The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny

An officer seeing Winifred carrying water to some men who were lying in a position that would soon be swept by two guns mounted near a bridge across the Goomtee, known as the Iron Bridge, ordered the soldiers to seek a safer refuge.

“And you, Miss Mayne, you must not remain here,” he went on. “You will only lose your life, and we want brave women like you to live.”

Winifred recognized him though his face was blackened with powder and grime. Her own wild imaginings made death seem preferable to the anguish of her belief that Frank had fallen.

“Oh, Captain Fulton,” she said, “can you tell me what has become of – of Mr. Malcolm?”

“Yes,” he said, summoning a gallant smile as an earnest of good news. “I heard the Chief tell him to make the best of his way to Allahabad. That is the only quarter from which help can be expected, and to-day’s disaster renders help imperative. Now, my dear child, don’t take it to heart in that way. Malcolm will win through, never fear! He is just the man for such a task, and each mile he covers means – ” he paused; a round shot crashed against a gable and brought down a chimney with a loud rattle of falling bricks – “means so many minutes less of this sort of thing.”

But Winifred neither saw nor heard. Her eyes were blinded with tears, her brain dazed by the knowledge that her lover had undertaken alone a journey declared impossible from the more favorably situated station of Cawnpore many days earlier.

She managed somehow to find her uncle. Perhaps Fulton spared a moment to take her to him. She never knew. When next her ordered mind appreciated her environment that last day of June, 1857, was drawing to its close and the glare of rebel watch fires, heightened by the constant flashes of an unceasing bombardment, told her that the siege of Lucknow had begun.

Then she remembered that Mr. Mayne had taken her to one of the cellars in the Residency in which the women and children were secure from the leaden hail that was beating on the walls. She had a vague notion that he carried a gun and a cartridge belt, and a new panic seized her lest the Moloch of war had devoured her only relative, for her father had been killed at the battle of Alma, and her mother’s death, three years later, had led to her sailing for India to take charge of her uncle’s household.

The women near at hand were too sorrow-laden to give any real information. They only knew that every man within the Residency walls, even the one-armed, one-legged, decrepit pensioners who had lost limbs or health in the service of the Company, were mustered behind the frail defenses.

To a girl of her temperament inaction was the least endurable of evils. Now that the shock of Malcolm’s departure had passed she longed to seek oblivion in work, while existence in that stifling underground atmosphere, with its dense crowd of heart-broken women and complaining children, was almost intolerable.

In defiance of orders – of which, however, she was then ignorant – she went to the ground floor. Passing out into the darkness she crossed an open space to the hospital, and it chanced that the first person she encountered was Chumru, Malcolm’s bearer.

The man’s grim features changed their habitual scowl to a demoniac grin when he saw her.

“Ohé, miss-sahib,” he cried, “this meeting is my good fortune, for surely you can tell me where my sahib is?”

Winifred was not yet well versed in Hindustani, but she caught some of the words, and the contortions of Chumru’s expressive countenance were familiar to her, as she had laughed many a time at Malcolm’s recitals of his ill-favored servant’s undeserved repute as a villain of parts.

“Your sahib is gone to Allahabad,” she managed to say before the thought came tardily that perhaps it was not wise to make known the Chief Commissioner’s behests in this manner.

“To Illah-hábàd! Shade of Mahomet, how can he go that far without me?” exclaimed Chumru. “Who will cook his food and brush his clothes? Who will see to it that he is not robbed on the road by every thief that ever reared a chicken or milked a cow? I feared that some evil thing had befallen him, but this is worse than aught that entered my head.”

All this was lost on Winifred. She imagined that the native was bewailing his master’s certain death in striving to carry out a desperate mission, whereas he was really thinking that the most disturbing element about the sahib’s journey was his own absence.

Seeing the distress in her face, Chumru was sure that she sympathized with his views.

“Never mind, miss-sahib,” said he confidentially, “I will slip away now, steal a horse and follow him.”

Without another word he hastened out of the building and left her wondering what he meant. She repeated the brief phrases, as well as she could recall them, to a Eurasian whom she found acting as a water-carrier.

This man translated Chumru’s parting statement quite accurately, and when Mr. Mayne came at last from the Bailey Guard where he had been stationed until relieved after nightfall, he horrified her by telling her the truth – that it was a hundred chances to one against the unfortunate bearer’s escape if he did really endeavor to break through the investing lines.

