Flashman in the Great Game

mutiny rampant, civilians murdered, a garrison besieged--and old flashy is in the middle of it, shaking in his boots

You may think it impossible for a white man to pass himself off as a native soldier in John Company's army, and, indeed, I doubt if anyone else has ever done it. But when you've been called on to play as many parts as many parts as I have, it's a bagatelle. None of 'em was as hard to sustain as my lifetime's impersonation of a British officer and gentleman. The truth is we all live under false pretences much of the time; you just have to put on a bold front and brazen it through.

I'll admit my gift of languages has been my greatest asset and I suppose I'm a pretty fair actor; anyway, I'd carried off the role of an Asian-Afghan nigger often enough, and before I was more than a day's ride on the way to Meerut, I was thoroughly back in the part, singing Kabuli bazaar songs through my nose, sneering sideways at anyone I passed and answering greetings with a grunt or a snarl. I had to keep my chin and mouth covered for the first three days, until my beard had sprouted to a disreputable stubble; apart from that, I needed no disguise, for, once I'd dyed my skin, I was dark and dirty-looking enough. By the time I struck the Grand Trunk, my own mother wouldn't have recognised the big, hairy Border Ruffian jogging along so raffishly with his boots out of his stirrups and his lovelock curling out under his puggaree; on the seventh day, when I cursed and shoved my pony through the crowded streets of Meerut city, spurning the rabble aside, as a good Hasanzai should, I was even thinking in Pushtu, and if you'd offered me a seven-course dinner at the Café Royal, I'd have turned it down for mutton-and-rice stew with boiled dates to follow.

But, at the last minute, my nerve slackened a little and I rode about for a couple of hours before I plucked up the courage to go to see Ilderim's cousin Gulam Beg--I rode on past the native-infantry lines and over the Nullah Bridge, up to the Mall in the British town; it was while I was sitting my pony, brooding under the trees, that a dogcart with two English children and their mother went by, and one of the brats squealed with excitement and said I looked just like Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. That cheered me up, for some reason--anyway, I had to have a place to eat and sleep while I shirked my duty, so I finally presented myself at the headquarters of the Third Native Light Cavalry and demanded to see the woordy-major.

I needn't have worried. Gulam Beg was a stout, white-whiskered old cove with silver-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose, and when I announced that Ilderim Khan of Mogala was my sponsor, he was all over me. Hasanzai, was I, and late of the polis? That was good--I had the look of an able man, yes. I had seen no military service, though? ... Hm.... He looked at me quizzically and I tried to slouch a bit more.

"Not in the Guides, perhaps?" says he, with his head on one side. "Or the cutcha cavalry? No? Then doubtless it is by chance that you stand the regulation three paces from my table and clench your hand with the thumb forward--and that the pony I see out yonder is girthed and bridled like one of ours." He chuckled playfully. "A man's past is his own affair, Makarram Khan. You come from Ilderim--it is enough. Be ready to see the colonel sahib at noon."

He'd spotted me for an old soldier, you see, which was all to the good; having detected me in a small deception, it never occurred to him to look for a large one. And he must have passed on his conclusion to the colonel, for when I made my salaam to that worthy officer on the orderly-room verandah, he looked me up and down and says to the woordy-major in English: "Shouldn't wonder if you weren't right, Gulam Beg--he's heard boots and saddles before, that's plain. Probably got bored with garrison work and slipped off one night with half a dozen rifles on his back. And now, having cut the wrong (continued on page 122)Fiashman(continued from page 99) throat or lifted the wrong herd, he's come well south to avoid retribution." He sat back, fingering the big white moustache which covered most of his crimson face. "Ugly-looking devil, ain't he, though? Hasanzai of the Black Mountain, eh? Yes, that's what I'd have thought. Very good...." He frowned at me and then said, very carefully: "Company cavalry apka mangta?"

Which abomination of bad Urdu I took to mean: Did I want to join the Company cavalry? So I showed my teeth and says: "Han, sahib," and thought I might as well act out my part by betraying some more military knowledge--I ducked my head and leaned over and offered him the hilt of my sheathed Khyber knife, at which he burst out laughing and touched it.1 He gave instructions for me to be sworn in and I took the oath on the sabre blade, ate a pinch of salt and was informed that I was now a skirmisher of the Third Native Light Cavalry, that my naik2 was Kudrat Ali, that I would be paid one rupee per day, with a quarter-anna dyeing allowance, and that since I had brought my own horse, I would be excused the customary recruit deposit.

Thereafter, I was issued with a new puggaree, half boots and pyjamy breeches, a new and very smart silver-grey uniform coat, a regulation sabre, a belt and bandoleer and a tangle of saddlery which was old and stiff enough to have been used at Waterloo (and probably had), and informed by a betel-chewing havildar that if I didn't have it reduced to gleaming suppleness by next morning, I had best look out. Finally, he took me to the armoury and I was shown (mark this well) a new rifled Enfield musket, serial number 4413--some things a soldier never forgets--which I was informed was mine henceforth and more precious than my own mangey carcase.

Without thinking, I picked it up and tested the action, as I'd done a score of times at Woolwich--and the Goanese store wallah gaped.

"Who taught you that?" says he. "And who bade you handle it, jangli pig? It is for you to see--you touch it only when it is issued on parade." And he snatched it back from me. I thought another touch of character would do no harm, so I waited till he had waddled away to replace it in the rack and then whipped out my Khyber knife and let it fly, intending to plant it in the wall a foot or so away from him. My aim was off, though--the knife embedded itself in the wall, all right, but it nicked his arm in passing, and he squealed and rolled on the floor, clutching at his blood-smeared sleeve.

"Bring the knife back," I snarled, baring my fangs at him, and when he had scrambled up, grey-faced and terrified, and returned, it, I touched and point on his chest and says: "Call Makarram Khan a pig just once more, uloo kabacha,3, and I will carry thine eyes and genitals on this point as kabobs." Then I made him lick the blood off the blade, spat in his face and respectfully asked of the havildar what I should do next. He, being a Mussulman, was all for me, and said, grinning, that I should make a fair recruit; and presently the word went round the big, airy barrack room that Makarram Khan was a genuine saddleand-lance man, who knew how to treat Hindoo insolence.

So there I was--Colonel Harry Paget Flashman, late of the 11th Hussars, 17th Lancers and the Staff, former aide to the commander in chief, and now acting sowar and rear file in the skirmishing squadron, Third Cavalry, Bengal Army, and if you think it was a madbrained train of circumstance that had taken me there--well, so did I. But once I had got over the unreality of it all and stopped imagining that everyone was going to see through my disguise, I settled in comfortably enough.

It was an eery feeling, though, at first, to squat on my charpai4 against the wall, with my puggaree off, combing my hair or oiling my light harness, and look round that room at the brown, half-naked figures, laughing and chattering of all the things that soldiers talk about--women, and officers, and barrack gossip, and women, and rations, and women--but in a foreign tongue which, although I spoke it perfectly and even with a genuine frontier accent, was still not my own.

For one thing, I wasn't used to being addressed in familiar terms by native soldiers, much less ordered about by an officious naik who'd normally have leaped to attention if I'd so much as looked in his direction. When the man who bunked next to me, Pir Ali a jolly rascal of a Baluch, tapped my shoulder in suggesting that we might visit the bazaar that first evening, I absolutely stared at him and just managed to bite back the "Damn your impudence" that sprang to my tongue. There were a thousand tiny details to beware of--I had to remember not to cross my legs when sitting, or blow my nose like a European, or say "Mmh?" if someone said something I couldn't catch, or use the wrong hand, or clear my diroat in the discreet British fashion, or do any of the things that would have looked damned odd in an Afghan frontiersman.

Of course, I made mistakes--once or twice I was just plain ignorant of things that I ought to have known, like how to chew a majoon5 when Pir Ali offered me one (you have to spit into your hand from time to time or you'll end up poisoned), or how to cut a sheep tail for curry, or even how to sharpen my knife in the approved fashion. When I blundered and anyone noticed, I found the best way was to stare him down and growl sullenly. My worst blunder, though, was when I was walking near a spot where the British officers were playing cricket and the ball came skipping towards me--without so much as thinking, I snapped it up, and was looking to throw down the wicket when I remembered and threw it back as clumsily as I could. One or two of them stared, though, and I heard someone say that big nigger was a deuced smart field. That rattded me and I trod even more carefully than before.

My best plan, I soon discovered, was to do and say as little as possible and act the surly, reserved hillman who walked by himself and whom it was safest not to disturb. The fact that I was by way of being a protégé of the woordy-major's, and a Hasanzai (and therefore supposedly eccentric), led to my being treated with a certain deference; my imposing size and formidable looks did the rest and I was left pretty much alone.

It was easy enough soldiering, and I quickly won golden opinions from my naik and jemadar6 for the speed and intelligence with which I appeared to learn my duties. At first it was a novelty, drilling, working, eating and sleeping with 30 Indian troopers--rather like being on the other side of the bars of a monkey zoo--but when you're closed into a world whose four corners are the barrack room, the stables and the maidan, it can become maddening to have to endure the society of an inferior and foreign race with whom you've no more in common than if they were Russian moujiks or Irish bogtrotters. What makes it ten times worse is the outcast feeling that comes of knowing that within a mile or two your own kind are enjoying all the home comforts, damn 'em--drinking barra pegs, smoking decent cigars, flirting and ramming with white women and eating ices for dessert. (I was no longer so enamoured of mutton pilau in ghee,7 you gather.) Within a fortnight, I'd have given anything to join an English conversation again, instead of listening to Pir Ali giggling about how he'd bullocked the headman's wife on his last leave, or the endless details of Sita Gopal's uncle's lawsuit, or Ram Mangal's reviling of the havildar, or Gobinda Dai's whining about how he and his brothers, being soldiers, had lost much of the petty local influence they'd formerly enjoyed in their Oudh village, now that the Sirkar had taken over.

When it got too bad, I would loaf up to the Mall and gape at the mem-sahibs, with their big hats and parasols, driving by, and watch the officers cantering past, flicking their crops as I dumped my big boots and saluted, or squat near the church to listen to them singing Greenland's Icy Mountains of a Sunday evening. Damn it, I missed my own folk then--far worse than if they'd been 100 miles away. So I would trudge back to barracks and lie glowering while the sowars chattered. It had this value--I learned more about Indian soldiers in three weeks dian I'd have done in a lifetime's ordinary service.

You'll think I'm being clever afterwards, but I soon realised that all wasn't as well with them as I'd have thought at first sight. They were northern Moslems, mostly, with a sprinkling of high-caste Oudh Hindoos--the practice of separating the races into different companies or troops hadn't come in then. Good soldiers, too; the Third had distinguished itself in the last Sikh war and a few had frontier service. But they weren't happy--smart as you'd wish on parade, but in the evening, they would sit about and croak like hell--in the beginning, I thought it was just the usual military soreheadedness, but it wasn't.

At first all I heard was vague allusions, which I didn't inquire about for fear of betraying a suspicious ignorance--they talked a deal about one of the padres in the garrison, Reynolds sahib, and how Colonel Carrnik-al-Ismeet (that was the Third's commander, Carmichael-Smith) ought to keep him off the post; and there was a fairly general repeated croak about polluted flour, and the Enlistment Act, but I didn't pay much heed until one night, I remember, an Oudh sowar came back from the bazaar in a tremendous taking. What had happened was that he'd been in a wrestling match with some local worthy, and before he'd got his shirt back on afterwards, some British troopers from the Dragoon Guards had playfully snapped the sacred cord, which he wore over his shoulder next the skin--as his kind of Hindoos did.

"Banchuts!6 Scum!" He was actually weeping with rage. "It is defiled--I am unclean!" And for all that his mates tried to cheer him up, saying he could get a new one, blessed by a holy man, he went on raving--they take these things very seriously, you know, like Jews and Moslems with pork. If it seems foolish to you, you may compare it to how you'd feel if a nigger pissed in the font at your own church.

"I shall go to the colonel sahib!" says he finally, and Gobinda Dal sneered, "Why should he care--the man who will defile our atta9 will not rebuke an English soldier for this!"

"What's all this about the atta?" says I to Pir Ali, and he shrugged.

"The Hindoos say that the sahibs are grinding cow bones into the sepoys' flour to break their caste. For me, they can break any Hindoo's stupid caste and welcome."

"Why should they do that?" says I, and Sita Gopal, who overheard, spat and says:

"Where have you lived, Hasanzai? The Sirkar will break every man's caste--aye, and what passes for caste even among you Moslems: There are pig bones in the atta, too, in case you didn't know it. Naik Syed Hyder in the second troop told me; did he not see them ground at the sahibs' factory at Cawnpore?"

"Wind from a monkey's backside," says I. "What would it profit the sahibs to pollute your food--since when do they hate their soldiers?"

To my astonishment, about half a dozen of them scoffed aloud at this: "Listen to the Black Mountain munshi!"10 "The sahibs love their soldiers--and so the gora-cavalry broke Lal's string for him tonight!" "Have you never heard of the Dum-Dum sweeper, Makarram Khan?" and so on. Ram Mangal, who was the noisiest croaker of them all, spat out:

"It is of a piece with the padre sahib's talk and the new regulation that will send men across the kala pani--they will break our caste to make us Christians. Do they not know this even where you come from, hillman? Why, it is the talk of the army!"

I growled that I didn't put any faith in latrine gossip--especially if the latrine was a Hindoo one, and at this, one of the older men, Sardul something-or-other, shook his head and says gravely:

"It was no latrine rumour, Makarram Khan, that came out of Dum-Dum arsenal." And, for the first time, I heard the astonishing tale that was, I discovered, accepted as gospel by every sepoy in the Bengal Army--of the sweeper at Dum-Dum who'd asked a caste sepoy for a drink from his dish and, on being refused, had told the sepoy that he needn't be so damn particular, because the sahibs were going to do away with caste by defiling every soldier in the army by greasing their cartridges with cow and pig fat.

"This thing is known," says old Sardul, positively, and he was the kind of old soldier that men listen to, 30 years' service, Aliwal medal and clean-conduct sheet, damn your eyes. "Is not the new Enfield rifle in the armoury? Are not the new greased cartridges being prepared? How can any man keep his religion?"

"They say that at Banaras, the jawans have been permitted to grease their own loads," says Pir Ali, but they hooted him down.

"They say!" cries Ram Mangal. "It is like the tale they put about that all the grease was mutton fat--if that were so, where is the need for anyone to make his own grease? It is a lie--just as the Enlistment Act is a lie, when they said it was a provision only and no one would be asked to do foreign service. Ask the Nineteenth at Berhampore--where their officers told them they must serve in Burma if they refused the cartridge when it was issued! Aye, but they will refuse--then we'll see!" He waved his hands in passion.

"It is true enough," says old Sardul, sadly. "Yet I would not believe it if such a sahib as my old Colonel MacGregor--did he not take a bullet meant for me at Kandahar?--were to look in my eye and say it was false. The pity is that Carmikal-Ismeet is not such a sahib--there are none such nowadays," says he with morbid satisfaction, "and die army is but a poor ruin of what it was. There was Sale sahib and Larrinsh11 sahib and Cotton sahib--they used to call us their children and they would have died before they put dishonour on us; and we would have followed them to hell! They were pukka-sahibs, not the cutch-sahibs we have now." He wagged his head.

"And the English common soldiers ... why, in my day, an English trooper would give me his hand, offer me his water bottle--not realising that I could not take it, you understand. And now these new ones spit on us and call us hubshis and monkeys."

