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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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E was a fine-looking man, was Michael Blackmore. There
were six feet and two inches of him, broad in the back,
deep-chested, and straight; he had a fine big, black
moustache, and a strong, dark, good-looking face that made
passers-by look twice at him; and his brown eyes were as
level and unflinching and inscrutable as Fate itself.
Moreover, he had a way with women.
He was sergeant-major of his regiment; and that was a fine thing to be even in those days, when the pay was less and the privileges were fewer than at present; and he was a prince among sergeant-majors in an army that has always had the finest sergeant-majors in the world.
The men realised his efficiency to their abiding disgust, and obeyed him with grudging admiration; and the officers drew comfort from it. The regiment was what it was because of him. And yet no one, either officer or enlisted man, looked on him as a friend, and no one either knew or cared what his private opinions were; he was known and admired from end to end of India as Black Mike of Jungalore; but no man loved him.
Black Mike retaliated in kind.
He went his own way, kept his own counsel, and did his duty in a most efficient manner of his own; and when his day's work was done, and well done, he prosecuted his various and quite amazing love affairs without apparently knowing or caring who witnessed them.
He had a bad name in the bazaar, for the natives of India are not in the least partial to the attentions of white soldiers to their women-folk; but he could talk the language that is spoken round Jungalore perfectly, and he had a vein of cunning in his composition that could pilot him through even the drawn curtains of the East. The natives hated him, and feared him; and Black Mike made love and went his way.
The regiment was the J.L.I.'s, and it had been a famous regiment. It paraded well, and drilled well, even in '57, thanks to Black Mike. But it had been stationed too long in Jungalore, which lies away and away to the northward of Cawnpore, in the middle of a densely-populated "babu" country.
The natives of that district never have been fighting men; they have been traders, and farmers, and manufacturers, and money-lenders for centuries—cunning, underhanded schemers, possessed of an amazing disregard for death, and an equally amazing dislike for getting hurt. They hated the English, and especially the English soldiers; but they have hated in turn, and just as cordially, every one of the conquering peoples that have overridden them and taxed them, and bullied them, through wave after wave of succeeding conquest since the birth of India.
They had over-developed brains with which to scheme against their conquerors, but they lacked always the courage and cohesion to overthrow them. It needed the Sepoy Rebellion to make them fight instead of talking fight.
So the J.L.I.'s grew fat and weary in cantonments. They guarded the big stone gaol in Jungalore, and that is no proper task for fighting men. They heartily despised the only enemy they might possibly be called upon to fight, and the reason for regimental discipline ceased to be so obvious; gradually their officers grew slack in the enforcement of it, and what should have been the very lifeblood of the regiment became a thing to cavil at and avoid by subterfuge.
After the fashion of those days they were harshly treated, and harassed by various annoying regulations, and they had plenty of time in which to resent their lot through the long, hot, lazy afternoons. By degrees they came to regard their officers as unreasonable martinets; that was the beginning of the trouble. Then they began to realise that officers are only human, and that each one had his private and peculiar weakness; they began to despise them; and from that point, stage by stage, they descended to the verge of mutiny.
Their full name and entitlement was the Honourable East India Company's Eighty-Second (Jungalore) Regiment of Light Infantry; but that name was much too long for general use. Like every other official thing in India, they were known by their initials, or part of them, and as the J.L.I.'s the regiment had left its mark, cut deep, on most of the battle-fields of India.
It would have been all right now if the men had had a chance to fight and feel their feet; but, stationed in that fat, green country, they had nothing much else to do but fight each other, and drink themselves into cells, half-sections at a time. And their officers were in no greatly better predicament.
There was no sport of any kind at Jungalore, and the British officer needs sport, and plenty of it, to keep him in condition. These particular officers were good enough men; they were quite devoid of cowardice, and they were bred and brought up in the same way as other officers whose names are famous; but it is not in human nature to continue for year after year guarding a big stone gaol instead of your country's honour, and retain your enthusiasm for a service that is supposed to be based on glory.
There was no glory at Jungalore, and uncommonly little fun; but the mess Madeira was magnificent. So, slowly, and by gradual degrees, the regiment became a mere trained mob, instead of the single-minded, many-handed unit it should have been.
