied them to a tree, and then unfolded the plan which the ekka-driver’s story had suggested.

The fever of rebellion had spread along the whole of the left bank of the Ganges as far as Allahabad. A party of fugitives from Fattehpore who had taken to a boat were pursued, captured, and slain. Two girls who had managed to cross the river unseen were now lodged in a go-down, or warehouse, belonging to the very man whom chance had made Malcolm’s prisoner. He was keeping them to curry favor with a local rajah who headed the outbreak at Fattehpore. It was true that there were no boats left on this side of the river: they were all on the opposite bank, being loaded with loot, and the two Englishwomen were merely awaiting the return of the zemindar’s budgerow to be sent to a fate worse than death.

Chumru, a Mohammedan himself, was not greatly concerned about the misfortunes of a couple of women, but he saw plainly that Malcolm could no more hope to escape under the present conditions than the poor creatures whose whereabouts had just become known. This was precisely the blend of intrigue and adventure that appealed to his alert intelligence. In wriggling through a mesh of difficulties he was lithe as a snake, and the proposal he now made was certainly bold enough to commend itself to the most daring.

He drew Malcolm and the trembling ryot apart.

“Listen, friend,” said he to the latter. “Thou art, indeed, lost if that fat hog sees thee again. He will harry thee and thy wife and all thy family to death for having helped us, and it will be in vain to protest that thou hadst no mind in the matter, for behold, thou didst not lift a finger when I threatened him with the pistol.”

“Protector of the poor, what was one to do?” whined the ryot.

“I am not thy protector. ’Tis the sahib here to whom thou must look for counsel. Attend, now, and I will show thee a road to safety and riches. Art thou known to either of those men?”

“I have not seen them before, for I come this way but seldom.”

“’Tis well. The sahib shall sit in the ekka, with the curtains drawn, while I give it out that I go with my wife to take the miss-sahibs across the river, for which purpose the worthy zemindar will presently hand us a written order, as he hath ink, paper, and pen in the ekka. Thou shalt be driver and come with us on the boat, and when we are in mid-stream, and the sahib appears at my signal, see that thou hast a cudgel handy if it be needed. Then, when we reach Allahabad, God willing, the sahib will give thee many rupees and none will be the wiser. What say’st thou?”

“I am a poor man – ”

“Ay, keep to that. ’Tis ever a safe answer. Do you like my notion, sahib? Otherwise, we must take our chance and wander in the jungle.”

The fact that Chumru’s scheme included the rescue of the unhappy girls imprisoned in the go-down caused Malcolm to approve it without reserve. The zemindar’s gag was removed and he was asked his name.

“Hossein Beg,” said he.

“Be assured, then,” said Malcolm, sternly, “that thy life depends on the fulfilment of the instructions I now require of thee. See to it, therefore, that they are written in such wise as to insure success, and I, for my part, promise to send thee succor ere night falls. Write on this tablet that the miss-sahibs are to be delivered to the charge of Rissaldar Ali Khan and his wife, for conveyance to Fattehpore, and bid thy servants help the rissaldar in every possible way. Believe me, if aught miscarries in this matter, thou shalt rot to death in thy bonds.”

“Let my servant go with your honor, so that all things may be done according to your honor’s wishes.”

“What then? Wouldst thou juggle with the favor I have shown thee?”

This time the sword impinged on the Adam’s apple in Hossein Beg’s throat, and he shrank as far as his bonds would permit.

“Say not so, Khudâwand,”18 he gurgled. “I swear by my father’s bones I meant no ill.”

“Mayhap. Nevertheless, I shall take care thy intent is honest, Hossein Beg. Write now and pay heed to thy words, else jackals shall rend thee ere to-morrow’s dawn.”

By this time the man was reduced to a state of abject submission. Possibly his offer of the ekka-wallah’s services was made in good faith, but Malcolm liked the looks of the man as little as he liked the looks of his master, and he preferred to trust to Chumru’s nimble wits rather than the stupid contriving of a peasant, no matter how willing the latter might be.

The zemindar, having written, was gagged again, and the pair were left to that torture of silence and doubt they had not scrupled to inflict on those who had done them no wrong. They were tied to a tree-trunk in the heart of a clump, and a hundred men might pass in that lonely place without discovering them, whereas Hossein Beg and his subordinate could see easily enough through the leafy screen that enveloped their open-air prison.

Half an hour later, Hossein Beg’s ekka arrived on the open space that adjoined the village ghât. At one end was a mosque – at the other a temple. In the center, at a little distance from the bank, was a square modern building, evidently the warehouse in which the English ladies were pent.