Most of this talk was just rubbish, of course, and no doubt the work of agitators. It wasn't such a burning topic of conversation most of the time that one could take it very seriously. Of course, the Hindoos put tremendous store by their religion and an incident like that of Lal's string did stir up old grievances, for the moment at least.

I'll confess that old Sardul's remarks about the British had some justice. I rarely saw a British officer on parade; they seemed content to leave their troops to the jemadar and the N.C.O.s. And there was no question that the British rankers in Meerut were a poorer type than, say, the 44th men of my Afghan days or Campbell's Highlanders.

I got firsthand evidence of this a day later, when I accidentally jostled a dragoon in the bazaar and the brute turned straight round and lashed out with his boot. "Aht the way, yer black bastard!" says he. "Think yer can shove a sahib arahnd? Banchut!"

I just put my hand on my knife hilt and glared at him. "Christ!" says he and took to his heels until he got to the end of the street, where he snatched up a stone and flung it at me--and then made off. I'll remember you, my lad, thinks I, and the day will come when I'll have you (continued on page 188)Fiashman(continued from page 124) triced up and flogged to ribbons. I was wild that this scum of the Whitechapel gutter should take his boot to me, but I have to be honest and say that I wouldn't have minded if I'd seen him do it to a native; it's a nigger's lot to be kicked. But it ain't mine.

I doubt if any commander in the old days would have done what Carmichael-Smith did in the way of preaching parades, either. I hadn't believed it in the barrack gossip, but sure enough, the next Sunday, this coffin-faced Anglican fakir, the Reverend Reynolds, had a muster on the maidan and we had listen to him expounding the parable of the prodigal son, if you please. He did it through a brazen-lunged rissaldar who interpreted for him, and you never heard the like. Reynolds lined it out in English, from the Bible, and the rissaldar stood there with his staff under his arm, at attention, with his whiskers bristling bawling his own translation:

"There was a zamindar,12 with two sons. He was a mad zamindar, for while he yet lived, he gave to the younger hisportion of the inheritance. Doubtless he raised it from a moneylender. And the younger spent it all whoring in the bazaar and drinking sherab.13 And when his money was gone, he returned home, and his father ran to meet him, for he was pleased--God alone knows why. And in his foolishness, the father slew his only cow--he was evidently not a Hindoo--and they feasted on it. And the older son, who had been dutiful and stayed at home, was jealous, I cannot tell for what reason, unless the cow was to have been part of his inheritance. But his father, who did not like him, rebuked the older son. This story was told by Jesus the Jew, and if you believe it, you will not go to paradise, but instead will sit on the right-hand side of the English Lord God Sahib who lives in Calcutta. And there you will play musical instruments, by order of the sirkar-Parade--dismiss!"

I don't know when I've been more embarrassed on behalf of my church and country. I'm as religious as the next man--which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in god. That's where so many clergymen, like the unspeakable Reynolds, go wrong--and it makes 'em arrogant and totally blind to the harm they may be doing. I suppose he thought of high-caste Hindoos as being like willful children or drunken costermongers--perverse and misguided but ripe for salvation if he just pointed 'em the way. He stood there, with his unctuous fat face and piggy eyes, blessing us soapily, while the Moslems, being worldly in their worship, tried not to laugh and the Hindoos fairly seethed. I'd have found it amusing enough, I dare say, if I hadn't been irritated by the thought that these irresponsible Christian zealots were only making things harder for the army and Company, who had important work to do. It was all so foolish and unnecessary--the heathen creeds, for all their nonsensical mumbo jumbo, were as good as any for keeping the rabble in order, and what else is religion for?

•

A few days after that parade, there was a gymkhana14 on the maidan and I rode for the skirmishers in the nezabazi.15 Apart from languages and fornication, horsemanship is my only accomplishment, and I'd been well grounded in tent pegging by the late Muhammed Iqbal, so it was no surprise that I took the greatest number of pegs and would have got even more if I'd had a pony that I knew and my lance hadn't snapped in a touch peg on die last round. It was enough to take the cup, though, and old Bloody Bill Hewitt, the garrison commander, slipped the handle over my broken lance point in front of the marquee where all the top numbers of Meerut society were sitting applauding politely.

"Shabash, sowar," says he. "Where did you learn to manage a lance so well?"

"Peshawar Valley, husoor," says I.

"Company cavalry?" asks he and, when I said no, Peshawar police, he says, "Didn't know they was lancers."

At which Carmichael-Smith laughed and said in English, "No more they are, sir--but it's a delicate matter, I suspect. This bird has got Guide written all over him. Shouldn't wonder if he wasn't a havildar, at least. But we don't ask embarrassing questions, what?"

" 'Nough said, then," replies Hewitt; he was a fat, kindly old buffer. I was just saluting when a wind sprang up and took the papers from his table and scattered them under my pony's hooves. Like a good little toady, I slipped out die saddle, gathered them up and set them back on the table, with the inkpot on top to hold diem steady. I looked up to see Duff Mason, one of the infantry colonels, staring at me in surprise. I just salaamed, saluted and was back in the saddle. Hollo, thinks I, has he spotted something? But I hadn't given myself away.

The next morning, though, when the rissaldar called me out of the ranks and told me to report to Mason's office in the British lines, my heart was in my mouth.

I stood to attention on the verandah and went through the ritual of hilt touching. He was a tall, brisk, wiry fellow with a sharp eye, which he cast over me.

"Makarram Khan, former Peshawar policeman but with only a few weeks' army service?" He spoke good Urdu, which suggested he was smarter than most, and my innards quaked.

"Well, now, Makarram," he said pleasantly, "I don't believe you. You ride like an old soldier and you stand like one. What's more, here's an ordinary sowar who gathers up papers as though he's as used to handling 'em as I am. Unusual in a Pathan, even if he's seen service, don't you agree?"

"In the police, husoor," says I woodenly, "are many kitabs16 and papers."

"To be sure, there are," says he and then added, ever so easily, in English, "What's that on your right hand?"

I didn't look, but I couldn't keep my hand from jerking. He chuckled and leaned back in his chair, pleased with himself.

"I guessed you understood English. When the commander and your colonel were talking yesterday, you couldn't keep it out of your eyes. No matter, it's all to the good. But see here, Makarram Khan, why waste that education and experience buried in a down-country cavalry pulton?17 It may take twenty, thirty years to make subadar,18 or havildar, even. I'll tell you how you can do better than that."

Well, it was a relief to know that my disguise was safe, but the last thing I wanted was to be singled out in any way.

He went on, "I had a Pathan orderly for ten years, Ayub Jan. First-class man, but now he's gone back home, to inherit. He wasn't a common orderly, never did a menial task or anything of that order. Couldn't have asked him to, for he was a Yusufzai and a gentleman, as I believe you are, d'you see." He looked at me very steadily, smiling. "So what I want is a man of affairs who is also a man of his hands--someone I can trust as a soldier, messenger, steward, aide, guide, shield-on-shoulder." He shrugged. "What d'ye say?"

I suppose I looked just the sort of ruffian I myself would have picked had I been in Duff Mason's shoes. Pathans make the best orderly-bodyguard-comrades there are, as I'd discovered with Ilderim. It would be a pleasant change from barracks--though risky. On the other hand, any lapses into Englishness could be explained by the Guides past that Mason and Carmichael-Smith had wished upon me.

He said quietly, "If you're thinking that coming out of the ranks might expose you to recognition by the police or by some inconvenient acquaintance from the past, have, no fear. There'll always be a fast horse and a dustuck19 to see you back to the Black Mountains."

Fair enough--with this I had to accept.

"Thank you, Makarram Khan," says he, nodding to a table with a drawn sabre lying on it. I went over and put my hand on the blade--it had been so arranged that, with my body in between, he couldn't see whether or not I was touching the steel.

The old dodge, thinks I, but I said aloud, "On the haft and the hilt, I am thy man and soldier."

"Good," says he and, as I turned, he held out his hand.

I took it and, just for devilment, said, "Have no fear, husoor--you will smell the onion on your fingers." I knew, you see, that onion had been rubbed on the blade as a test. A Pathan who intended to break his oath wouldn't have put his hand on the steel.

"By Jove!" says he, laughing and smelling his fingers. "We'll get along famously."

Which, I'm bound to say, we did. What he wanted me for, it turned out, was to play the role of major-domo in his household. His bungalow was a pretty big establishment, just off the east end of the Mall and near the British infantry lines. With no proper mem-sahib and a nearly senile khansamah,20 there was no order about the place at all.

Duff Mason decided I should make a beginning by putting his house and its staff into pukka order and I set about it. Flashy, Jack-of-all-trades, you see: In the space of a few months, I'd been a gentleman of leisure, staff officer, secret political agent, ambassador and sepoy, so why not a nigger butler for a change?

You may think it odd--and, looking back, it seems damned queer to me, too--but the job was just nuts to me. I was leading such an unreal existence, anyway, and had become so devilish bored in the sepoy barracks, that I suppose I was ready enough for anything that occupied my time without too much effort. Duff Mason's employ was just the ticket: It gave me the run of a splendid establishment, the best of meat and drink, a snug little bunk of my own and nothing to do but bully menials, which I did with a hearty relish that terrified the brutes and made the place run like clockwork. All round, I couldn't have picked a softer billet for my enforced sojourn in Meerut if I'd tried.

I've said there was no proper memsahib in the house, by which I mean that there was no brigadier's lady to supervise it. But, in fact, there were two white women there, both useless in management--Miss Blanche, a thin, twitchy little spinster who was Duff Mason's sister, and Mrs. Leslie, a vague relative who was either a grass widow or a real one and reminded me rather of a sailor's whore--she was a plumpish, pale-skinned woman with red frizzy hair and a roving eye for die garrison officers, with whom she went riding and flirting when she wasn't lolling on the verandah eating sweets. (I didn't do more than run a brisk eye over either of 'em when Duff Mason brought me to the house, by the way--we nigger underlings know our place, and I'd already spotted a nice fat black little kitchenmaid with a saucy lip and a rolling stern.)

However, if neither of the resident ladies was any help in setting me about my duties, there was another who was--Mrs. Captain McDowall, who lived farther down the Mall and who bustled in on my first afternoon on the pretext of taking tea with Miss Blanche, but, in fact, to see that Duff Mason's new orderly started off on the right foot. She was a rawboned old Scotch trot, not unlike my mother-in-law; the kind who loves nothing better than to interfere in other folks' affairs and put their lives in order for them. She ran me to earth just as I was stowing my kit; I salaamed respectfully and she fixed me with a glittering eye and demanded if I spoke English.

"Now, then, Makarram Khan, this is what you'll do," says she. "This house is a positive disgrace; you'll make it what it should be--the best in the garrison after Major General Hewitt's, mind that. Ye can begin by thrashing every servant in the place--and if you're wise, you'll do it regularly. My father," says she, "believed in flogging servants every second day, after breakfast. So now. Have you the slightest--the slightest notion--of how such an establishment as this should be run? I don't suppose ye have."

At all events, under her occasional guidance and blistering rebukes, I drove Mason's menials until the place was running like a homebound tea clipper. You'll think it trivial, perhaps, but I got no end of satisfaction in this supervising--there was nothing else to occupy me, you see, and as Arnold used to say, what thy hand findeth to do.... I welted the backsides off the sweepers, terrorised the mateys,21 had the bearers parading twice a day with their dusters, feather brooms and polish bottles and stalked grimly about the place, pleased as punch to see the tabletops and silver polished till they gleamed, the floors bone-clean and the chota hazri22 and darwaza band23 trays carried in on the dot. Strange, looking back, to remember the pride I felt when Duff Mason gave a dinner for the garrison's best and I stood by the buffet in my best grey coat and new red sash and puggaree, with my beard oiled, looking dignified and watching like a hawk as the khansamah and his crew scuttled round the candlelit table with the courses. As the ladies withdrew, Mrs. Captain McDowall caught my eye and gave just a little nod--probably as big a compliment, in its way, as I ever received.

So a few more weeks went by and I was slipping into this nice easy life, as is my habit whenever things are quiet. I reckoned I'd give it another month or so, and then slide out one fine night for Jhansi, where I'd surprise Skene by turning up a la Pathan and pitch him the tale about how I'd been pursuing Ignatieff in secret and getting nowhere. If all were clear, I might even shave, become Flashy again and make tracks for Calcutta.

In the meantime, I was doing very well--eating Duff Mason's rations and tupping his kitchenmaid. Once or twice, it seemed to me that Mrs. Leslie's eyes lingered warmly on my upstanding Pathan figure and I toyed with the idea of having a clutch at her. Better not, though--too many prying eyes in a bungalow household.

Every now and then I had to go back to barracks, because I still had to muster on important parades when all sepoys on regimental strength were called in. It was during one of these that I heard the rumour flying that the 19th N.I. had rioted in Berhampore over the greased cartridges, as Ram Mangal had predicted.

"They have been disbanded by special court," says he to me as we clattered back to the armoury to hand in our rifles. He was full of excitement. "The Sirkar fears to keep such spirited fellows under arms! So much for the courage of your British colonels. Aye, presently they will have real cause to be fearful!"

"It will take more than a pack of whining monkeys like the Nineteenth," says Pir Ali. "Who minds if a few Hindoos get cow grease on their fingers?"

"Have you seen this, then?" Mangal whipped a paper from under his jacket and thrust it at him. "Even you Mussulmen, who lick the sahibs' backsides so faithfully, have begun to find your manhood! Read here of die great jihad24 your mullahs25 are preaching--in Arabia and Turkistan as well as India. Read it and learn that an Afghan army, with Ruski guns and artillerymen, will march on India. What does it say? 'Thousands of ghazis, strong as elephants.' "26 He laughed jeeringly.

It was just another scurrilous pamphlet, no doubt, but the sight of that grinning black ape gloating over his sedition riled me. I snatched the paper and rubbed it deliberately on the seat of my trousers. Pir Ali and some of the sepoys grinned, but the rest looked pretty glum.

Old Sardul shook his head. "If the Nineteenth have been false to their salt," says he, "it is an ill thing."

"The sahibs have broken faith first by trying to defile the sepoys' caste," says Mangal. "Which pulton will be next? It is coming, brothers!"

I didn't value this at the time, but a few days later, I overheard Duff Mason, Hewitt, Carmichael-Smith, Archdale Wilson, the binky-nabob27 and others talking on the verandah. Jack Waterfield, a senior staff officer, spoke of Berhampore and wondered if it were wise to press ahead with the issue of the cartridges.

"Yes, suppose our chaps did refuse?" asks one young fellow in the circle. "Mightn't it--"

"That is damned croaking," says Carmichael-Smith angrily. "You don't know sepoys, Gough, and that's plain. I do and I won't countenance the suggestion that my soldiers would have their heads turned by this seditious bosh. But if they get the notion that any of us show weakness--well, that's the worst thing imaginable. I'll be obliged if you'll keep your half-baked notions to yourself."

Duff Mason tried to get the pepper out of the air by saying he was sure Carmichael-Smith was right. "We might settle the question by putting it to one of the sowars--don't fret, Smith, he's a safe man." And he beckoned me from where I stood in the shadows by the serving table. "Now, Makarram Khan, you know about this cartridge nonsense. Will you take it?"

I stood respectfully by his chair, glancing round the circle of faces--Carmichael-Smith red and glistening, Waterfield thin and shrewd, young Gough flustered, old Hewitt grinning and belching quietly. "If it will drive a ball three hundred yards and straight, husoor, I shall take it," says I.