And indeed few men could have escaped from the entrenchment that night. Any one who climbed to the third story of the Residency – itself the highest building within the walls and standing on the most elevated site – would soon be dispossessed of the fantastic notion that any corner was left unguarded by the rebels. A few houses had been demolished by Lawrence’s orders, it is true, but his deep respect for native ideals had left untouched the swarm of mosques and temples that stood between the Residency and the river.

“Spare their holy places!” he said, yet Mohammedan and Hindu did not scruple now to mask guns in the sacred enclosures and loop-hole the hallowed walls for musketry. On the city side, narrow lanes, lofty houses and strongly-built palaces offered secure protection to the besiegers. The British position was girt with the thousand gleams of a lightning more harmful than that devised by nature, for each spurt of flame meant that field-piece or rifle was sending some messenger of death into the tiny area over which floated the flag of England. Within this outer circle of fire was a lesser one; the garrison made up for lack of numbers by a fixed resolve to hold each post until every man fell. To modern ideas, the distance between these opposing rings was absurdly small. As the siege progressed besiegers and besieged actually came to know each other by sight. Even from the first they were seldom separated by more than the width of an ordinary street, and conversation was always maintained, the threats of the mutineers being countered by the scornful defiance of the defenders.

Nevertheless Chumru prevailed on Captain Weston to allow him to drop to the ground outside the Bailey Guard. The Police Superintendent, a commander who was now fighting his own corps, accepted the bearer’s promise that if he were not killed or captured he would make the best of his way to Allahabad, and even if he did not find his master, tell the British officer in charge there of the plight of Lucknow.

Chumru, who had no knowledge of warfare beyond his recent experiences, was acquainted with the golden rule that the shorter the time spent as an involuntary target the less chance is there of being hit. As soon as he reached the earth from the top of the wall he took to his heels and ran like a hare in the direction of some houses that stood near the Clock Tower.

He was fired at, of course, but missed, and the sepoys soon ceased their efforts to put a bullet through him because they fancied he was a deserter.

As soon as they saw his face they had no doubts whatever on that score. Indeed, were it his unhappy lot to fall in with the British patrols already beginning to feel their way north from Bengal along the Grand Trunk Road he would assuredly have been hanged at sight on his mere appearance.

Chumru’s answers to the questions showered on him were magnificently untrue. According to him the Residency was already a ruin and its precincts a shambles. The accursed Feringhis might hold out till the morning, but he doubted it. Allah smite them! – that was why he chanced being shot by his brethren rather than be slain by mistake next day when the men of Oudh took vengeance on their oppressors. He could not get away earlier because he was a prisoner, locked up by the huzoors, forsooth, for a trifling matter of a few rupees left behind by one of the white dogs who fell that day at Chinhut.

In brief, Chumru abused the English with such an air that he was regarded by the rebels as quite an acquisition. They had not learned, as yet, that it was better to shoot a dozen belated friends than permit one spy to win his way through their lines.

Watching his opportunity, he slipped off into the bazaar. Now he was quite safe, being one among two hundred thousand. But time was passing; he wanted a horse, and might expect to find the canal bridge closely guarded.

Having a true Eastern sense of humor behind that saturnine visage of his, he hit on a plan of surmounting both difficulties with ease.

Singling out the first well-mounted and half-intoxicated native officer he met – though, to his credit be it said, he chose a Brahmin subadar of cavalry – he hailed him boldly.

“Brother,” said he, “I would have speech with thee.”

Now, Chumru took his life in his hands in this matter. For one wearing the livery of servitude to address a high-caste Brahmin thus was incurring the risk of being sabered then and there. In fact the subadar was so amazed that he glared stupidly at the Mohammedan who greeted him as “brother,” and it may be that those fierce eyes looking at him from different angles had a mesmeric effect.

“Thou?” he spluttered, reining in his horse, a hardy country-bred, good for fifty miles without bait.

“Even I,” said Chumru. “I have occupation, but I want help. One will suffice, though there is gold enough for many.”

“Gold, sayest thou?”

“Ay, gold in plenty. The dog of a Feringhi whom I served has had it hidden these two months in the thatch of his house near the Alumbagh. To-day he is safely bottled up there – ” he jerked a thumb towards the sullen thunder of the bombardment. “I am a poor man, and I may be stopped if I try to leave the city. Take me up behind thee, brother, and give me safe passage to the bungalow, and behold, we will share treasure of a lakh or more!”