Black Mike was the only man who suffered no deterioration. He saw the change that was taking place, for a good sergeant-major is in touch with officers and men, swinging like a pendulum between them; he should be the first person to know what is wrong with a regiment's morale, and to divine the reason for it.
Black Mike saw clearly enough, but he went through the routine of his business, and said nothing; the regiment still paraded clean and glittering as it ought to do, and the usual number of drills were gone through the usual number of times a day; the men feared him and obeyed him; there was no murmuring while on duty, and there was even less than the usual amount of crime. But a rot had set in in the regiment, and Black Mike knew it.
He went his way daily down to the bazaar on errands of his own, and as time went on there were signs there that he could not fail to recognise. There were always men of the regiment down there, slouching about in twos and threes in and out of native grogshops, spending money freely, but very seldom getting really drunk. He came across them every now and then talking in low tones to natives—a thing that the British soldier is seldom prone to, and there was one native, Chundha Ram by name, who seemed to be for ever fraternising with the soldiers.
Black Mike knew Chundha Ram; he was a high-caste native, whose religion forbade him as a general rule to associate with foreigners, and Black Mike knew the caste rules as well as anyone. But he kept on his course, and still said nothing; his business lay always farther down in the bazaar, where a Hindu girl thrummed on a stringed instrument, and waited for him.
His interludes with her were not in the least what the J.L.I.'s would have suspected, had they wasted any time on speculation. Once his love-affairs did come up for discussion in the canteen, and a recently-joined youngster openly expressed his envy.
"Him?" said Bill Connors, who was reckoned shrewd by the men and a "lawyer" by his officers. "Him? Why, he's the livin' breathin' image o' Hanuman, the God o' Love, that's what he is, with a different woman for every day o' the week, an' Hell waitin' for him! Envy him, do you? I don't envy him! Mark what he'll get by-and-by, an' then see if you envy him!"
That was the first openly-expressed hint that the sergeant-major was included among the victims of their intended vengeance, and the low laugh that followed told more than words could have done that he was less popular even than the officers.
Black Mike must have heard the whisperings; every now and then he came on little groups of men, behind walls and around unexpected corners, talking together earnestly in low tones and arguing; he must have noticed, too, the scowls that followed him everywhere, and he could hardly have helped hearing the mocking laughter that was directed at him whenever his back was turned. But he still said nothing, and he went on his daily walk to the bazaar with his back as straight and his walk as care-free and swaggering and independent as it had always been.
Whatever Connors might have to say about it, the whole regiment would have envied Black Mike if that Hindu girl of his had been less invisible. But though she had succumbed to his allurements, she was still a purdah-woman, hidden behind the inviolable curtains of the East. No white man save Black Mike saw her. She lay and longed for him, and thrummed on her guitar, and sang a native song, the ending of whose every verse was "They will make thee King, my master!" And when he entered, she flung the instrument aside and rose to greet him with a "Hail, Heaven-born!" He changed then, or seemed to change. The mask of iron indifference left him, and the man stepped out from beneath the mould of the sergeant-major.
Love-making in Hindustanee is a little different from the ordinary methods of the soldier-man; it is just as near to nature, but it is more like the flowers of nature, and less like the untilled weeds. Black Mike was past master of it, and he lay on the mat beside her and wooed his Indian sweetheart with honeyed words until her dark eyes glistened, and her teeth, like two rows of chosen pearls, peeped at him through the sweetest smiling lips in Asia. Then she would shake her head at him, and sing the last words of her song again, "They will make thee King, my master!"
"Little fool! Am I not thy King already?"
"Indeed art thou! But others need thee! There is no peace in Ind—nothing but intrigue and corruption and the matching of scheme with scheme. Men need a strong man to rule them, and thou art chosen. Aye, my beloved, thou art chosen!"
"By Chundha Ram?" Black Mike rolled over, face downwards, and bit his sleeve.
"Nay. But by those who sent him. Thou shalt rule the whole of Ind, Heaven-born!"
When he left her and faced the blazing sunlight beyond the curtains, the human element shrank once more inside him, and the sergeant-major strutted out again to stare at the world with level eyes; and as his straight, white-clad figure swaggered down the dusty road—almost before he was out of sight even—the fat, good-natured-looking babu, Chundha Ram, would enter the room that he had left. The girl did not rise to receive him, nor call him Heaven-born; but she expected him, and did not seem to resent his coming.