They roared, of course, and Hewitt says that was a real Pathan answer, what? "And your comrades?" he asks.

"If they are told truly by the colonel sahib that the cartridge is clean, why should they refuse?" Well, thinks I, that's a plain enough hint if Carmichael-Smith wants to take the poison out of Mangal's croaking.

The very next day, though, the barrack was agog with a new rumour and, for the first time, we heard a name that was to sweep across India and the world. "Pande?" says I to Pir Ali. "Who may he be?"

"A sepoy of the Thirty-fourth at Barrackpore," says he. "They say he was--27 artillery commander drugged with bhang. He shot his captain sahib on the parade ground and called on the sepoys to rise against their officers .28 This may be truth or only a rumour--but Ram Mangal is busy convincing those silly Hindoo sheep that it really happened."

So he was, with a crowd applauding him in the barrack room. "The sahibs have put about a lie that the sepoy Pande was drugged!" cries he. "But the truth is that he would not take the cartridge. He is a hero defending our religion! The captain sahib shot Pande with his own hands, wounding him, and now he is kept alive for torture!"

He was working himself into a terrific froth over this and not even the Moslems contradicted him. Naik Kudrat Ali stood by silently, chewing his lip. Finally, I asked Mangal why he didn't go to the colonel himself and ask for the truth about the cartridges.

"Ask a sahib for the truth!" cries he scornfully. "Ha! Only the gora-colonel's lap dog would suggest that."

Well, one swallow don't make a summer and one agitator a revolt and none of this discontent seemed so very bad at the time. You can go into any barracks in the world and hear much the same. In spite of the sullen talk, the sepoys did their duty and the British officers seemed content enough. When the word came, though, that Pande had been hanged, I thought there might be some kind of a stir among our men, but never a cheep.

In the meantime. I had other things to claim my attention. Mrs. Leslie, of the red hair and lazy disposition, had begun to take an interest in me. It began with little errands, progressed to escort duty when she and Miss Blanche went visiting ("It looks so much better to have Makarram Khan than an ordinary syce," she told Duff Mason) and finally ended with the two of us going riding together. The excuse was that it would be convenient to have an attendant who spoke English and who could satisfy her interest about India.

I know what interests you, my girl, thinks I, but you'll have to make the first move. She was torn between natural revulsion at the idea of a black servant and a desire to have the big, hairy Pathan set about her. It was amusing to see her flirt a little in a hoity-toity way, then think better of it. I maintained my noble-animal pose, with just an occasional ardent smile and a slight squeeze when I helped her dismount.

One day, she said, "You Pathans are--28 The report was largely true as stated. Mangal Pande of (he 34th Native Infantry attacked one of his officers, after calling for a religious revolt, then tried to kill himself. He was hanged, but later pandy became the British term for any Indian mutineer. not truly Indian, are you? I mean, in some ways you look--well, almost--white."

"We are not Indians at all, mem--sahib," says I. "We are descended from the people of Ibrahim, Ishak and Yakub, who were led from the khedive's country by one Moses."

"You mean--you're Jewish?" says she. She rode in silence for a while. "How strange." She thought some more. "I ... I have some Jewish acquaintances in England. Most respectable people. And quite white, of course."

Well, the Pathans believe it and it made her happy, so I hurried the matter along by suggesting a ride to the ruined temple at Aligaut, about six miles from the city. What I didn't tell her was that the walls inside were covered with die most artistically carved friezes depicting all the Hindoo postures of fornication. You know the kind of thing--effeminate looking lads performing incredible couplings with fat-titted females.

She took one look and gasped; I stood behind with the horses and waited. I saw her eyes travel from one impossible carving to the next while she gulped and went pale and crimson by turns, so I stepped up behind her and said quietly that the 45th position was much admired by the discriminating. When she turned, I saw that her eyes were wild and her lips trembling, and so I gave my swarthy ravisher's growl, swept her into my arms and then down onto the mossy floor.

She gave a little frightened moan, opened her eyes wide and said, "You're sure you are really Jewish? Not Indian?"

"Han, mem-sahib," says I, thrusting away respectfully. At that, she gave a contented little squeal and grappled me like awrestler.

We studied Indian social customs at Aligaut frequently after that, and if the 45th position eluded me, it wasn't for want of trying. I think back affectionately to that cool, musty interior, the plump, white body among the ferns and the thoughtful way she would gnaw her lip before pointing to the lesson for today.

By now, April had turned into May, the temperature was sweltering and there was a hot wind blowing across the Meerut parade ground that had nothing to do with the weather. You could feel the tension in die air like an electric cloud; the sepoys of the Third L.C. went about their drill like sullen automatons; the native officers stopped looking their men in the eye; the British officers were either quiet and wary or explosively short-tempered. There were ugly rumours and portents: A mysterious fakir on an elephant had appeared in the Meerut bazaar predicting that the wrath of Kali was about to fall on the British; chapatties were said to be passing in some barracks; the Plas-sey legend was circulating again. A great unease grew in the garrison and, without a word being said, one thing was certain; The Third Native Light Cavalry would refuse the new cartridge.

Now, knowing what followed, you might say something should have been done. I ask, what? The British couldn't conceive that the sepoys would be false to their salt and, damn it, neither could the sepoys. At that moment, neither side could imagine that the bitterness would explode in violence.

When Carmichael-Smith ordered a firing parade at which the new cartridge would be demonstrated, Waterfield tried to smooth things over beforehand. But even the older skirmishers pleaded with him not to ask them to accept the cartridge. I believe that Waterfield went back to Carmichael-Smith and tried to reason with him, but, nevertheless, the word went out that the firing parade would take place as ordered.

This was really throwing down the gauntlet, for one thing you learn as an officer is never to give a command unless it's likely to be obeyed. But, in spite of all, there we were one fine morning with our new Enfields; drawn up in extended line between the other squadrons of the regiment, which were facing inwards; with the rissaldar calling us to attention and Carmichael-Smith, looking thunderous, riding along the rank. There wasn't a sound. The baking sun was on our backs; every now and then, a little puff of warm wind would drive a tiny dust devil across the parade ground. I watched the shadows of the rank swaying with the effort of standing rigid and sweat rivers were tickling my chest. Naik Kudrat Ali on my right was straight as a lance; on my other side, old Sardul's breathing was hoarse enough to be audible.

Carmichael-Smith completed his slow inspection and reined up almost in front of me, his red face under the service cap heavy as a statue's. Then he snapped an order; the havildar major stepped forward, saluted, marched to Carmichael-Smith's side and turned to face us.

Jack Waterfield called out the orders from the platoon exercise manual. "Prepare to load!" says he and adds quietly, "Rifle-at-full-extent-of-left-arm." The havildar major shoved out his rifle. "Load!" cries Jack and adds again, "Cartridge-is-brought-to-the-left -handright-elbow-raised-tear-of-top-of-cartridge-with-fingers-by-dropping-elbow."

This was the moment; you could feel the rank sway forward ever so little as the havildar major, his bearded face intent, held up the little, shiny brown cylinder, tore it across and poured the powder into his barrel. There was just a suspicion of a sigh from the rank as the ramrod drove the charge home. He came to attention again. Waterfield gave him die "Present" and "Fire" and the singledemonstration shot cracked across the great parade ground.

"Now," says Carmichael-Smith, "you have seen the havildar major, a soldier of high caste, take the cartridge. He knows the grease with which it is waxed is pure. I assure you again that nothing offensive to Hindoo or Moslem is being offered you. I would not permit it. Carry on, Havildar Major."

Obeying, he came along the line with two naiks carrying bags of cartridges and I heard the repeated murmur of refusal, "Nahin. Havildar Major Sahib, nahin." I could see Carmichael-Smith's hand clutched white on his rein.

When it came Kudrat Ali's turn, I could almost feel him stiffen. He was a big, rangy Punjabi Mussulman, a veteran of Aliwal and the frontier, proud as Lucifer of his stripes, the kind of devoted ass who thinks the colonel is his father and who even breaks wind by the numbers. I stole a glance at him; his mouth was working under his heavy moustache as he muttered, "Nahin, Havildar Major Sahib."

Carmichael-Smith's temper must have boiled higher with each refusal. Suddenly, his voice cracked out hoarsely, "What the devil do you mean? Don't you recognise an order?"

Kudrat swallowed with a gulp you could have heard in Poona and says, "Colonel Sahib, I cannot have a bad name."

"By God," roars Smith, "d'you know a worse name than mutineer?" He sat there glowering and Kudrat trembled. Then the havildar major's hand was thrust out to me, his bloodshot brown eyes staring into mine, aware that old Sardul was breathing like a walrus at my other side.

I took the cartridges--there was a sudden exclamation farther along the rank--stuffed two of them into my belt and held up the third. As I glanced at it, I realised with a start that it wasn't greased--it was waxed. I tore it across with a shaky hand, poured the powder into the barrel, stuffed the cartridge after it and rammed it down. Then I returned to attention. 29

Old Sardul was crying. When the cartridges were offered to him, he sings out, "Colonel Sahib, I have never been false to my salt. Ask anything of me--even my life--but not my honour!"

"Fool!" shouts Smith. "D'you suppose I would hurt your honour? Look at the havildar major--look at Makarram Khan! Are they men of no honour? No--and they're not mutinous dogs, either!"

It wasn't the most tactful thing to say to that particular sepoy; I thought Sardul would go into a frenzy, the way he wept--but he wouldn't touch the cartridges. So it went, along the line; when the end had been reached, only four other men out of 90 had accepted the loads--four and that stalwart pillar of loyalty, Flashy Makarram Khan (he knew his duty and on which side his bread was buttered).

So there it was. Carmichael-'Smith could hardly talk for sheer fury, but he cussed us something primitive, promising dire retribution, and then dismissed the parade. They went in silence--some stony-faced, others troubled, a number (like old Sardul) weeping openly, but most just sullen. For those of us who had taken the cartridges, by the way, there were no reproaches from the others--proper lot of long-suffering holy little Tom Browns they were.

That, of course, was something that Carmichael-Smith didn't understand. He thought the refusal of the cartridges was pure pigheadedness by the sepoys, egged on by a few malcontents. So it was, but there was a genuine religious feeling behind it and a distrust of the Sirkar. If he'd had his wits about him, he'd have seen that the thing to do now was to drop the cartridge for the moment and badger Calcutta to issue a new one that the sepoys could grease themselves (as was done, I believe, in some garrisons). He might even have made an example of one--29 Flaishman's account of this scene, corresponds with that of most historians. Even though the cartridges were waxed, the sepoys were suspicious of their shiny appearance and were not placated by assurances that they could grease their own loads with nonpolluling substances or could tear the cartridges with their fingers rather than bite off the top. or two of the older disobedients; but no, that wasn't enough for him. He'd been defied by his own men and, by God, he wasn't having that. So die whole 85 were court-martialled, and die court, composed entirely of native officers, gave them all ten years' hard labour. And, what was worse, a punishment parade was ordered for the next Saturday.

As it happened, I quite welcomed this myself, because I had to attend and so was spared an excursion to Aligaut with Mrs. Leslie--that woman's appetite for experiment was increasing and I'd had a wearing if pleasurable week of it. But from the official point of view, that parade was a stupid, dangerous farce and came near to costing us all India.

It was a red morning, oppressive and grim, with a heavy, overcast sky and a hot wind driving the dust in stinging volleys across the maidan. The air was suffocatingly close, as in the moment before thunder. The whole Meerut garrison was there--the Dragoon Guards, with their sabres out; the Bengal Artillery, with their British gunners and native assistants in leather breeches standing by their guns; line on line of red-coated native infantry completing the hollow square; and in the middle, Hewitt and his staff with Carmichael-Smith and die regimental officers, all mounted. Then the 85 were led out in double file, all in full uniform but for one thing--they were in their bare feet.

I don't know when I've seen a bleaker sight than those two grey ranks standing there hangdog, while someone bawled out the court's findings and sentence, and then a drum began to roll, very slowly, and the ceremony began.

Now, I've been on more punishment parades than I care to remember, and quite enjoyed 'em, by and large. There's a fascination about a hanging or a good flogging, and the first time I saw a man shot from a gun--at Kabul, that was--I couldn't take my eyes off it. I've noticed, too, that the most pious and humanitarian folk always make sure they get a good view, and while they look grim or pitying or shocked, they take care to miss none of the best bits. Really, what happened at Meerut was tame enough--and yet it was different from any other drumming out or execution I remember; usually there's excitement, or fear, or even exultation, but here there was just a doomed depression that you could feel hanging over the whole vast parade.

While the drum beat slowly, a havildar and two naiks went along the ranks of the prisoners, tearing the buttons off die uniform coats; they had been half cut off beforehand, to make the tearing easy, and soon in front of the long grey line there were little scattered piles of buttons, gleaming dully in the sultry light; the grey coats hung loose, like sacks, each with a dull black face above it.

Then the fettering began. Groups of armourers, each under a British sergeant, went from man to man, fastening the heavy lengths of irons between their ankles; the fast clanging of the hammers and the drumbeat made the most uncanny noise--clink-clank-boom! clinkclank-clink-boom!--and a thin wailing sounded from beyond the ranks of the native infantry.

"Keep those damned people quiet!" shouts someone, and there was barking of orders and the wailing died away into a few thin cries. But then it was taken up by the prisoners themselves; some of them stood, others squatted in their chains, crying; I saw old Sardul, kneeling, smearing dust on his head and hitting his fist on the ground; Kudrat Ali stood stiff at attention, looking straight ahead; my half-section, Pir Ali--who to my astonishment had refused the cartridge in the end--was jabbering angrily to the man next to him; Ram Mangal was actually shaking his fist and yelling something. A great babble of noise swelled up from the line, with the havildar major scampering along the front, yelling, "Chupraho! Silence!" while the hammers clanged and die drum rolled--you never heard such an infernal din. Old Sardul seemed to be appealing to Carmichael-Smith, stretching out his hands; Ram Mangal was bawling the odds louder than ever; close beside me, an English sergeant of the Bengal Artillery knocked out his pipe on the gun wheel, spat and says:

"There's one black bastard I'd have spread over the muzzle o' this gun, by Jesus! Scatter his guts far enough, eh, Paddy?"

"Aye," says his mate, and paced about, scratching his head. " 'Tis a bad business, though, Mike, right enough. Dam' niggers! Bad business!"

"Oughter be a bleedin' sight worse," says Mike. "Pampered sods--lissen 'em squeal! If they 'ad Hoggin' in the nigger army, tiiey'd 'ave summat to whine about--touch o' die cat'd 'ave them bitin' each other's arses, never mind cartridges. But all they get's the chokey, an' put in irons. That's what riles me--Englishmen get flogged fast enough, an' these black pigs can stand by grinnin* at it, but somebody pulls their buttons off an' they yelp like bleedin' kids!"30

"Ah-h," says die other. "Disgustin". An' pitiful, pitiful."

I suppose it was, if you're the pitying kind--those pathetic-looking creatures in their shapeless coats, with the irons on their feet, some yelling, some pleading,--30 The British were, in fact, more considerate towards their Indian troops than they were to their white ones. Flogging continued in the British army long after it had been abolished for Indian troops, whose discipline appears to have been much more lax, possibly in consequence. some indifferent, some silently weeping, but most just sunk in shame--and out in front, Hewitt and Carmichael-Smith and the rest sat their horses and watched, unblinking. I'm not soft, but I had an uneasy feeling just then--you're making a mistake, Hewitt, thinks I, you're doing more harm than good.