The Brahmin’s brain was bemused with drink, but it took in two obvious elements of the tale at once. Here was a fortune to be gained by merely cutting a throat at the right moment.

“That is good talking,” said he. “Mount, friend, and leave me to answer questions.”

Chumru saw that he had gaged his man rightly, and the evil glint in the subadar’s eyes told him the unspoken thought. He climbed up behind the high-peaked saddle and, after the horse had showed his resentment of a double burthen, was taken through the bazaar as rapidly as its thronged streets permitted. Sure enough, the canal bridge was watched.

“Whither go ye?” demanded the officer in charge.

“To bring in a Feringhi who is in hiding,” said the Brahmin.

“Shall I send a few men with you?”

“Nay, we two are plenty – ” this with a laugh.

“Quite plenty,” put in Chumru. The officer glanced at him and was convinced. Being a Mohammedan, he took Chumru’s word without question, which showed the exceeding wisdom of Chumru in selecting a Brahmin for the sacrifice; thus was he prepared to deal with either party in an unholy alliance.

They jogged in silence past the Alumbagh. The Brahmin, on reflection, decided that he would stab Chumru before the hoard was disturbed and he could then devise another hiding-place at his leisure. Chumru had long ago decided to send the Brahmin to the place where all unbelievers go, at the first suitable opportunity. Hence the advantage lay with him, because he held a strategic position and could choose his own time.

Beyond the Alumbagh there were few houses, and these of mean description, and each moment the subadar’s mind was growing clearer under the prospect of great wealth to be won so easily.

“Where is this bungalow, friend?” said he at last, seeing nothing but a straight road in front.

“Patience, brother. ’Tis now quite near. It lies behind that tope of trees yonder.”

The other half turned to ascertain in which direction his guide was pointing.

“It is not on the main road, then?”

“No. A man who has gold worth the keeping loves not to dwell where all men pass.”

A little farther, and Chumru announced:

“We turn off here.”

It was dark. He thought he had hit upon a by-way, but no sooner did the horse quit the shadow of the trees by the roadside than he saw that he had been misled by the wheel-tracks of a ryot’s cart. The Brahmin sniffed suspiciously.

“Is there no better way than this?” he cried, when his charger nearly stumbled into a deep ditch.

“One only, but you may deem it too far,” was the quiet answer, and Chumru, placing his left hand on the Brahmin’s mouth, plunged a long, thin knife up to the hilt between his ribs.

CHAPTER IX

A LONG CHASE

It was not Lawrence’s order but Malcolm’s own suggestion that led to the desperate task entrusted to the young aide by the Chief. While those few heroic volunteer horsemen drove back the enemy’s cavalry and held the bridge over the Kokrail until the beaten army made good its retreat, Sir Henry halted by the roadside and watched the passing of his exhausted men. He had the aspect of one who hoped that some stray bullet would end the torment of life. In that grief-stricken hour his indomitable spirit seemed to falter. Ere night he was the Lawrence of old, but the magnitude of the calamity that had befallen him was crushing and he winced beneath it.

Out of three hundred and fifty white soldiers in the column he had lost one hundred and nineteen. Every gun served by natives was captured by the enemy. Worst of all, the moral effect of such a defeat outweighed a dozen victories. It not only brought about the instant beginnings of the siege, but its proportions were grossly exaggerated in the public eye. For the first time in many a year the white soldiers had fled before a strictly Indian force. They were outnumbered, which was nothing new in the history of the country, but it must be confessed they were out-generaled, too. Lawrence, never a believer in Gubbins’s forward policy, showed unwonted hesitancy even during the march to Chinhut: he halted, advanced and counter-marched the troops in a way that was foreign to a man of his decisive character. Where he was unaccountably timid the enemy were unusually bold, and the outcome was disaster.

Yet in this moment of bitterest adversity he displayed that sympathy for the sufferings of others that won him the esteem of all who came in contact with him.

By some extraordinary blunder of the commissariat the 32d had set forth that morning without breaking their fast. Now, after a weary march and a protracted fight in the burning sun, some of the men deliberately lay down to die.

“We can go no farther,” they said. “We may as well meet death here as a few yards away. And, when the sepoys overtake us, we shall at least have breath enough left to die fighting.”