With the ekka came a rissaldar of cavalry, riding one horse and leading two others. When he dismounted a scabbard clattered at his heels, for Malcolm now had the pistols between his knees as he sat behind the tightly drawn curtains of the vehicle.

“Mohammed Rasul!” shouted the rissaldar, loudly. “Where is Mohammed Rasul? I must discourse with him instantly.”

A man came running.

“Ohé, sirdar,” he cried. “Behold, I come!”

A note was thrust into the runner’s hands.

“Read, and quickly,” was the imperious order. “I have affairs at Fattehpore and cannot wait here long. Is there a boat to be hired?”

“A budgerow is even now approaching, leader of the faithful.”

“Good. There is some disposition to be made of two Feringhi women. Read that which Hossein Beg hath written, and make haste, I pray thee, brother.”

Perhaps Mohammed Rasul wondered why his employer wrote in such imploring strain that he was to obey the worshipful “Ali Khan’s” slightest word, and bestow him and his belongings, together with the two prisoners, on board a boat for Fattehpore with the utmost speed. However that may be, he lost no time. The budgerow was warped close to the ghât, her contents, mostly European furniture, as Malcolm could see through a fold in the curtain, were promptly unloaded, and preparations made for the return journey. First, the horses were led on board and secured. Then two pallid girls, only half clothed, their eyes red with weeping and their cheeks haggard with misery, were led from the go-down.

“Ali Khan” was about to guide the ekka along the rough gangway when Mohammed Rasul interfered.

“My master says naught concerning the ekka and pony,” said he. “He hath detained Gopi, and this driver is unknown to me. Who will bring them back when they have served your needs, sirdar?”

“I will attend to that,” replied Chumru, gruffly, and Hossein Beg’s factotum had perforce to be content with the undertaking.

But fate, which had certainly favored Malcolm and his native comrade thus far, played them what looked like a jade’s trick at the very moment when success was within their grasp. The ekka pony, frightened by the lap of the swift-flowing water against the steps beneath, shied, backed, and strove to reach the shore. Not all Chumru’s wiry strength, aided by the alarmed ryot, could prevent the brute from turning. A wheel slipped off the staging, the narrow vehicle toppled over, and the amazed spectators saw a booted and spurred British officer of cavalry sprawling on the ghât instead of the veiled Mohammedan woman who ought to have made her appearance in this undignified manner.

Malcolm was on his feet in a second.

“Come on, Chumru!” he cried, as he leaped on board the budgerow. He saw one of the crew take an extra turn of a rope round a cat-head, and fired at him. Hit or miss, the fellow tumbled overboard, and his mates followed. Chumru, assisted by the ryot, who elected at this twelfth hour to throw in his lot with that of the sahib, began to cast off the cables. Even the two dazed girls helped, once they knew that an Englishman was fighting in their behalf.

To add to the excitement on shore Malcolm fired the second pistol at the men nearest to the boat, which was already beginning to slip away with the current. Then he rushed to the helm, unlashed it, and turned the boat’s head toward the channel, while Chumru and the ryot, helped by the girls, hauled at the heavy mat sail.

Having lashed the helm again in order to keep the budgerow on the starboard tack, Malcolm was about to lend a hand, despite his wound, when a spurt of firing from the bank took him by surprise, because he had seen neither gun nor pistol in the hands of the loungers on the ghât, and the coolies were certainly unarmed.

Glancing back he saw a man whom he had last seen in the moulvie’s company at Rai Bareilly gesticulating fiercely as he directed the target practise of a number of men. A group of lathered horses behind them showed that they had ridden far and fast, so the accident, which nearly led to his undoing, had really helped to save him and his companions, else the fusillade to which they were now subjected must have taken place while the boat was still tied to the wharf.

“Lie flat on the deck,” he shouted in English, and repeated the words in Hindustani. He flung himself down by Chumru’s side.

“Haul away!” he gasped. “We will soon be out of range.”

Thus while the cumbrous sail creaked and groaned as it slowly climbed the mast, and bullets cut through the matting or were imbedded in the stout woodwork, the latest argosy of Malcolm’s fortunes thrust herself with ever-increasing speed into the ample breast of Mother Ganga. Soon the firing ceased. Malcolm raised his head. The excited mob on the shore was already a horde of Lilliputians, and the placid swish of the river around the roomy craft told him that he was actually free, and on the way to Allahabad once more.

CHAPTER XII

THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM

Malcolm’s first measured thought was an unpleasant one. It was his intent to land one of the budgerow’s crew at the earliest opportunity with a written message, which the bearer would probably be unable to read, addressed to Mohammed Rasul, bidding him go to the assistance of the unlucky Hossein Beg. That plan was now impracticable. The crew had bolted. He could neither send the ryot ashore nor trust to the help of any neighboring village, since men were already galloping along the left bank with obviously hostile designs.