When the fettering was done and the band had struck up The Rogues' March. they shuffled off, dragging their irons as they were herded away to the New Jail beyond the Grand Trunk Road. Damned depressing; and as I walked my pony off with the four other loyal skirmishers and glanced at their smug black faces, I thought, well, you bloody toadies--after all, they were Indians, I wasn't.

However, I soon worked off my glums back at Duff Mason's bungalow, by lashing the backside off one of the bearers who'd lost his oil funnel. And then I had to be on hand for the dinner that was being given for Carmichael-Smith that night (doubtless to celebrate the decimation of his regiment), and Mrs. Leslie, dressed to the nines for the occasion, was murmuring with a meaning look that she intended to have a long ride in the country next day, so I must see picnic prepared, and there were the mateys to chase, and the kitchen staff to swear at, and little Miss Langdale, the riding master's daughter, to chivvy respectfully away--she was a pretty wee thing, seven years old, an d a favourite of Miss Blanche's, but she was die damnedest nuisance when she came round the back verandah in the evenings to play, keeping the servants from their work and being given sugar cakes.

With all this, I'd soon forgotten about the punishment parade, until after dinner, when Duff Mason and Carmichael-Smith and Archdale Wilson had taken their pegs and cheroots onto the verandah, and I heard Smith's voice suddenly raised unusually loud. I stopped a matey who was taking out a tray to them and took it myself, so I was just in time to hear Smith saying:

"Of all the damned rubbish I ever heard! Who is this havildar, then?"

"Imtiaz Ahmed--and he's a good man, sir." It was young Gough, mighty red in the face and carrying his crop, for all he was in dinner kit.

"Damned good croaker, you mean!" snaps Smith, angrily. "And you stand there and tell me that he has given you this cock and bull about the cavalry's plotting to march on the jail and set the prisoners free? Utter stuff--and you're a fool for listening to--"

"I beg your pardon, sir," says Gough, "but I've been to the jail--and it looks ugly. And I've been to barracks; the men are in a bad way and--"

"Now, now, now," says Wilson, "easy there, young fellow. You don't know 'em, perhaps, as well as we do. Of course they're in a bad way--what, they've seen their comrades marched off in irons and they're upset. They're like that--they'll cry their eyes out, half of 'em.... All right, Makarram Khan," says he, spotting me at the buffet, "you can go." So that was all I heard, for what it was worth, and since nothing happened that night, it didn't seem to be worth too much.31

Next morning, Mrs. Leslie wanted to make an early start, so I fortified myself against what was sure to be a taxing day with half a dozen raw eggs beaten up in a pint of stout, and we rode out again to Aligaut. She was in the cheeriest spirits, curse her, climbing all over me as soon as we reached the temple, and by the end of the afternoon, I was beginning to wonder how much more Hindoo culture I could endure, delightful though it was. I was a sore and weary native orderly by the time we set off back, and dozing pleasantly in my saddle as we passed through the little village which lies about a mile east of the British town--indeed, I could just hear the distant chiming of the church bell for evening service--when Mrs. Leslie gave an exclamation and reined in her pony.

"What's that?" says she, and as I came up beside her, she hushed me and sat listening. Sure enough, there was another sound--a distant, indistinct murmur, like the sea on a far shore. I couldn't place it, so we rode quickly forward to where the trees ended and looked across the plain. Straight ahead in the distance were the bungalows at the end of the Mall, all serene; far to the left, there was the outline of the jail, and beyond it the huge mass of Meerut city--nothing out of the way there. And then, beyond the jail, I saw it as I peered at the red horizon--where the native cavalry and infantry lines lay, dark clouds of smoke were rising against the orange of the sky and flickers of flame showed in the dusk. Buildings were burning and the distant murmur was resolving itself into a thousand voices shouting, louder and ever louder. I sat staring, with a horrid suspicion growing in my mind, half aware that Mrs. Leslie was tugging at my sleeve, demanding to know what was happening. I couldn't tell her, because I didn't know; nobody knew, in that first moment, on a peaceful, warm May evening, when the great Indian Mutiny began.

If I'd had my wits about me, or more than an inkling of what was happening, I'd have turned our ponies north and ridden for the safety of the British infantry lines a mile away. But my first thought was: Gough was right, some crazy bastards are rioting and trying to break the prisoners loose--and of course they'll fail, because Hewitt'll have British troops marching down to the scene at once; maybe they're there already, cutting up the niggers. I was right--and wrong, you see--but, above all, I was curious, once my first qualms had settled. So it wasn't in any spirit of chivalry that I sang out to Mrs. Leslie:

"Ride to the bungalow directly, mem-sahib Hold tight, now!" and cut her mare hard across the rump. She squealedas it leaped forward, and called to me, but I was already wheeling away down towards the distant jail--I wanted to see the fun, whatever it was, and I had a good horse under me to cut out at the first sign of danger. Her plaintive commands echoed after me, but I was putting my pony to a bank and clattering off towards the outlying buildings of the native city bazaar, skirting south, so that I'd pass the jail at a distance.

At first, there didn't seem to be much--this side of the bazaar was strangely empty--but in the gathering dark I could hear rather than see confused activity going on between the jail and the Grand Trunk: shouting and the rush of hurrying feet and sounds of smashing timber. I wheeled into the bazaar, following the confusion of noise ahead; the whole of the sky to my front beyond the bazaar was glowing orange now, whether with fire or sundown you couldn't tell, but the smoke was hanging in a great pall beyond the city--it's a hell of a fine fire, thinks I, and forged on into the bazaar, between booths where dim figures seemed to be trying to get their goods away, or darting about in the shadows, chattering and wailing. I bawled to a fat vendor, who was staring down the street, asking what was up, but he just waddled swiftly into his shop, slamming his shutters--try to get sense out of an excited Indian, if you like. Then I reined up, with a chico32 scampering almost under my hooves and the mother after it, crouching and shrieking; and before I knew it, there was a swarm of folk in the street, all wailing and running in panic, stumbling into my pony, while I cursed and lashed out with my quirt. Behind them, the sounds of riot were suddenly closer--hoarse yelling and chanting, and the sudden crack of a shot, and then another.

Time to withdraw to a safer distance, thinks I, and wheeled my pony through the press into a side alley. Someone went down beneath my hooves, they scattered like sheep--and then down the alley ahead of me, running pell-mell for his life, was a man in the unmistakable stable kit of the Dragoon Guards, bareheaded and wild-eyed, and behind him, like hounds in full cry, a screaming mob of niggers.

He saw me ahead and yelled with despair--of course, what he saw was a great hairy native villain blocking his way. He darted for a doorway and stumbled, and in an instant, they were on him, a clawing, animal mob, tearing at him while he lashed out, yelling obscenities. For an instant, he broke free, blood pouring from a wound in his neck, and actually scrambled under my pony; the mob was round us in a trice, dragging him out bodily while I struggled to keep my seat--there was no question of helping him, even if I'd been fool enough to try. They bore him up, everyone shrieking like madmen, and smashed him down on the table of a pop shop, holding his limbs while others broke the pop bottles and slashed and stabbed at him with the shards.33

It was a nightmare. I could only clutch my reins and stare at that screaming, thrashing figure, half covered in the pop foam, as those glittering glass knives rose and fell. In seconds, he was just a hideous bloody shape, and then someone got a rope round him and they swung him up to a beam, with his life pouring out of him. In panic, I drove my heels into the pony, blundered to the corner and rode for dear life.

It was the shocking unexpectedness of it that had unmanned me--to see a white man torn to pieces by natives. Perhaps you can't imagine what that meant in India; it was something you could not believe, even when you saw it. For a few moments, I must have ridden blind, for the next thing I knew, I was reining up on the edge of the Grand Trunk where it comes north out of Meerut city, gazing at a huge rabble pouring up--32 child33One of the first casualties of the Meerut mutiny was, in fact, a British soldier murdered in a bazaar lemonade shop. towards the British town; to my amazement, half of them were sepoys, some of them just in their jackets, others in full fig down to the crossbelts, brandishing muskets and bayonets and yelling in unison: "Mar dalo! Mar dalo!34 Sipahi jai!" and the like--slogans of death and rebellion. There was one rascal on a cart, brandishing ankle irons above his head, and a heaving mass of sepoys and bazaar wallahs pushing his vehicle along, yelling like drunkards.

Beyond the road, the native cavalry barracks were in full flame; even as I watched, I saw one roof cave in with an explosion of sparks. Behind me, there were buildings burning in the bazaar, and even as I turned to look, I saw a gang of ruffians hurling an oil lamp into a booth, while others were steadily thrashing with clubs at the fallen body of the owner; finally, they picked him up and tossed him into the blaze, dancing and yelling as he tried vainly to struggle out; he was a human torch, his mouth opening and closing in unheard screams, and then he fell back into the burning ruin.

I don't know how long I sat there, staring at these incredible things, but I know it was dark, with flames leaping up everywhere, and an acrid reek pervading the air, before I came to my senses enough to realise that the sooner I lit out the better. For the moment, I was safe enough in my native guise, but I didn't want to be caught when the bugles sounded the arrival of a British detachment. So I put my pony's nose north and trotted along the edge of the road, with that stream of mad humanity surging in the same direction.

As I came level with the jail, I saw a huge crowd clamouring round bonfires and some freed prisoners forming up--I recognised Gobinda and several others listening to a sepoy who stood on a cart and shouted, "Death to the gora log!35 The sahibs are already running away!" Then the mob screamed as one man and took the prisoners up shoulder high as they all streamed out onto the Grand Trunk Road.

I could see the flames on the distant Mall, where bungalows must have been burning. Behind me was the riot-torn city; to my left were the burning native barracks; ahead was the road jammed with that mass of fanatics. My only road was to the right, across the east bridge and, by a long circle, to the British camp lines.

As I skirted the east end of the British town in the half-dark, all seemed quiet, but there was one ominous sign. An old chowkidar was lying beside his broken staff, his head beaten in--were they butchering anyone, then? Not far behind--34 Kill!35 British me, I could hear chanting voices and see torchlight among the trees.

"Help! In God's name, help us!" The voice came from a little bungalow among the trees--an English voice.

Without thinking, I slipped from the saddle, vaulted the gate and cried, "It's a friend. Who are you?"

"Oh, thank God!" cried the man. "Quickly--they've killed Mary!"

I glanced back and saw that the torches were still 200 yards away in die darkness. If I could get the bungalow occupants moving quickly enough, they might have a chance. I strode up the steps to the verandah and looked into a wrecked room with an oil lamp burning feebly and a white man, his left leg soaked in blood, lying against the wall, a sabre in his hand, staring at me with feverish eyes.

"Christ, it's a mutineer!" he yells. "Jim!" Before I could get my mouth open, someone sprang out of the shadows. I had an instant's vision of a white face, red moustache, staring eyes and whirling sabre. Then I was locked with him, crashing to the floor as I yelled, "You bloody idiot, damn you, I'm English!"

But he seemed to have gone mad; even as I wrested his sabre from him, the other man shoved his own across the floor and the one called Jim was slashing at me. Trying to shout some sense at him, I broke ground, fell over something soft and, as I struck the floor, realised that it was the body of a white woman in evening dress lying in a pool of blood. I flung up my sabre to guard against another maniac slash, but too late. I felt a fiery pain across my skull just above the left ear as the fellow on the floor screams, "Go it, Jim! Finish him!"

The crash of musketry filled the room. The man above me twisted grotesquely and tumbled across my legs. There were black faces grinning through die powder smoke and suddenly the sepoys were in the room, yelling with triumph as they hacked at the wounded Tommy with their bayonets.

One of them helped me up, shouting, "Just in time, brother! Thank the Eleventh Infantry. Three of the pigs, aieee!" While they went on to ransack the bungalow, growling like beasts, I crawled out onto the verandah and down into the bushes to try to staunch the blood--though the wound seemed not very serious. But I was shaken and scared enough to stay hidden when they went away, taking my pony with them.

Then it occurred to me that the idiot who'd come within an ace of finishing me was Jim Lewis, of course, the veterinary whom I'd bowed out of Mason's bungalow only a couple of nights before.

By this time, there was no doubt about the scale of the mutiny--I'd seen uniforms of the Third Cavalry, the 20th N.I. and die 11th N.I.--the whole Indian garrison of Meerut. But where were the two British regiments? In the two or three hours since the rioting must have started, I'd heard no bugles, no shouted orders, no heavy gunfire amidst the confusion. A terrible thought struck me and I wondered if it were possible that 2000 disciplined soldiers could be wiped out. No, not by a mutinous mob--but what the hell was keeping 'em, then?36

My best move now, it seemed, would be to avoid the British town--where there was a hell of a din and shooting--and to take the little drive that led up to the eastern end of the Mall and thence to our infantry lines. As I stole quietly along the road, I saw a bungalow burning like blazes with half a dozen sepoys firing an occasional shot into it. Across the road was Veterinary Surgeon Dawson's bungalow, where, I remembered, he and his wife were confined with smallpox. It was afire and suddenly the roof caved in with a great whoosh of sparks. Ahead, the path seemed deserted and I hurried on by the light of the rising moon.

Our bungalow wasn't burning, anyway. I had a pressing reason for going inside, but later I wished I hadn't. I knew that in Duff Mason's bottom desk drawer there was a Colt and a box of ammunition and I wanted them both as I wanted my next breath. The place was silent as a grave and, glancing through the window towards the Dawsons', I could see no sign of mutineers. I slipped through the chick door into the hall and there I fainted dead away--something I haven't done more than twice in my life.

Mrs. Leslie's head was lying on the hall table. The white body I'd fondled only a few hours earlier was lying naked a few feet beyond, unspeakably gashed. And in the doorway to the dining room, Mrs. Captain McDowall was huddled grotesquely against the jamb with a tulwar pinning her to the wall. Clenched in one hand was a small vase and the flowers it had held were scattered on the boards--I realised that she must have snatched it up as a poor weapon.

I don't remember getting Duff Mason's revolver, but later I was standing in the hall, keeping my eyes away from those ghastly things while I loaded it and wept. Why the hell should they have done it--men like Gobinda, Pir Ali, old Sardul? They wouldn't have done it to the wives of their worst enemies. I tell it not to horrify but to let you understand that after what happened in India in '57, none of us was ever the same again.

You know me and what a damned coward I am, not much moved by anything--but before I left, I went to Mrs.--36 Hewitt and Archdale Wilson were extraordinarily slow in getting the British regiments on the move after the outbreak; they did not reach the sepoy lines until after the mutineers had set off for McDowall and forced the vase from her Delhi. McDowall and forced the vase from her fingers. I collected the flowers and replaced them. I was going to put the vase on the floor beside her, but then I remembered that carping Scotch voice and her fierce love of neatness and so I set it on a little table instead, with a napkin under it, just so.

I took one last look round at the place my bearers had made into the finest house on the station--at the polished wood now smashed, the rug matted with blood, the fine chandelier wantonly shattered in one corner--and I went out with such hate in my heart as I'd never felt before, or since.

I wanted no more of burning buildings, horrors and wreckage. Whatever Hewitt and Carmichael-Smith and the others were doing, they could do without me now; all I wanted to do was to get out of Meerut as fast as I could, for a little safety and time to get over the hellish pain in my head.

But first, there was one thing I must get--and here came the chance in the shape of a trooper cantering along the Mall, swaying in his saddle and singing drunkenly to himself.