Lawrence, when finally he turned his horse’s head toward Lucknow, came upon such a group. He shook his feet free of the stirrups.

“Now, my lads,” he said quietly, “you have no cause to despair. Catch hold of the leathers, two of you, and the horse will help you along. Mr. Malcolm, you can assist in the same way. Another mile will bring us to the city.”

One of the men, finding it in his heart to pity his haggard-faced general, thought to console him by saying:

“We’ll try, if it’s on’y to please you, your honor, but it’s all up with us, I’m afraid. If the end doesn’t come to-day it will surely be with us to-morrow.”

“Why do you think that?” asked Lawrence. “We must hold the Residency until the last man falls. What else can we do?”

“I know that, your honor, but we haven’t got the ghost of a chance. They’re a hundred to one, and as well armed as we are. It ’ud be a different thing if help could come, but it can’t. If what people are saying is true, sir, the nearest red-coats are at Allahabad, an’ p’raps they’re hard pressed, too.”

“That is not the way to look at a difficulty. In war it is the unexpected that happens. Keep your spirits up and you may live to tell your grandchildren how you fought the rebels at Lucknow. I want you and every man in the ranks to know that my motto is ‘No Surrender.’ You have heard what happened at Cawnpore. Here, in Lucknow, despite to-day’s disaster, we shall fight to a finish.”

An English battery came thundering down the road to take up a fresh position and assist in covering the retreat. The guns unlimbered near a well.

“There!” said Lawrence, “you see how my words have come true. A minute ago you were ready to fall before the first sowar who lifted his saber over your head. Go now and help by drawing water for the gunners and yourselves. Then you can ride back on the carriages when they limber up.”

Malcolm, to whom the soldier’s words brought inspiration, spurred Nejdi alongside his Chief.

“Will you permit me to ride to Allahabad, sir, and tell General Neill how matters stand here?” he said.

Lawrence looked at him as though the request were so fantastic that he had not fully grasped its meaning.

“To Allahabad?” he repeated, turning in the saddle to watch the effect of the first shot fired by the battery.

“Yes, sir,” cried Malcolm, eagerly. “I know the odds are against me, but Hodson rode as far through the enemy’s country only six weeks ago, and I did something of the kind, though not so successfully, when I went from Meerut to Agra and from Agra to Cawnpore.”

“You had an escort, and I can spare not a man.”

“I will go alone, sir.”

“I would gladly avail myself of your offer, but the Residency will be invested in less than an hour.”

“Let me go now, sir. I am well mounted. In the confusion I may be able to reach the open country without being noticed.”

“Go, then, in God’s name, and may your errand prosper, for you have many precious lives in your keeping.”

Lawrence held out his hand, and Malcolm clasped it.

“Tell Neill,” said the Chief Commissioner in a low tone of intense significance, “that we can hold out a fortnight, a month perhaps, or even a few days longer if buoyed up with hope. That is all. If you succeed, I shall not forget your services. The Viceroy has given me plenary powers, and I shall place your name in orders to-night, Captain Malcolm.”

He kept his promise. When Lucknow was evacuated after the Second Relief, the official gazettes recorded that Lieutenant Frank Malcolm of the 3d Cavalry had been promoted to a captaincy, supernumerary on the staff, for gallantry on the field on June 30, while a special minute provided that he should attain the rank of major if he reached Allahabad on or before July 4.

From the point on the road to Chinhut where Malcolm bade his Chief farewell, he could see the tower of the Residency, gray among the white domes and minarets that lined the south bank of the Goomtee. He had no illusions now as to the course the mutineers would follow. Native rumors had brought the news of the massacre at Cawnpore, though the ghastly tragedy of the Well was yet to come. He knew that this elegant city, resplendent and glorious in the sheen of the setting sun, would soon be a living hell. A fearsome struggle would surge around that tower where the British flag was flying. A few hundreds of Europeans would strive to keep at bay tens of thousands of eager rebels. Would they succeed? Pray Heaven for that while Winifred lived!

And in all human probability their fate rested with him. If he were able to stir the British authorities in the south to almost superhuman efforts, a relieving force might arrive before the end of July. It was a great undertaking he had set himself. Yet he would have attempted it for Winifred’s sake alone, and the thought of her anguish, when she should hear that he was gone, gave him a pang that was not solaced by the dearest honor a soldier can attain – promotion on the field.