As there was a favorable breeze and the current was swift and strong, he wondered why these pursuers strove to keep the boat in sight. Then it was borne in on him that they had a definite object. Could it be possible that they knew of the presence of other craft, lower down the river? – that he might be called on within the hour to make a last stand against irresistible odds on the deck of the budgerow? Rather than meet certain death in that way he would head boldly for the opposite shore, and trust again to his tired horses for escape to the jungle and the night. Yet, some plan must be devised to keep faith with that wretched zemindar. The man would not die if left where he was for another forty-eight hours, or even longer. But the word of a sahib was a sacred thing. Whatever the difficulty of communicating with Mohammed Rasul, he must overcome it somehow.

In his perplexity, his eyes fell on the two girls. Being ladies from Fyzabad, they might be able to help him with some knowledge of the locality. Summoning Chumru to take the helm he went forward and spoke to them.

Now it is an enduring fact that a woman’s regard for her personal appearance will engross her mind when graver topics might well be to the fore. No sooner did these sorrow-laden daughters of Eve realize that they were in a position of comparative safety, and in the company of a good-looking young man of their own race, than they attempted to effect some change in their toilette. A handkerchief dipped in the river, a few twists and coilings of refractory hair, a slight readjustment of disordered bodices and crumpled skirts – above all, the gleam of the magic lamp of hope that illumined an abyss of despair – and the amazing result was that Malcolm found two pretty, shy, tremulous maidens awaiting him, instead of the disheveled woe-begone women he had seen pushed down the steps of the ghât.

He introduced himself with the well-mannered courtesy of the period, and in response the elder of the pair raised her blue eyes to his and told him that since the 16th of June until the previous day they had been hiding in the hut of a native woman, mother of their ayah.

“My dear father was killed by Mr. Tucker’s side,” said she. “He was the deputy commissioner of Fattehpore. Keene is our name – I am Harriet, this is my sister Grace. We only came out from England last cold weather – ”

A sudden recollection brought a cry of surprise from Frank.

“Why,” he said, “you were fellow-passengers on the Assaye with Miss Winifred Mayne?”

“Yes, do you know her? What has become of her? We were told that everyone at Meerut was killed.”

“Thank Heaven, she was alive and well when I last saw her three days ago.”

“And her uncle? Is he living? She was very much attached to him. How did she escape from Meerut?” broke in Grace, eagerly.

“I wish they had never left Meerut. The Mutiny at that station collapsed in a couple of hours. Unfortunately they are now both penned up in the Residency at Lucknow, which is surrounded by goodness only knows how many thousands of rebels. But I must give you Winifred’s recent history at another time. I want you to tell me something about this neighborhood. What is the nearest town on the river, and which bank is it on?”

“Unfortunately, our acquaintance with this part of India is very slight,” said Miss Harriet Keene, sadly. “We remained at Calcutta four months with our mother, who died there, without having seen our dear father after a separation of five years. We came up country in March, and were going to Naini Tal19 when the Mutiny broke out. We only saw the Ganges three or four times before our ayah brought us across on that terrible night when father was murdered.”

Malcolm had heard many such tensely dramatic stories from fugitives who had reached Lucknow during July. Phrases of pity or consolation were powerless in face of these tragedies. But he could not forbear asking one question:

“How did you come to fall into the hands of Hossein Beg?”

“We were betrayed by some children,” was the simple answer. “They saw our ayah’s mother baking chupatties, day by day, sufficient for four people. My sister and I lived nearly three weeks in a cow-byre, never daring, of course, to approach even the door. The children made some talk about the lavish food supply in the old woman’s hut, and the story reached the ears of their father. He, like all the other natives here, seems to hate Europeans as though they were his deadliest enemies. He spied on us, discovered our whereabouts, and yesterday morning we were dragged forth, while the poor creatures to whom we owed our lives were beaten to death with sticks before our very eyes.”

The speaker was a fair English girl of twenty. Her sister was eighteen, and their previous experience of the storm and fret of existence was drawn from an uneventful childhood in India, four years in a Brighton school, and a twelvemonth in a Brussels convent!

Malcolm choked back the hard words that rose to his lips, and sought such local information as the ryot could give him. It was little. The tiller of the Indian fields lives and dies in his village and has no interests beyond the horizon. This man visited the Ganges once a year on a religious feast, and perhaps twice in the same period in connection with the shipping of grain on his brother’s boat. To that extent, but no further, did his store of general knowledge pass beyond the narrower limits of those who dwelt far from a river highway.