I stepped into the Mall as he rode up; he had a bloody tulwar in one hand, a foolish, animal grin on his face and the grey coat of the Third Cavalry on his back. Seeing me in the same rig, he let out a whoop and reined in.

"Ram-ram, sowar,"37 says I, and forced myself to leer. "How many have you slain? Whose blood is that on your tulwar?"

"Hee-hee-hee. Is it blood?" he laughs, lurching in his saddle. "Whose? Why, maybe it is Carmik-al-Ismeet's? Or Hewitt sahib's? Or the riding master, Langdale sahib's? Nay, nay." He waved the blade, goggling drunkenly.

"Whose, then?" asks I genially, and laid a hand on his horse's crupper.

"Not Langdale's--but, truly, he will have no grandchildren by his daughter! Hee-hee-hee!"

And just the previous night I'd chased her off the verandah, pretending to growl at her. I had to hold on to his leather to keep my balance and to bite back the bile that came into my mouth.

"Shabash!" says I. "That was a brave stroke!" I brought my Colt up, aimed carefully just above his groin and fired.

I clutched the bridle to steady the horse as he went flying from the saddle. A second later and I was mounted in his place and he was thrashing on the ground. With any luck, he would take days to die.

I looked back across the Mall at some distant black figures, like Dante's demons against the burning inferno behind them, and then I was thundering eastward past--37 Hello, soldier. the last bungalows and the sights and sounds of horror were fading behind me.38

[Flashman struck out along the road for Delhi, but he soon came across a formation of sepoy infantry bound for that city. They were heady with the news that uprisings were now taking place everywhere in north-central India. For the next few days, Flashman wandered in the countryside, feverish with his wound and constantly coming across new scenes of murder and destruction. When he was more or less recovered, he decided to head for Jhansi and a rendezvous with Ilderim Khan at the Bull Temple outside the town.

There was more bad news when he arrived. The Indian troops in Jhansi had rebelled and had slaughtered the British contingent of about 60 people. Ilderim and his irregulars had barely managed to escape and were now hiding in the ruined temple. The Rani's role in all this was uncertain, though Ilderim was convinced--and Flashman was doubtful--that she had taken a leading part in the events. At any rate, the whole countryside was now dangerous and only a few British strongholds remained. One of these was Cawnpore, where General Wheeler had gathered the Europeans into an improvised fort and was holding out. Ilderim and Flashman decided that their only hope was to ride there.

Along the way, however, Ilderim's ruffians deserted one night, leaving only Flashman, Ilderim and Tamar to go on. Shortly thereafter, diey found themselves in the middle of a skirmish between some sepoys and a group of horsemen. This group turned out to be a troop of irregular horse--Rowbotham's Mosstroopers--made up of Sikhs and British civilians. They were scouring the countryside and hanging every mutineer diey managed to catch.

Rowbotham, too, had already decided to take his men through the Indian lines besieging Cawnpore and had set up a plan with the garrison, and Flashman--shuddering at the thought of this new madness--had to go along.]

We lay in the stuffy heat of the wood all afternoon, waiting for dark and listening to the incessant thunder of cannonading--and there was one consolation, because the crash of artillery salvoes showed that Wheeler's gunners were still making good practice and must still be stocked with powder and shot.

About two in the morning, Rowbotham called us together and gave his orders. "There's a clear way to the Allahabad Road," says he, "but before we reach it, we must bear right to come in behind the rebel gun positions, no more than half a mile from the entrenchment. At precisely four o'clock, I shall fire a rocket, on which we shall ride for the entrenchment at our uttermost speed. The sentries, having seen our rocket, will pass us through. The word is Britannia. Now, remember that our goal lies to the left of the church, so keep that tower always on your right front. Finally, we must put our horses to the entrenchment bank, which is four feet high. God bless us all and let us meet again within the lines or in heaven."

That's just the kind of pious reminder of mortality I like, I must say; while the rest of 'em were shaking hands in the dark, I was carefully instructing Ilderim that, at all costs, he must stick by my shoulder. I was in my normal state of chattering funk and my spirits weren't at all raised when we were filing out of the wood and I heard someone ask, "I say, Jinks, what's the time?"

"Ten past three," says Jink s, "on the bright summer morning of June the twenty-second--let's hope to God we see the twenty-third."

Suddenly, I was back in the big, panelled room at Balmoral and Pam was saying, "The British raj will come to an end exactly a hundred years after the Battle of Plassey--next June the twenty-third." By George, that was an omen for you.

We advanced interminably, my hands sweating on the reins, my eyes glued to the rider ahead. At last we halted in the stifling dark between two rows of ruined houses. Five minutes, ten minutes, and then a voice called, "Ready, all!" There was the flare of a match, a sudden rush of sparks and an orange rocket shot up into the purple night sky, bursting to a chorus of yells from somewhere far ahead, and Rowbotham's shout, "Advance!" We dug in our heels and fairly shot forward in a thundering mass.

As we passed through some trees and came into the clear again, it was just light enough to see some dim shapes and guns parked at intervals--we were coming into the rear of the pandy positions. There were shrieks of alarm and a crackle of shots and then we were past the gun pits. Ilderim, crouched low in his saddle at my elbow, shouted to point out a tumbled outline that must be the church. Directly ahead, little sparks of light flashed in the distance--the defenders were firing to cover us. As someone shouted, "Bravo, boys!" all hell burstloose behind us with a salvo of cannon, shot whistling over our heads and the earth rising up in fountains of dust. I swerved to miss a thrashing tangle of mount and man and a limb caught me smack on the knee. Behind me, I heard the scream of someone mortally hit and a riderless horse came neighing and stretching against my left side. Another hellish storm swept through us from those guns at our rear--it was Balaclava all over again, and in the dark, to boot.

Suddenly, a stinging cloud of gravel struck me across the face; my pony stumbled and, by the way he came up, I knew he was hit. Then Ilderim was sweeping past me and I bawled desperately that he should stop to give me a hand. I saw his shadowy form check; his horse reared; he swung round. As my pony sank under me, he swept me out of the saddle with one arm. For a few feet, I was literally dragged along, with Ilderim hauling to get me across the crupper. Just as I'd got up, someone cannoned into us and Ilderim pitched out of the saddle.

As I righted myself on the horse's back, some swine fired a flare and the whole scene was suddenly illuminated, like a mad artist's hell. Men and horses were going down all round me under the hail of fire and Ilderim, one arm dangling, was clutching at my stirrup with the other. A bare 100 yards away, I could see the defenders' heads behind their parapet and some ass standing atop it, waving his hat. The explosions of cannon suddenly ceased and in the flare light, to my horror, I saw a straggling line of sepoy cavalry at the charge, bearing down not a furlong away.

Ilderim yelled, "On, on! Ride, brother!" I didn't hesitate. He'd come back to rescue me and his noble sacrifice wasn't going to be in vain. I jammed in my heels, the horse leapt forward and he was almost dragged off his feet. For perhaps five paces, he kept up before he stumbled and went down. I did my damnedest to shake him free, but in that instant, the bloody bridle snapped and I hurtled to the ground with a smash. A shocking pain ran through my left ankle--Christ, it was caught in the stirrup and the horse was still tearing ahead, dragging me at the end of a tangle of leatherwork.

If any of you young fellows ever find yourself dragged over rough, iron-hard ground, with or without a mob of yelling black fiends after you, take a word of advice from me. Keep your head up (screaming helps) and, above all, try to be dragged on your back. It will cost you a skinned arse, but that's better than having your organs scraped off. Try, too, to arrange for some stout lads to pour rapid fire into your pursuers, and for a handy Ghilzai friend to chase afteryou and slash the stirrup leather free before your spine falls apart and you are totally buttockless. God knows how Ilderim, wounded as he was, got the strength to pitch me bodily over the breastwork.I went over in a great tangle, shouting, "Britannia! Britannia! For Christ's sake, I'm a friend!" and then some chap was catching me and lowering my battered carcase to earth.

"Will you have nuts or a cigar, sir?" he enquired.

Then a musket was being pushed into my hands and I found myself at the parapet, banging away at the red-coated figures that surged out of the smoke and dust. Alongside me, Ilderim had my revolver out and was loosing off shots. A great, bass voice was yelling, "Odds, fire! Reload! Evens, fire! Reload!" The pain from my ankle was rising up my leg, making me sick and dizzy. I was coughing with the reek of powder smoke; there was a bugle sounding and a ragged cheer. The next tiling I remember was lying against a sandbag wall, staring at a big, shot-torn barrack in the pale light of dawn, while a bald-headed cove with a pipe was getting my boot off and applying a damp cloth to my ankle.

Ilderim was having his arm bandaged by a fellow in kepi and spectacles. Others were carrying people towards the barrack, and along the parapet were haggard-looking fellows, white and sepoy, with their pieces at the ready. A horrid smell hung over the place and the dusty ground was covered with gear and litter.

•

I'll tell you a strange thing about pain--and Cawnpore. That ankle of mine, which I'd thought was broken but which in fact was badly sprained, would have kept me flat on my back for days anywhere else, bleating for sympathy; in Cawnpore, I was walking on it within a few hours, suffering damnably, but with no choice but to endure it. That was the sort of place it was; if you'd had both legs blown off, you were rated fit for only light duties.

Imagine a great trench, with an earthand-rubble parapet four feet high, enclosing two big single-storey baracks, one of diem a burnt-out shell and the other with half its roof gone. All round was flat plain, stretching hundreds of yards to the encircling pandy lines which lay among half-ruined buildings and trees; a mile or less to the northwest was the great straggling mass of Cawnpore city itself, beside the river--but when anyone of my generation speaks of Cawnpore, he means those two shattered barracks with the earth wall round them.

That was where Wheeler, with his ramshackle garrison, had been holding out against an army for two and a half weeks. There were 900 people inside it when the siege began, nearly half of them women and children; of the rest, 400 were British soldiers and civilians and 100 loyal natives. They had one drinking well and three cannons; they were living on two handfuls of mealies a day, fighting off a besieging force of more than 3000 mutineers who smashed at them constantly with 15 cannon, subjected them to incessant musket fire and tried to storm the entrenchment. The defenders lost over 200 dead in the first fortnight, men, women and children, from gunfire, heat and disease; the hospital barrack had been burned to ashes with the casualties inside; and of the 300 left fit to fight, more than half were wounded or ill. They worked the guns and manned the wall with muskets and bayonets and whatever they could lay hands on.

This, I discovered to my horror, was the place I'd fled to for safety, the stronghold which Rowbotham had boasted was being held with such splendid ease. It was being held--by starved ghosts, half of whom had never fired a musket before, with their women and children dying by inches in the shot-torn, stifling barrack behind them, in the certainty that unless help came quickly, that entrenchment would be their common grave. Rowbotham never lived to discover how mistaken he'd been; he and half his troop were lying stark out on the plain--his final miscalculation having been to time our rush to coincide with a pandy assault.

I was the senior officer of those who'd got safely (?) inside, and when they'd discovered who I was and bound up my ankle, I was helped into the little curtained corner of the remaining barrack where Wheeler had his office. We stared at each other in disbelief, he because I was still looking like Abdul the Bulbul and I because in place of the stalwart, brisk commander I'd known ten years ago, there was now a haggard, sunken ancient; with his grimy, grizzled face, his uniform coat torn and filthy and his breeches held up with string, he looked like a dead gardener.

"Good God, you're never young Harry Flashman!" was his greeting to me. "Yes, you are, though! Where die doose did you spring from?" I told him--and in the short time I took to tell him about Meerut and Jhansi, no fewer than three round shots hit the building, shaking the plaster; Wheeler just absently brushed the debris off his table, and then says:

"Well, thank God for twenty more men--though what we'll feed you on I cannot think. Still, what matter a few more mouths?--you see the plight we're in. You've heard nothing of ... our people advancing from Allahabad, or Lucknow?" I said I hadn't, and he looked round at his chief officers, Vibart and Moore, and gave a little gesture of despair.

"I suppose it was not to be expected," says he. "So ... we can only do our duty--how much longer? If only it was not for the children, I think we could face it well enough. Still--no croaking, eh?" He gave me a tired grin. "Don't take it amiss if I say I'm glad to see you, Flashman, and will welcome your presence in our council. In the meantime, the best service you can do is to take a place at the parapet. Moore here will show you--God bless you," says he, shaking hands, and it was from Moore, a tall, fair-haired captain with his arm in a blood-smeared sling, that I learned o£ what had been happening in the past two weeks and how truly desperate our plight was.

It may read stark enough, but the sight of it was terrible. Moore took me round the entrenchment, stooping as he walked and I hobbled, for the small-arms fire from the distant sepoy lines kept whistling overhead, smacking into the barrack wall, and every so often a large shot would plump into the enclosure or smash another lump out of the building. It was terrifying--and yet no one seemed to pay it much attention; the men at die parapet just popped up for an occasional look, and those moving in the enclosure, with their heads hunched down, never even broke step if a bullet whined above them. I kept bobbing nervously, and Moore grinned and said:

"You'll soon get used to it--pandy marksmen don't hit a damn thing they aim at. It's the random shots that do the damage--damnation!" This as a cloud of dust, thrown up by a round shot hitting the parapet, enveloped us. "Stretcher, there! Lively, now!" There was a body twitching close by where the shot had struck; at Moore's shout, two fellows doubled out from the barrack to attend to it. After a brief look, one of them shook his head, and then they picked up the body between them and carried it off towards what looked like a well; they just pitched it in, and Moore says:

"That's our cemetery. I've worked it out that we put someone in there every two hours. Over there--that's the wet well, where we get our water. We won't go too close--the pandy sharpshooters get a clear crack at it from that grove yonder, so we draw our water at night. John Mackillop worked it for a week, until they got him. Heaven only knows how manywe've lost on water drawing since."

What seemed so unreal about it, and still does, was the quiet conversational way he talked. There was this garrison, being steadily shot to bits, and starving in the process, and he went on pointing things out, cool as damn it, with the crackle of desultory firing going on round us. I stomached it so long and then burst out:

"But, in God's name--it's hopeless! Hasn't Wheeler tried to make terms?"

He laughed straight out at that. "Terms? Who with? Nana Sahib? Lookhere, you were at Meerut, weren't you? Did they make terms? They want us dead, laddie. They slaughtered everything white up in the city yonder, and God knows how many of their own folk as well. They tortured the native goldsmiths to death to get at their loot; Nana's been blowing loyal Indians from guns as fast as they can trice 'em over the muzzles! No," he shook his head, "there'll be no terms."

"But what the devil--I mean, what... ?"

"Well, if a relief column doesn't win through from Allahabad in three days at most, we'll be so starved and short of cartridges that the pandies will storm over the wall. Then--" He shrugged.

It was utterly hopeless. For once, there was no place for me to bolt to and, with everybody steady and cheery enough to sicken you, I had to pretend to be ready to do or die with the rest.

I'll carry to my grave the pictures from those days; for example, a Cockney sergeant arguing with a private about the height of the pillars at Euston Square while they cut pieces from a dead horse for the big copper boiler against the barrack wall.

"Stew today," says Moore to me. "That's thanks to you fellows coming in. Usually, if we want meat, we have to let a pandy cavalryman charge up close and then shoot the horse, not die rider."

"More meat on the 'orse than there is on the pandy, eh, Jasper?" says the sergeant, winking, and the private said it was just as well, since some noncoms of his acquaintance, namin' no names, would as soon be cannibals as not.