"Does he take it well?" asked the babu. She nodded.
"Even to-day, but a short hour ago, he chuckled with delight at the thought of so great an honour. He turned away from me and bit his sleeve that I might not hear him. Listen, Chundha Ram! Thou wilt spare his life?"
"I have promised," said the babu.
"Thy promises! What worth have they to me? How shall I know thou wilt not cause him to be slain with all the others?"
"I have promised!" said the babu once again. "But his life only! It is thy reward. The others die, all of them, before nightfall on the appointed day!"
"Thou wilt slay him too!"
"Nay! I have promised."
ONE afternoon Black Mike came on Private Connors loafing in the bazaar, and this time he stopped and spoke to him.
"Come over here" he ordered.
Connors obeyed him sulkily.
"What's this talk about a mutiny, and what's Chundha Ram got to do with it?"
Connors' little slits of eyes opened wide, and he drew back like a scared snake.
"What d'you mean?" he asked.
"Out with it!" said the sergeant-major. "I know you're at the head of it, and I know Chundha Ram's version. I want yours."
There was no avoiding Black Mike's level eyes, that seemed able to read right down into the soul of a man; and Bill Connors, like many other talkers and ringleaders, lacked courage when single-handed.
"It's more than my life's worth to tell you, sergeant-major," he answered after a moment.
"Take your chance of that. If you don't tell me, you'll hang in hollow square in less than a week! I'll see to that. If there's to be a mutiny, I'm in it. If I'm not in it, there'll be no mutiny, or I'm not sergeant-major."
"We thought you'd side with the officers."
"You thought wrong. Now, out with it! Get it off your chest!"
So Connors told him. The scheme was to turn fantee—to go over to the natives. The officers were to be coaxed into the gaol under some pretext or other, and shut in there for the natives to deal with as they saw fit; then the whole regiment would lay down its arms and walk outside the fort.
Chundha Ram had promised them a life of luxury and idleness, and almost limitless sums of money, and had assured them that the same thing was about to happen to nearly every other British regiment in India. They had received liberal supplies of money in advance already, and had made up their minds to mutiny and get the rest; they were only waiting now for Chundha Ram to give the word.
"And where do I come in?" asked Black Mike.
Connors eyed him inquiringly, but the sergeant-major's face betrayed nothing.
"We reckoned you'd side with the officers," he repeated.
"Going to shut me inside the gaol with them?"
"No. That wasn't the idea."
"What then? Shoot?"
Connors nodded, and Black Mike smiled grimly.
"Nice lot of mutineers you'd be without me to lead you! D'you think Chundha Ram would keep his word with you, once you'd laid down your arms? He'd butcher the whole lot of you in cold blood within half an hour. Are the non-coms all with you?"
"Sure, all of 'em!"
"Well, I'm a non-com. I'm going to lead this business. I'll conduct the negotiations with Chundha Ram, and I'll fix it so that we keep our weapons. You tell the men from me that if they don't agree to that the mutiny's off. If I don't lead it, I'll put a stop to it."
"All right, sergeant-major, I'll tell 'em."
"And see here! You tell 'em to carry on as though I knew nothing about it. I'll talk to a few of them now and then, but no demonstrations, mind. Nothing that would excite suspicion. Remember, I'm sergeant-major until the thing comes off, and I'll be treated so."
"All right, sergeant-major."
Then Black Mike, committed to lead a mutiny, swaggered down to the bazaar again to have a talk with Chundha Ram; he talked for two hours, and then returned to barracks.
The men watched Black Mike after that as birds watch a prowling cat. They were afraid of him, and not quite sure of him, and they did not dare to kill him for fear that the fat would be in the fire too soon. They gave him no opportunity whatever to talk to the officers in private, although Black Mike showed not the slightest desire to do it; there was always somebody within earshot of him, and even in the bazaar he was kept in sight until he disappeared behind the purdah of the house where his girl waited for him. None of the men ever knew what he talked to her about, and nobody else cared.
Black Mike was one of the few men, though, who knew in advance of the impending Sepoy Rebellion, and he must have drawn his information from some such source. He had warned his Colonel of it more than a year ago, but almost the most amazing thing about that rebellion was the way that the British officers ignored the warnings of it. They absolutely refused to believe that there was a chance of an Indian rising, and when Black Mike spoke of it his Colonel laughed at him.