It was out of the question that he should return to the Residency before he began his self-imposed mission. Already the enemy’s cavalry were swooping along both flanks of the routed troops. In a few minutes the only available road, which crossed the Goomtee by a bridge of boats and led through the suburbs by way of the Dilkusha, would be closed. As it was he had to press Nejdi into a fast gallop before he could clear the left wing of the advancing army. Then, easing the pace a little, he swung off into a by-way, and ere long was cantering down the quiet road that led to Rai Bareilly and thence to Allahabad.

At seven o’clock he was ten miles from Lucknow, at eight, nearly twenty. The quick-falling shadows warned him that if he would procure food for Nejdi and himself he must seize the next opportunity that presented itself, while a rest of some sort was absolutely necessary if he meant to spare his gallant Arab for the trial of endurance that still lay ahead.

Though he had never before traveled that road he was acquainted with its main features. Thirty miles from his present position was the small town of Rai Bareilly. Fifty miles to the southeast was Partabgarh. Fifty miles due south of Partabgarh lay Allahabad. The scheme roughly outlined in his mind was, in the first place, to buy, borrow, or steal a native pony which would carry him to the outskirts of Rai Bareilly before dawn. Then remounting Nejdi he would either ride rapidly through the town, or make a détour, whichever method seemed preferable after inquiry from such peaceful natives as he met on the road. Four hours beyond Rai Bareilly he would leave the main road, strike due south for the Ganges, and follow the left bank of the river until he was opposite Allahabad. He refused to ask himself what he would do if Allahabad were in the hands of the rebels.

“I shall tackle that difficulty about this hour to-morrow,” he communed, with a laugh at his own expense. “Just now, when a hundred miles of unknown territory face me, I have enough to contend with. So, steady is the word! good horse! Cæsarem invehis et fortunas ejus!”

Thus far the wayfarers encountered during his journey had treated him civilly. The ryots, peasant proprietors of the soil, drew their rough carts aside and salaamed as he passed. These men knew little or nothing, as yet, of the great events that were taking place on the south and west of the Ganges. A few educated bunniahs and zemindars,11 who doubtless had heard of wild doings in the cities, glanced at him curiously, and would have asked for news if he had not invariably ridden by at a rapid pace.

As it happened, the route he followed was far removed from the track of murder and rapine that marked the early progress of the Mutiny, and the mere sight of a British Officer, moving on with such speed and confidence, must have set these worthy folk a-wondering. Between Rai Bareilly and the Grand Trunk Road stood the wide barrier of the sacred river, while the town itself must not be confused with Bareilly – situated nearly a hundred miles north of Lucknow – which became notorious as the headquarters of Khan Bahadur Khan, a pensioner of the British Government, and a ruffian second only to Nana Sahib in merciless cruelty.

All unknown to Malcolm, and indeed little recognized as yet in India save by a few district officials, there was a man in Rai Bareilly that night who was destined to test the chivalry of Britain on many a hard-fought field. Ahmed Ullah, famous in history as the Moulvie of Fyzabad, had crossed the young officer’s path once already. When Malcolm took his untrained charger for the first wild gallop out of Meerut – the ride that ended ignominiously in the moat of the Kings’ of Delhi hunting lodge – he nearly rode over a Mohammedan priest, as he tore along the Grand Trunk Road some five miles south of the station.

It would have been well for India if Nejdi’s hoofs had then and there struck the breath out of that ascetic frame. Of all the firebrands raised by the Mutiny, the Moulvie of Fyzabad was the fiercest and most dangerous. Early in the year he was imprisoned for preaching sedition. Unhappily he was liberated too soon, and, his fanaticism only inflamed the more by punishment, he went to the Punjab and sowed disaffection far and wide by his burning zeal for the spread of Islam. By chance he returned to Fyzabad before the outbreak at Meerut. The feeble loyalty of the native regiments at Lucknow sufficed to keep all the borderland of Nepaul quiet for nearly two months. But the reports brought by his disciples warned the moulvie that the true believer’s day of triumph was approaching. Moreover, the Begum of Oudh, one of three women who were worth as many army corps to the mutineers, was waiting for him at Rai Bareilly, a placid eddy in the backwash of the torrents sweeping through Upper India, and Ahmed Ullah had left Fyzabad on the evening of the 29th to keep his tryst.