These are the trivial things that stick in memory, but none clearer than the inside of that great barrack room, with the wounded lying in a long, sighing, groaning line down one wall and, a few yards away, behind roughly improvised screens of chick and canvas, 400 women and children, who had lived in that confined, sweating furnace for two weeks. The first thing that struck you was the stench, of blood and stale sweat and sickness, and then the sound--the children's voices, a baby crying, the older ones calling out, some even laughing, while the firing cracked away outside; the quiet murmur of the women; the occasional gasp of pain from the wounded; the brisk voices from the curtained corner where Wheeler had his office. Then the gaunt, patient faces--the weary-looking women, some in ragged aprons, others in soiled evening dresses, nursing or minding the children or tending the wounded; the loyal sepoys, slumped against the wall, with their muskets between their knees; an English civilian sitting writing, and staring up in thought, and then writing again; beside him a fat, old babu in a dhoti, mouthing the words as he read a scrap of newspaper through steel-rimmed spectacles; a haggard-looking young girl stitching a garment for a small boy who was waiting and hitting out angrily at the flies buzzing round his head; two officers in foul suits that had once been white, talking about pigsticking--I remember one jerking his arm to shoot his linen, and him with nothing over his torso but his jacket; an ayah39 smiling as she piled toy bricks for a little girl; a stocky, towheaded corporal scraping his pipe; a woman whispering from the Bible to a pallid Goanese-looking fellow lying on a blanket with a bloody bandage round his head; a rather pretty girl named Bella Blair reading poetry to some children.

They were all waiting to die, and some of them knew it, but there was no complaint, no cross words that I ever heard. It wasn't real, somehow--the patient, ordinary way they carried on. "It beats me," I remember Moore saying, "when I think how our dear ladies used to slang and backbite on the verandahs, to see 'em now, as gentle as nuns. Take my word for it, they'll never look at dieir fellow women the same way again, if we get out of this."

"Don't you believe it," says another, called Delafosse. "It's just lack of grub that's keeping 'em quiet. A week after it's all over, they'll be cutting Lady Wheeler dead in die street, as usual."

That night, as I lay trying to sleep, tortured by thirst and hunger cramps, I toyed with the idea of taking off my army shirt and breeches and resuming my Pathan dress to slip over the parapet, lame as I was. But the thought of being taken in die pandy lines was more than I could bear, and so I just lay there quaking and listening to the distant crack of snipers' shots.

I must have dozed off, for suddenly I was being shaken; a bugle was blaring; a brazen voice was bawling, "Stand to! Loading parties there!" I crawled to where I could see over the barricade. It was dawn and, across the flat maidan, I could see long lines of horsemen in white tunics, dim through the light morning mist, and in among the squadrons were the red coats and white breeches of sepoy infantry. Then came the red winking of fire from the gun positions, the crash of explosions, the whine of shot. The barrack walls shook under the impact and clouds of dust billowed down. On the barrack roof, someone hauled up a Union Jack to flap limply in the warm dawn air.

"Look there at the Bengal Cavalry, rot 'em!" says the man next to me. "Those are my own fellows--or were. All right, my bucks, your old riding master's waiting for you!" He slapped the stock of his rifle. "I'll give you more pepper than I ever did at the stables!"

I was pressing loads into my revolver and all down the parapet there was the scraping of ramrods. Wheeler was shouting, "Three rifles to each man! Loaders be ready with fresh cartridges. Delafosse, Moore, call every second man from the south side--smartly, now!"

He could hardly be heard above the din; the space between the parapet and the barracks was swirling with dust thrown up by the shot and we lay pressed against the barrier. Someone came forward at a crouching run and laid two charged muskets on the ground beside me. To my astonishment, it was Bella Blair. The fat babu I'd noticed reading last night was arming the riding master. They lay down behind us; Bella was as pale as death, but she smiled at me and pushed the hair out of her eyes; she was wearing a yellow calico dress, I remember, with a band tied round her brow.

Wheeler alone was standing on his feet, gaunt and bareheaded, with his white hair hanging in wisps down his cheeks, his sabre stuck into the ground before him. As he started to shout another order, a concerted salvo struck us and all was thunder and brick dust for a minute or two, settling at last with a high-pitched screaming farther down the line and a call for the stretchers. Then a strange, eery stillness fell.

Across the maidan, a bugle called. They were looking like a rather untidy review, the sepoy redcoats in open order and the horse squadrons, in front of them, trying to form up.

"Sickenin'," says the riding master, "when you think I tried to teach 'em that. As usual, C Troop can't dress. That's Havildar Ram Sarup for you! It's like a bloody Paul Jones! Take a line from the right-hand troop, can't you? Rest of 'em look well enough, though, don't they? There, now, steady up. If you must charge, let's see it done proper."

Now the distant bugle sounded again; there was a volley of orders over there across the maidan and the cavalry began to move at a walk, now a trot, and there was a bright flicker along their lines as the sabres came out. In a minute or two, sabres steady against shoulders, they were coming at the gallop. I heard the riding master muttering, "Ain't that a sight! And ain't they shaping well? Hold 'em in there, rissaldar, mind the dressing--"

The thunder of the beating hooves was like surf; there was a sudden yell and all the points advanced, with the black blobs of faces behind them as the riders crouched forward and the line burst into the charge. Then Wheeler yelled, "Fire!"

The volley crashed out in a billow of smoke and horses and men went down. We seized our second muskets and blazed away, then our third--Bella Blair beside me feverishly reloading. When the smoke had cleared a little, we saw the tangle of fallen men and beasts, but half of the riders were still howling and coming on. I was yelling incoherent obscenities and blasting away with my revolver at three whitecoats about to put their horses to the parapet just where we stood.

I toppled one with a shot; the second went rolling down as his mount was hit; the third came hurtling over the breastwork, slashing at the man next to me. All along the entrenchment, men were struggling, bayonets against sabres. I grabbed for another musket--and then, thank God, they were wheeling and falling back through the smoke, and the bhisti40 was at my elbow, thrusting his chagul to my lips.

"Stand to!" shouts Wheeler. "They're coming again." They were re-forming a bare 100 yards away among their strewn dead and dying. I gulped down my muddy mouthful and seized my musket again. I could see pandy foot soldiers racing up behind the cavalry now. "Aim for the horses!" Wheeler bawls. "No surrender! Ready, aim, fire!"

Water carrier

It was our last volley; it tore holes in them, but it didn't stop them, and in moments, they were rearing and plunging up the embankment, their sabres swinging at our heads. One came in almost on top of me and I rolled aside to avoid the hooves. When I'd scrambled to my feet, there was a red-coated black devil leaping at me from above; I smashed at him with my musket butt. Then a trooper was lunging at me with his sabre and I shrieked as it sliced past my head--and immediately, I was clawing at his face. He dropped his sabre and, just as I'd got my hand on the fallen hilt, I felt a sickening shock on my head, a dead weight landed on me and I fell to my hands and knees, with the earth swimming before my eyes.

As I waited for the worst, the noise of yells and firing died away and Wheeler was bawling, "Cease fire! Stretchers, there!" I turned to look up at the ghastly shambles of the parapet, felt the earth sticky with blood where I knelt, saw about a dozen pandies sprawled within ten by the yards of our little section of the line.

Wheeler was down on one knee, supporting the fat babu, who was wailing with a shattered leg. The stretcher parties were hurrying up. I rose to my feet and looked out across a maidan heaped with slaughtered men and horses. Here and there, a screaming horse was trying to rise. Two hundred yards off, there were men running--the other way, thank God--and along the parapet there spread a ghastly, croaking cheer. I was too dazed and dry to cheer--but I was alive.

Bella Blair was dead, her hands clutching the musket whose bayonet was driven through her body. I heard a moan and turned to see the riding master slumped against the parapet, his shirt soaked with blood, trying to get a drink from the fallen water chagul. I held it up to his lips and he sucked at it.

"Beat 'em, did we?" asks he, and I could tell that the life was running out of him where he lay. "Damn good. Thought ... they was going to ride ... clean over us there ... for a moment." He coughed blood and his voice trailed away. "They shaped well, though ... didn't they? My Bengalis...." He closed his eyes. "I thought they shaped ... uncommon well...."

When I looked at our defences and saw about half of us still upright along the parapet--though mostly too starved and fatigued to lift a musket--and the other half silent and sprawled or groaning among the bloody rags, broken weapons and bits of gear, I knew that the pandies could walk in any time they wanted to.

But they didn't. That last great assault of June 23 had come within an ace of breaking us, but it had sickened the pan-dies, too. The maidan, within our range, was a ghastly carpet of their dead. For another two terrible days, they were content to pound us with gunfire. In those 48 hours, three people went mad. I only wonder that we all didn't. In the furnace of the barrack, the women and children were too reduced by famine even to cry. On the second night, Wheeler called the senior men together.

"I have sent a last message out to Lawrence," says he. "I have told him that we have nothing left but British spirit and that cannot last forever. We are like rats in a cage. Our best hope is that the rebels will come in again and give us a quick end; better than watch our women and children die by inches." I can still see his gaunt face in the candlelight as he said, finally, "I say that, short of a miracle, it is all up. We're in God's hands, so let us each make his preparations accordingly."

I was with him there--only my preparations weren't going to be spiritual. I still had my Pathan rig stowed away and I could see that the time was fast approaching when Flashy would have to take his chances over die wall. As I sat by the parapet and thought about it, though, I was in a blue funk and, in the end, my nerve failed me that night. Thank God it did, for on die next morning, Wheeler got his miracle.

•

She was the most unlikely messenger of grace you ever saw--a raddled old chee-chee41 biddy with clanking earrings and a parasol, drawn in a rickshaw gharry by two pandies, with a havildar out in front carrying a white flag. When this strange little procession was seen approaching the east corner of the entrenchment, Wheeler and Moore went to meet it. Soon the word was passed along for Vibart and me to present ourselves.

When we came up, Wheeler was shaking his head and saying, "I wouldn't trust it a blasted inch!" and he passed over a paper, which I read over Vibart's shoulder. It was written in English, in a good hand, and, as near as I recall, it said:

To the subjects of her Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria. All those who are in no way connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie and are willing to lay down dieir arms shall receive a safe passage to Allahabad.

It was signed on behalf of Nana Sahib by an official called Azimullah Khan.

As the others read it, a fierce babble of voices broke out: "It's a plot!" "No, it ain't!" "We've stood the bastards off this long--" "I can smell nigger treachery a mile away." "Why should it be treachery? My God, what have we got to lose? We're done for as it is!" And all the while, a delicious hope began to break over me--we were saved! Whatever Wheeler felt, he would have to accept any terms offered. He couldn't refuse and so doom the women and children to death in that stinking barrack. We were being offered at least a chance of life--and he had to take it.

[After some argument between those who wanted to reject the offer out of hand and those who were for accepting, it was decided--on Flashman's suggestion--that Moore and Flashman parley with Nana Sahib to explore the terms further. Flashman, privately, wanted to make quite sure that there would be a surrender.

At noon, the two Englishmen were escorted through die sepoy lines to the tent of the Maharajah of Bithur, commonly called Nana Sahib, who appeared to Flashman as a "burly, fat-faced rascal with curly moustachios and a shifty look, dressed in more silks and jewels than a French whore." With him were Azimullah Khan, his shrewd diplomat, who spoke excellent French and English, and Tantia Topi, his military commander.

Azimullah said that Nana, moved by generosity, offered to permit the garrison to depart with the honours of war. Flashman asked what guarantees there were and, as Azimullah began to reply, the terrible scream of someone being tortured broke out behind the trees--"Mahratta diplomacy," Flashman observed. In any case, the British would be allowed to keep small arms and ammunition when they left the fort. Baggage animals would be provided to carry the wounded to the river, where boats would be waiting to take them all to Allahabad.

When Wheeler's council of senior officers discussed these terms, quite a few were still in favour of "dying with honour," but when Flashman finally spoke, he said that he couldn't agree to maintaining his own honour by the sacrifice of the women and children. "The irony was that, for my own cowardly reasons, I was arguing die sane and sensible course and having to dress it up in high-sounding bilge in order to break down their fatuous notions of duty." And so Nana Sahib's terms were accepted.]

Whatever misgivings Wheeler may have had, hardly anyone else shared them when word got round of what had been decided, and Azimullah had come to die entrenchment with the Nana's undertakings all signed and witnessed: Draught animals were to arrive at dawn for the mile-long journey to the river, where boats would be waiting, and throughout the night there was bustle and eagerness and thanksgiving all through the garrison. It was as though a great shadow had been lifted; cooking fires blazed outside the barrack for die first time in weeks, the wounded were brought out of that stinking oven to lie in the open air, and even the children frolicked on the parapet where we'd been slashing at the sepoys two days before. Tired, worn faces were smiling, no one minded die dirt and stench any longer or gave a thought to the rebels' massed guns and infantry a few hundred yards away; the firing had stopped, the fear of death had lifted, we were going out to safety and throughout the night, over the din of packing and preparation, the sound of hymns rolled up to die night sky.

One of the few croakers was Ilderim. Wheeler had told those sepoys who had remained loyaLand fought in the garrison to slip away over die southern rampart, for fear of reprisals from their mutinous fellows in the morning, but Ilderim wouldn't have it. He came to me in the dark at the north entrenchment, where I was smoking a cheroot and enjoying my peace of mind.

"Do I slip away like a cur when someone throws a stone at it?" says he. "No--I march with Wheeler Sahib and the rest of you tomorrow. And so that no pye-dog of a mutineer will take me for anything but what I am, I have put this on, for a and as he stepped closer in the gloom, I saw he was in the full fig of a native officer of cavalry, white coat, gauntlets, long-tailed puggaree and all. "It is just a down-country regiment's coat, which I took from one of those we slew the other day, but it will serve to mark me as a soldier." He grinned, showing his teeth. "And I shall take my sixty rounds--do thou likewise, blood brother."

"We're not going to need 'em, though," says I, and he shrugged.

"Who knows? When the tiger has its paw on the goat's neck and then smiles in friendship.... Wheeler Sahib does not trust the Nana. Dost thou?"

"There's no choice, is there?" says I. "But he's signed his name to a promise, after all--"

"And if he breaks it, the dead can complain," says he, and spat. "So I say--keep thy sixty rounds to hand, Flashman Sahib."

I didn't heed him much, for Pathans are notoriously suspicious of everyone, reason or none, and when day broke, there was too much to do to waste time in thinking. The mutineers came in the first mists of dawn, with bullocks and elephants and carts to carry us to the river, and we had the herculean task of getting everyone into the convoy. There were 200 wounded to be moved, and all the women and children, some of them just babes in arms, and old people who'd have been feeble enough even without three weeks on starvation rations. Everyone was tired and filthy and oddly dispirited now that the first flush of excitement had died away. As the sun came up, it shone on a strange, nightmare sight that lives with me now only as a series of pictures as the evacuation of Cawnpore began.

I can see the straggling mass of the procession, the bullock carts with their stretchers carrying the bloodstained figures of the wounded, gaunt and wasted; bedraggled white women, either sitting in the carts or standing patiently alongside, with children who looked like White-chapel waifs clinging to their skirts; our own men, ragged and haggard, with their muskets cradled, taking up station along the convoy; the red coats and sullen faces of the mutineers who were to shepherd us across the maidan and down to the river ghat beyond the distant trees, where the boats were waiting. The dawn air was heavy with mist and suspicion and hatred, as Wheeler, with Moore at his elbow, as always, stood up on the rampart and reviewed the battered remnants of his command, strung out along the entrenchment, waiting listlessly for the word to move, while all round was the confused babble of voices, orders being shouted, officers hurrying up and down, elephants squealing, the carts creaking, children crying and the kites beginning to swoop down on the emptying barracks.