There was no language star against the sergeant-major's name on the muster-roll, and the Colonel had taken the senior-grade examination in Hindustanee; it passed his comprehension that a non-commissioned man should know more of the language and the country than he himself did.
And yet Blackmore could make love in the native dialect to three different girls at once, and keep them all guessing. There was more knowledge of India and the Indians in his little finger than in the heads of all his officers put together, and Black Mike knew it. His position, though, forbade any display of resentment or superior knowledge, just as his character precluded the possibility of risking a second snub—one such was enough for him. Besides, had he told his Colonel that a mutiny of the regiment was impending, as well as an uprising of the whole of India, he would probably have been locked up in the guard-room as a lunatic, and the least thing that would have happened to him would have been reduction to the ranks.
He preferred to take his own line and quell the regimental mutiny himself; the Colonel, he knew, would only set a match to the stored-up powder if alarmed, and the regiment would be doomed and damned for ever. He had the honour of the regiment at heart, and it seemed to him that he saw his way clear to preserve it.
Every now and then a delegation of the men, headed by Private William Connors, would waylay him for an interview; their conversation began invariably with threats of what they would do to him at the slightest sign of what they were pleased to call treachery on his part, and it ended with excited queries as to when and exactly how the blow they planned was to be struck.
"Ever see a file o' men lined up with their backs to the twelve-pounders?" he asked them. "Feel like trying it? You move before Chundha Ram gives the word, and the guns'll be over from Jullundra in half a jiffy. There's four batteries there, and it's only fourteen miles away."
The guns! They had not thought about the guns. With the shortsighted cunning of uneducated men they had laid a scheme cleverly enough to trap their officers; but they had looked no farther than their noses, and the mention of the guns brought terror to them.
The Bengal Horse Artillery was the finest branch of the East India Company's service; the men were magnificent, and loyal to the last drop of blood that ran in them. There were four-and-twenty sleek twelve-pounder guns at Jullundra, fourteen miles away, and they were horsed and manned by the very best that England could produce.
"What about the guns, sergeant-major? Chundha Ram said all the other regiments were going to do the same—like us—mutiny. How about 'em?"
"You leave the guns to me. Leave everything to me. Your plan's all right enough about the officers. Stick to that, and leave me to settle the rest. What you've got to bear in mind is that these natives are as treacherous as they make 'em; I've fixed it now so's we keep our arms and some ammunition, and we'll be able to look after ourselves after it's all over; but unless we stick together they'll turn on us like a shot as soon as they're in possession of the gaol.
"We can loot all we want to so long as we're still a regiment and don't seem afraid of them, but if we start looting afterwards, one by one, there'll be mighty few of us left to loot within twenty-four hours—you take my word for it!"
"What about Chundha Ram?" they asked him. "Is he square?"
"Square as the average run of natives. Don't let him think that you're afraid of him—that's all. If he thinks that you're afraid, he'll break his word and butcher the lot of you, or try to. Keep the upper hand with him. Better still, leave him to me; I know how to deal with him."
They began to have more confidence in Black Mike after that; he seemed to be sincerely one of them; and along with their growing confidence in him they began to be surer of themselves; they had a strong man to lead them, and the regiment began to cohere again. It was mutinous, but it began again to be a unit, capable of acting uniformly, precisely, and on the instant. There was less grumbling, and the men looked less sulky; they began even to behave better, and one morning after six o'clock parade the Colonel addressed them and actually complimented them on their good behaviour.
If he could have heard the ribald laughter in the barrack-rooms afterwards he might have been enlightened, but it was not considered good policy in those days to know the men too intimately; instead of getting into better touch with them, he wrote a long report to the authorities in which he boasted, among other things, of his men's good conduct.
It was not only the J.L.I.'s who were anxious about those guns at Jullundra; the natives were worried about them, too, and Chundha Ram spoke to Black Mike about them.
"About the artillery, sahib? Would your men fight if the gunners got news of their mutiny and tried to interfere?"
"That all depends," said Blackmore. "If they got here before it happened, the men would be partly afraid and partly ashamed, and they'd call the thing off. If they came too late, the men would either fight or else scatter; they'd probably scatter—one regiment couldn't make much of a show against four batteries."