Incidents and figures remain very clear--two civilians hauling down die tattered flag from the barrack roof, rolling it up carefully and bringing it to Wheeler, who stood absent-mindedly with it trailing from one hand while he shouted, "Sar'nt Grady! Is the south entrenchment clear, Sar'nt Grady?" A little boy with curly hair, laughing and shouting, "Plop-plop!" as one of the elephants dropped its dung; his mother, a harassed young woman in a torn ball gown (it had rosebuds embroidered. I recall) with a sleeping infant in her arms, slapped and shook him with her free hand, and then straightened her hair. A group of mutineers walking round the barracks, belabouring one of our native cooks who was limping along under a great load of pans. A British private, his uniform unrecognisable, being railed at by an old mem-sahib as he helped her into a cart, until she was settled, when she said, "Thank you, my good man. thank you very much," and began searching her reticule for a tip. Four mutineers were hurrying up and down the untidy convoy, calling out and searching, until they spotted Vibart and his family--and then they ran hallooing and calling, "Major Sahib! Mem-sahib!" and seized on the family's baggage, and one of them, beaming and chuckling, lifted Vibart's little lad onto his shoulders, piggyback, while the others shouted and shoved and made room for Mrs. Vibart in a wagon. Vibart was dumbfounded, and two of the mutineers were weeping as they took his hand and carried his gear--I saw another one at it, too, an old grizzled havildar of the 56th, standing on the entrenchment, gazing down into the ruin of the barracks with tears running down his white beard; he was shaking his head in grief, and then he would look no more, but turned about and stared across the maidan, still crying.

Most of the mutineers weren't so sentimental, though. One tried to snatch a musket from Whiting and Whiting flung him off, snarling and shouting, "You want it, do you? I'll give you its contents fast enough, you damned dog, if you don't take care!" The pandies fell back, growling and shaking their fists, and another gang of them stood and jeered while old Colonel Ewart was carried on a palki to his place in the line. "Is it not a fine parade, Colonel Sahib?" they were jeering. "Is it not well drawn up?" And they cackled and made mock of the drill, prancing up and down.

I didn't like the look of this a bit, nor of the menacing-looking crowd of pandies which was growing across the maidan. Promises or no promises, it don't take much to touch off a crowd like that, and I was relieved when Moore, who had hurried to the head of the column, shouted and blew his whistle and the procession began to move, creaking slowly, away from the entrenchment, and out onto the plain. I was near the rear of the line, where Vibart had charge of the supply wagons; behind us, the pandies were already scavenging in the deserted barracks--by God, they were welcome to anything they could find.

It was about a mile to the river, where the boats were, but we were so exhausted, and the convoy so haphazard and cumbersome, that it took us the best part of an hour to cross the maidan alone. It was a hellish trek, with the mutineers trying to drive us along, swearing and thrusting, and our fellows cursing 'em back, while wagons foundered, and one or two of the garrison collapsed and had to be loaded aboard, and the drivers thrashed at the beasts. Crowds of natives had come down from Cawnpore city to watch and jeer at us and get in the way; some of them, and the more hostile pan-dies, kept sneaking in close to shout taunts, or even to strike at us and try to steal our belongings. Something's going to crack in a moment, thinks I, and sure enough, just as we were trying to manhandle one of the store wagons over a little white bridge at die far side of the maidan, where the trees began, there was a crackle of firing off to one side, and sudden shouting, and then more shots.

The driver of my store wagon tried to whip up in alarm, a wheel caught on the bridge and I and two civilians were struggling to keep it steady when Whiting comes up at the run, cocking his musket and demanding to know what the row was. In the same moment, one of our corporals came flying out of the wood, rolled clean under the wagon in front of us and jumps up, yelling:

"Quick, sir--come quick! Them devils is murthering Colonel Ewart! They got 'im in the trees yonder, an'--"

Whiting sprang forward with an oath, but quick as light, one of the mutineers who'd been watching us at the bridge jumps in his way and flung his arm round him. For a moment, I thought, oh, God, now they're going to ambush us, and the corporal must have thought the same, for he whipped out his bayonet, but the mutineer holding Whiting was just trying to keep him back and shouting:

"Nahin, sahib, khabadar!43 If you go there, they will kill you! Let be, sahib! Go on--to the river!"

Whiting swore and struggled with him, but the mutineer--a big, black-moustached havildar with a Chillianwallah medal--threw him down and wrested his musket away. Whiting came up, furious, but the corporal understood and grabbed his wrist.

" 'E's right, sir! Them swine'll just saf karo44 you, like they done the colonel! We got to git on to the river, like 'e says! Otherwise, maybe they'll do for everybody--the women an' kids an' all, sir!"

He was right, of course--I'd been through the same sort of retreat as this, back in Afghanistan, and you've got to allow for a few stray slaughters and turn a blind eye, or the next thing you know, you'll have a battle on your hands. Even Whiting realised it, I think, for he wheeled on the havildar and says:

"I must see. Will you come with me?"

The fellow says, "Han, sahib," and they strode into the trees. It seemed a sensible time to be getting on down to the river, so I told the corporal I must inform Wheeler of what was happening, ordered him to see the store wagon safely over the bridge and jumped up onto the coping, running past the carts ahead, with their passengers demanding to know what was happening. I hurried on through the trees and found myself looking down the slope to the Suttee Choura Ghat and, beyond it, the broad, placid expanse of the Ganges.

The slope was alive with people. The foremost wagons had reached the landing stage and our folk were already getting out and making their way to the water's edge, where a great line of thatched, clumsy-looking barges was anchored in the shallows. The wagons nearer me were splitting away from the convoy to get closer to the water and everything was in confusion, with some people getting out and others sitting tight. Already, the ground was littered with abandoned gear, the stretchers with the wounded were being unloaded just anywhere; groups of women and children were waiting, wondering which way to go, while their menfolk, red in the face and shouting, demanded to know what die orders for embarkation were. Someone was calling, "All ladies with small children are to go in numbers twelve to sixteen!" but no one knew which barges were which, and you couldn't hear yourself think above the elephants' squealing and the babble of voices.

On either side of the slope, there were groups of pandies with their bayonets fixed, glowering but doing nothing to help, and off to one side, I saw a little gaily dressed group of natives by a temple on a knoll--Azimullah was there, talking to Wheeler, who was gesturing towards the barges, so I walked across towards them, through the silent groups of pandy riflemen, and as I came up, Azimullah was saying:

"But I assure you, General, the flour is already in the boats--go and see for yourself. Ah, Colonel Flashman, good morning, sir; I trust I see you in good health. Perhaps, General, Colonel Flashman could be asked to examine the boats and see that all is as I have told you?"

So I was despatched down to the water, and had to wade out through the shallows to the barges; they were great, musty-smelling craft, but clean enough, with half-naked nigger boatmen in charge, and, sure enough, there were grain sacks in most of them, as Azimullah had said. I reported accordingly, and then we set to with the embarkation, which simply meant telling people off at random to the various barges, carrying the women and children through the water, bearing the stretchers of the wounded head high, stumbling and swearing in the stinking ooze of the shallows--I went under twice myself, but thank God I didn't swallow any; the Ganges is one river you don't want to take the waters of. It was desperate work, gasping in die steamy heat as the sun came up; the worst of it was getting the women and children and wounded properly stowed inboard. I reckon I must have carried 20 females to the barges (and none of 'em worth even a quick fumble, just my luck), plucked one weeping child from the water's edge, where she was crying for her mama, put my fist into the face of a pandy who was pestering Mrs. Newnham and trying to snatch her parasol, quieted an old crone who refused to be embarked until she was positive the barge she was going to was number 12 ("Mr. Turner said I must go to number 12; I will go to no other"--it might have been the Great Eastern for all I knew, or cared) and stood neck deep wrestling to replace a rotted rudder rope. Strange, when you're working all out with down things like that, sweating and wrestling to make sense out of chaos, you forget about death and danger and possible treachery--all that matters is getting that piece of hemp knotted through the rudder stem or finding the carpetbag that Mrs. Burtenshaw's maid has left in the cart.

I was about done when I stumbled up through the litter of the bank for the last time and looked about me. Nearly all the command was loaded, the barges were floating comfortably high on the oily surface and, beyond them, the last dawn mists were receding across the broad expanse of the river to the far bank half a mile distant, with the eastern sun turning the water to a great crimson mirror.

There weren't above 50 of our folk, Vibart's rear guard, mostly, left on the wreck-strewn, mud-churned slope; Wheeler and Moore and Vibart were all together, and as I went to them, I heard Whiting's voice, shaking with anger:

"And he was shot on his palki, I tell you--half a dozen times, at least! Those forsworn swine up yonder--" and he shook his fist towards the temple on the knoll, where Azimullah was sitting with Tantia Topi in a little group of the Nana's officers. There was no sign of Nana himself, though.

"There is nothing to be done, Captain Whiting!" Wheeler's voice was hoarse and his gaunt face was crimson and sweating. He looked on the edge of collapse.

"I know, sir, I know--it is the basest treachery, but there is no remedy now! Let us thank God we have come this far--no, no, sir, we are in no case to protest, let alone punish--we must make haste down the river before worse befalls!"

Whiting stamped and cursed, but Vibart eased him away. The pandies who had lined the slope were moving now, through the abandoned wagons, converging on the landing place.

"Hollo, Flash," says Moore, wearily. Like me, he was plastered with mud, and the sling was gone from his wounded arm. "They settled Massie, too--did you know? He protested when the pandies dragged off four of our loyal sepoys--so they shot 'em all, out o' hand--"

"Like dogs, beside the road!" cries Whiting. "By God, if I'd a gun!" He dashed the sweat from his eyes, glaring at the pandies on the slope. Then he saw me. "Flashman, one of the sepoys was that Padian orderly of yours--the big chap in the havildar's coat--diey shot him in the ditch!"

For a moment, I didn't comprehend; I just stared at his flushed, raging face.

"Like a dog in the ditch!" cries he again, and then it hit me like a blow: He was telling me that Ilderim was dead. I can't describe what I felt--it wasn't grief, or horror, so much as disbelief. Ilderim couldn't die--he was indestructible, always had been, even as the boy I'd first met at Mogala years ago, one of those folk whose life is fairly bursting out of them; I had a vision of that grinning, bearded hawk face of just a few hours ago--"No pye-dog of a mutineer will take me for anything but what I am!" And he'd been right, and it had been the death of him--but not the kind of death the great brave idiot had always looked for, just a mean, covert murder at the roadside. Oh, you stupid Ghilzai bastard, I thought--why didn't you go over the wall when you had the chance?

"Come on!" Moore was pushing at my shoulder. "We'll be last aboard. We're in the--hollo, what's that?"

From the trees on the top of the slope, a bugle sounded, the notes floating clearlydown to us. I looked up the hill and saw a strange thing happening--I suppose I was still shocked by the news of Ilderim's death, but what I saw seemed odd rather than menacing. The pandies on the slope--and there must have been a couple of hundred of them--were dropping to the kneeling firing position, their muskets were at their shoulders and they were pointing at us.

"For Christ's--" a voice shouted, and then the hillside seemed to explode in a hail of musketry, the balls were howling past, I heard someone scream beside me, and then Moore's arm flailed me to the ground and I was plunging through the ooze, into the water. I went under and struck out for dear life, coming up with a shattering crash of my head against the middle barge. Overhead, women were shrieking and muskets were cracking, and then there was the crash of distant cannon, and I saw the narrow strip of water between me and the shore ploughed up as the storm of grape hit it. I reached up, seizing the gunwale, and heaved myself up, and then the whole barge shook as though in a giant hand, and I was hurled back into the water again.

I came up gasping. The pandies were tearing down the slope now, sabres and muskets and bayonets at the ready, charging into the last of our shore party, who were struggling in the shallows. Up on the slope, others were firing at the boats, and in the shade beneath the trees, there was the triple flash of cannon, sending grape and round shot smashing down into the helpless lumbering boats. Men were struggling in the water only a few yards from me--I saw a British soldier sabred down, another floundering back as a sepoy shot him point-blank through the body, and a third, thrust through with a bayonet, sinking down slowly on the muddy shore. Wheeler, white-faced and roaring, "Treachery! Shove off--quickly! Treachery!" was stumbling out into the shallows, his sabre drawn; he slashed at a pursuing sepoy, missed his footing and went under; but a hand reached out from the gunwale near me and pulled him up, coughing and spewing water. Moore was in the water close by and Vibart was trying to swim towards us with his wounded arm trailing. As Moore plunged towards him, I sank beneath the surface, dived and struck out beneath the boat, and as I went, I was thinking, clear enough, well, Flashy, my lad, you were wrong again--Nana Sahib wasn't to be trusted, after all.

I came up on the other side, and the first thing I saw was a body falling from the boat above me. Overhead, its thatch was burning, and as a great chunk of the stuff fell hissing into die water, I shoved away. I trod water, looking about me. In the next two barges, the thatches were alight as well, and people were screaming and tumbling into the water--I saw one woman jump with a baby in her arms: I believe it was the one who had cuffed the little boy for laughing at the elephant's dung. The shore was hidden from me by the loom of the barge, but the crash of firing was redoubling and the chorus of screams and yells was deafening. People were firing back from the barges, too, and in the one down-river from me, two chaps were beating at the burning thatch and another was heaving at its tiller; very slowly, it seemed to be veering from the bank. That's the boy for me, thinks I, and in the same moment, the thatch of the barge immediately above me collapsed with a roar and a whoosh of sparks, with shrieks of the damned coming from beneath it.

It was obvious, even in that nightmare few moments, what had happened. Nana had been meaning to play false all along; he had just waited until we were in the boats before opening up with musketry, grape and every piece of artillery he had. From where I was, I could see one barge already sinking, with people struggling in the water round it; at least four others were on fire; two were drifting helplessly into midstream. The pandies were in the water round the last three boats, where most of the women and children were; but then a great gust of smoke blotted the scene from my view and. at the same time, I heard the crackle of firing from the far bank--the treacherous bastards had us trapped both sides. I put my head down and struck out for the next barge ahead, which at least had someone steering it, and as I came under its stern, there was Moore in the water alongside, shoving for all he was worth to turn the rudder and help it from the shore. Beyond him, I saw Wheeler and Vibart and a couple of others being dragged inboard, while our people blazed back at the pandies on the bank.

Moore shouted something incoherent at me, and as I seized on the rudder with him, his face was within a foot of mine--and then it exploded in a shower of blood and I literally had his brains blown all over me. I let go, shrieking, and when I had dashed the hideous mess from my eyes, he was gone, the barge was surging out into the river as our people got the sweeps going and I was just in time to grasp the gunwale and be dragged along, clinging like grim death and bawling to be hauled aboard.

We must have gone several hundred yards before I managed to scramble up and onto the deck and get my bearings. The first thing I saw was Wheeler, dead or dying; he had a gaping wound in the neck and the blood was pumping oozily onto his shirt. All around, there were wounded men sprawled on the planks, the smouldering thatch filled the boat with acrid clouds of smoke and at both gunwales, men were firing at the banks. I clung to the gunwale, looking back--we were half a mile below Suttee Ghat by now, where most of the barges were stillswinging at their moorings, under a pall of smoke; the river round them was full of people, floundering for the bank. The firing seemed to have slackened, but you could still see the sparkle of the muskets along the slope above the ghat and the occasional blink of a heavy gun, booming dully across the water. Behind us, two of the barges seemed to have got clear and were drifting helplessly across the river, but we were die only one under way, with half a dozen chaps each side tugging at the sweeps.

I took stock. We were clear; die shots weren't reaching us. Wheeler was dead, flopped out on the deck, and beyond him, Vibart was lying against the gunwale, eyes closed, both arms soaked in blood; someone was babbling in agony and I saw it was Turner, with one leg doubled at a hideous angle and the other lying in a bloody pool. Whiting was holding on to one of the awning supports, a gory spectre, fumbling one-handed at the lock of a carbine--there hardly seemed to be a sound man in the barge. I saw Delafosse was at one of the sweeps, Thomson at another and Sergeant Grady, with a bandage round his brow, was in the act of loosing off a shot at the shore.

•

Memory's the queerest thing. When you've gone through some hellish experience--and Cawnpore ranks high in that line--the aftermath tends to get vague. That barge is mercifully dim in my mind now. I know that it was the only one that got away. The rest were burned or shot to pieces--except for those with the women and children. The pandies took the women and kids back ashore and carried them to Cawnpore, and all the world knows what happened after that.45

Only a few things remain clear in my recollection of that trip down-river--though Thomson has left a pretty full account of it, if you're interested. I remember Whiting's dead face, looking very pale and small, in the bow of the boat. I remember splashing and straining in the water when we'd grounded on a mudbank in the dark. I remember Vibart biting on a leather strap as they set his broken arm. Finally--and memory begins to be consecutive and coherent at this point--I remember the night fire arrows came winging in out of the dark and thudding in the deck as we blazed away at dim figures on the bank and then hauled at the sweeps until we could get out of range. When we finally flopped down exhausted, the current swept us along and then landed us high and dry on another mud-bank just before dawn.

We were wedged on a deserted, jungly shore with nothing to be heard except monkeys' chatter and the screech of birds in the undergrowth and no sight except the walls of green and the oily river sliding past. For a change, it all looked peaceful, at least.

Vibart reckoned that there must still be 100 miles of hostile country to Allahabad. There were two dozen of us left in the boat now, perhaps half of whom were fit to stand. We were low on powder and ball and desperately short of mealies. There were no medical supplies and it was odds that half the wounded would contract gangrene unless we reached safety quickly. I looked round at that squalid barge with its stench of death and blood, and even the unwounded looking fit to croak, and an idea crossed my mind. I hadn't been through the whole siege, and so I was in better case than most; I might do worse than to slip away and trust to luck and judgement to get to Allahabad on foot.

So when we held our little council about getting refloated and on our way, I laid the groundwork for my decamping, in my own subtle style. "I agree with all that," says I, "but as for me, well, I'd sooner head back to Cawnpore."

They gaped at me in disbelief. "You're mad!" cries Delafosse.

"So I've been told," says I. "See here--we only surrendered because of the women and children. Well, now that they're either gone or prisoners of those fiends, I don't much fancy running any longer." I looked as belligerent as I knew how. "I reckon I've got a score to settle in Cawnpore."

"But you can't go back, man!" says Thomson. "It's certain death."

"Maybe," says I, very businesslike. "But I've seen my country's flag hauled down. I've seen us betrayed ... our loved ones ravished from us"--I managed a manly glisten about the eyes. "I don't like it above half! So--I'm going back to put a bullet into that black bastard's heart."

"My God!" says Delafosse, taking fire. "I've half a mind to come with you! " "You'll do no such thing!" This was Vibart. He was deathly pale, with both arms useless, but he was still in command. "Colonel Flashm an, I forbid you! I will not have you fling away your life in this mad folly!"

I gave him a quizzical little grin and patted his foot. "I'm senior to you, Vibart, remember?"

At this, they all cried out together, telling me not to be a fool and not to desert our wounded. Vibart spoke up then and said it was my first duty to carry out Wheeler's dying wishes. He said he wanted to send a shore party to find friendly villagers who would tow us off and--if I were restless--I could lead it.

I seemed to hesitate, but finally, I said, "All right. But I wager you'll be going to Allahabad without me in the end. All I'll need is a rifle and a knife and a handshake from each of you." So we set off, a dozen of us, to find a friendly village. If we did, well and good. If we didn't, I'd slip off. (That's one thing about having a reputation for recklessness: They'll shake their heads in admiration and believe anything you tell 'em.)

I was feeling far less self-reliant once we'd got five minutes into the jungle. It wasn't very thick stuff but eery and silent, with huge trees shadowing a forest floor of creeper and swampy plants, like a great cathedral. We struck a little path and followed it and presently came on a tiny temple in a clearing, a lath-and plaster thing that looked as if it hadn't been visited for years. Delafosse and Sergeant Grady scouted and found it to be empty. I was just ordering up the rest of the men when, very low and far off in the forest, we heard it: the slow boom-boom of drums.

I don't know any sound like it for shivering the soul--the muted rumble of doom that conjures up the idea of spectres with painted faces creeping towards you through the dark.

They were damned real spectres this time--as we found out when Grady suddenly went staggering with an arrow in his brow and black, half-naked figures were swarming out of die trees, yelling bloody murder.

I snapped off one shot and then went haring for the temple. I made it a split second before two arrows slapped into the doorpost, and then we were all tumbling inside.

They came storming up to the doorway in a great rabble and, for the next five minutes, it was as bloody and desperate a melee as any I'd ever been in. There were about eight of us now, in a space about eight feet square, and only two of us could fire through the door at once. Whoever the attackers were--half human jungle people, I suppose, infected with the mutiny madness--they had no firearms and the first of them were shot down before they were close enough to use their spears. But their arrows buzzed in and two of our fellows went down before the attack slackened off.

I was just helping Thomson get an arrow out of the fleshy part of Murphy's arm when I heard some stealthy fumbling outside and Delafosse suddenly whoops out, "Fire! They've set the place alight!" And, sure enough, a gust of smoke came billowing in through the doorway and a fire arrow came zipping into Private Ryan's side.

Thomson was suddenly shouting, "A volley straight in front, and then run for it!" He and Delafosse and two privates stumbled to the door and, when he yelled, "Fire!" they all let blast at once. Then we were charging across the clearing, the niggers shrieking at the sight of us. The man in front of me went down with a spear in his back. I cannoned into a black figure and he fell away. I followed Delafosse onto the path, with the arrows whipping past us, and I knew that a few of us had got free because there were booted feet thumping behind me.

How we broke clear, God knows, but our sudden rush must have surprised them. We could hear their yells behind us and we knew they weren't giving up the hunt. My lungs were nearly bursting as we ploughed through the thicker jungle near the water, tripping on snags, tearing ourselves, sobbing with exhaustion.

Then we were on the bank and Delafosse, sliding to a halt in the mud, was yelling, "My God, the boat is gone!" There was the great groove in the bank where it had lain, but the brown stretch of water before us was empty.

"It must have slid off," Delafosse was saying, and I thought: Good for you, my boy. Let's stop to consider how it might have happened, and then the niggers can come along and join in. I didn't even check stride; I went into the water in the mightiest racing dive I'd ever performed. Behind me, I could hear splashes as the others followed suit.

I was striking out blindly with the current. The far bank was too distant, but, downstream, 1 could see islands and sandbanks towards which we were being carried faster than the jungle niggers could hope to run. Glancing round, I could see four heads--Delafosse, Thomson, Murphy and Sullivan--bobbing along in my wake.

I was just sighting on the nearest sandbank when Delafosse reared up in the water, yelling and gesturing. I couldn't make him out at first--and then I heard one frantic word, "Muggers!" and as I looked where he was pointing, the steamy waters of the Ganges seemed to turn to ice.

On a mudbank 100 yards ahead and to my right, shapes were moving--long, brown, hideously scaly dragons waddling down to the water at frightening speed, plashing into the shallows and then gliding out inexorably to head us off, their half-submerged snouts rippling the surface. For an instant, I was paralysed--then I was thrashing at the water in a frenzy of terror, trying to get out into midstream, fighting the sluggish current. I knew it was hopeless; they must intercept us long before we could reach the islands, but I lashed out blindly, ploughing through the water, too terrified to look and expecting every moment to feel the agonising stab of crocodile teeth in my legs. I was almost done, with exhaustion and panic, and then Sullivan was alongside, tugging at me, pointing ahead--and I saw that the placid surface was breaking up into a long, swirling race where the water ran down between two little scrubby mudbanks. There was just a chance, if we could get into that broken water, that the faster current might carry us away--muggers hate rough water, anyway--and I went for it with the energy of despair.

One glance I spared to my right--my God, there was one of the brutes within ten yards, swirling towards me. I had a nightmare glimpse of that hideous snout breaking surface, of the great tapering jaws yawning in a cavern of teeth. (I regret to say that I did not notice whether the fourth tooth of the lower jaw was overlapping or not. A naturalist chap I know tells me that if I'd taken due note of this, I'd have known whether I was being attacked by a true crocodile or some other species--which would have added immense interest to the occasion.) As it was, I can only say that die thing looked like a fast-swimming Iron Maiden, and I was just letting out a last wail of despair when Sullivan seized me by the hair and we were swept into the rough water between the islands. We struck out any old way, going under in the choking brown, struggling up again--and then the water changed to clinging, black ooze and Sullivan was crying, "Up, sir, for Christ's sake." He began to drag me towards the safety of a mass of creeper on a higher bank. Delafosse was staggering along beside us; Thomson was still knee-deep in the river, smashing with a piece of root at the head of a mugger which lunged and snapped, then swirled away with a flourish of its tail. Murphy, his arm trickling blood, reached down to help me up the bank.

I heaved up beside him, shuddering, and I remember thinking: This must be the end; nothing more can happen now. Sullivan was kneeling over me and I said, "God bless you, Sullivan, you are die noblest man alive"--or something equally brilliant, although I meant it, by God.

And he replied, "I dare say you're right, sir; but you'll have to tell my missus, for damn me if she thinks so."

And then I must have half swooned away, for all I can remember is Delafosse's voice saying, "I believe they are friends--see, Thomson, they are waving to us. They mean us no harm."Whereat, I was thinking: If it's the muggers waving, don't trust the bastards an inch; they're only pretending to be friendly.

•

Luck, as I've observed before, is an agile sprite who can jump either way in double-quick time. Evil luck took me to Meerut and good luck let me escape--only to land in the hell of Cawnpore, from which I was a fortunate one of five to get clear. It was the foulest luck to run into those wild jungle men and the infernal muggers--but if they hadn't chased us, we mightn't have fetched up on a mudbank under the walls of one of those petty Indian rulers who had stayed loyal to the Sirkar. The new niggers, whom Delafosse saw waving and hallooing at us from the shore, turned out to be followers of one Diribijah Singh, a tough old Maharajah who ruled from a fort in the jungle and was a steadfast friend of the British. So, you see, all that matters about luck is that it should run good on the last throw.

Not that the game was over, you understand. When I think back on the whole course of things, I can say truthfully that the worst was still to come.

Synopisi: It hardly seemed likely that the prime minister, old Lord Plarmerston, would invite Colonel Flashman to a secret meeting at Balmoral Castle just to show him some greyish little cakes, but but that is what happened one day in the summer of 1856. The cakes were Indian chapatties, reputed to be a signal for multiny among the East India Company's sepoy troops--and if Flashman had been able to foresee where they were to lead, he would have fled wailing from the room. As he freely admitted to himself, the gallant lancer officer, hero of Balaclava to the public, had a liver as yellow as yesterday's custard. What was cruel and sinister Count Ignatieff--Flashman's old nemesis--who, by the oddest chance, happened to be visiting Balmoral just at that moment. Thus, Flashman set off for the Inian city of Jhansi to report on the muliny rumours. Part of his mission was to placate the Rani of Jhansi, who, to his lecherous delight, turned out to be a fascinating young woman quite susceptible to cavalry whiskers and gallantry. One night, as he was drinking with Ilderim Khan, a friend from former adventures, Flashman was invited to a rendezvous with the Rani at her pavilion. That turned into one of the most Indian history. Waking up alone and half-drugged, Flashman found two Thugs on the point of murdering him and narrowly escaped with the help of Ilderim Khan. The assassins had been hired by Ignatieff, and so it was now imperative that Flashman go into hiding, disguised as a native cavalryman in the garrison at Meerut.

1 The offering and touching of a sword hilt, in token of mutual respect, was traditional in the Indian cavalry.

2 corporal

3 son of an owl

4 cot

5 green sweetmeat containing bhang

6 underofficer

7 native butter, cooking fat

8 a hightly offensive term

9 flour

10 teacher

11 Lawrence--any one of the famous brothers who served on the frontier and in the multiny

12 landowner

13 strong drink

14 athletic meet

15 tent pegging with a lance

16 books

17 regiment

18 native officer

19 permit

20 butter

21 waiters

22 literally, "little breakfast"--early morning tea

23 not at home; presumably, the salver used for calling cards

24 holy war

25 preachers

26 This paper was undoubtedly the March 28 issue of Ashruf-al-Akbar, of Lucknow, which predicted a holy war throughout the Middle East, though warning against relying on russian "enemies of the faith."

27 artillery commander

28 The report was largely true as state. Mangal Pande of the 34th Native Infantry attacked one of his officers, after calling for a religious revolt, then tried to kill himself. He was hanged, but later pandy became the Baritish term for any Indian mutineer.

29 Flashman's account of this scene corresponds with that of most historians. Even though the cartidges were waxed, the sepoys were suspicious of their shiny apprance and were not placated by assurances that they could grease their own loads with nonpolluting substances or could tear the cartidges with their fingers rather than bite off the top.

30 The British were, in fact, more considerate towards their Indian troops than they were to their white ones. Flogging continued in the British army long after it had been abolished for Indian troops, whose discipline appears to have been much more lax, possibly in consequence.

31 Lieutenant (later Lieutenant General Sir Hugh) Gough was warned by one of the native officers of his troop on May ninth that the sepoys would rise to rescue their the sepoys would rise to rescue their comrades from the jail. Carmichael-Smith and Archdale Wilson both rejected the warning.

32 child

33 One of the first casualties of the Meerut mutiny was, in fact, a British soldier murdered in a bazaar lemonade shop.

34 Kill!

35 British

36 Hewitt and Archdale Wilson were extraordinarity slow in getting the British regiments on the move after the outbreak; they did not reach the sepoy lines until after the mutineers had set off for Delhi.

37 Hello, soldier

38 Thirty-one Europeans were massacred at Meerut, including all those mentioned by Flashman. Langdale's little daughter was killed with a sword as she was sleeping on her charpai. Because some extremely exaggerated reports of the atrocities were circulated, British witnesses later tried to set the record straight by denying the wilder stories, even in the highly emotional atmosphere of the mutiny.

39 native nursemaid

40 water carrier

41 half-caste

42 dress of honour, usually on ceremonial occasions

43 Take care!

44 to make clear--i.e., clean you up

45 Those 206 survivors were lodged in two rooms of the Bidigarh (House of the Women) for 18 days, along with some similar refugees from Fategarh. On July 15, when news came that a British column was approaching the city, all were slaughtered--not by their sepoy guards but by butchers from the bazaar. Their dismembered bodies were thrown into a well.

This is the second of three installments of a condensed version of "Flashman in the Great Game." The third installment will appear in the November issue.