The babu nodded. He would like the regiment to scatter. It would be easier to deal with afterwards.
"The guns must not arrive—too soon!" he said deliberately.
"You can't prevent them coming unless you contrive to keep the news from them."
"They will get news, sahib—when all is over. That will be arranged. Then they will come galloping—there will be an ambuscade—and—" The babu shrugged his fat shoulders.
"Who'll arrange the ambuscade?"
"I will, sahib."
"Better let me hunt out the right place for you. I know more about that kind of thing than you do."
"Pardon me, sahib. Were you to wander out alone in the direction of Jullundra, knowing what you know, you would not return alive. That, too, would be attended to."
Black Mike grinned pleasantly.
"Come with me," he answered.
Chundha Ram eyed him in silence for half a minute; then he nodded. It suited his sense of humour perfectly that a British soldier's knowledge of warfare should be used for the undoing of his own countrymen.
"If you have time, sahib, we will go now," he answered.
The two men got into a native bullock-cart and drove out leisurely in the direction of Jullundra, while Chundha Ram chewed betel-nut reflectively, and Black Mike searched the surrounding country with eyes that took in every crease and fold in it, and burned them in his memory. Two-thirds of the distance to Jullundra he pointed out to Chundha Ram a place that was admirably suited as a trap for galloping artillery; they could be almost surrounded and shot down at close range from under cover.
"How many men can you spare for the ambuscade?" asked Black-more.
"More thousands than you or I can count, sahib. All India is behind this uprising."
"You don't want too many. The chief element of an ambuscade is surprise. Your men must not be seen. If the ground scouts catch sight of them they'll lead the batteries round by another route, and your trouble'll all go for nothing; besides that, you'll have the guns to deal with at the other end. Send just as many as can be concealed in the cover here—say, a thousand, certainly not more—and clear everybody else away from the countryside.
"Concentrate your forces on the gaol. If the gunners see any bodies of armed men anywhere about, they'll be on their guard, and you'll never trap them. Clear the whole countryside, set your ambuscade right here, and make all the others close in on Jungalore—understand? Then, if any of the guns do get through, you'll have plenty of men near the gaol to deal with them."
"I understand, sahib; it shall be done as you say. And we will not be ungrateful to you; you will be better situated than a King when the English are no longer over-lords of India."
And Black Mike rolled over on his side in the bullock-cart, and once more bit his sleeve as he had done when the girl had prophesied.
"Now look here, Chundha Ram," he said, as the bullock-cart bumped and squeaked along the road to Jungalore again; "you've got to do this thing properly, and make no mistakes about it; otherwise there'll be a holy mess. Are you going to take my advice or aren't you?"
"You see that I take it, sahib. Otherwise, why should I ride with you in a bullock-cart?"
"True for you. Now listen. The men of the J.L.I.'s won't surrender without a parley. They've got to save their faces, you understand. You, being a black man, don't know about it, but there's such a thing as the honour of a regiment; take my word for it—it's so."
"Is it different from other sorts of honour?" asked the babu blandly.
"In some ways, no; in others, yes. Now, for instance, supposing you were to be surrounded by a gang of thugs while you were in this bullock-cart, and they ordered you to surrender—you'd surrender, wouldn't you?"
"Surely, sahib. I would be but one against many, and I would be afraid."
"That's the idea exactly. It's the same with a regiment; they're not going to surrender without some apparent reason why they should. I mean they won't just walk out and ask to be taken prisoners. You'll have to show up with a sufficient force, and then you'll have to talk to them and call on them to surrender. They can save their faces that way; it wouldn't be dishonouring the regiment—at least not to the same extent—to surrender to a vastly superior force. Understand?"
"I understand, sahib; and words are cheap. What shall I tell them?"
"Be more polite about it than the thugs I spoke of would be to you, but use the same sort of argument. Make it clear that they are surrendering because there is no alternative."
"I understand, sahib."
"And talk in Hindustanee, Chundha Ram. Sometimes when you're talking English you make mistakes, and there won't be room for anything of that sort. I'll be standing at the head of the regiment, and I'll translate what you have to say. I know just how to handle 'em, and you don't; you haven't lived among them for years and years as I have, Chundha Ram."
"I thank God I have not, sahib!" said the babu, smiling; "but everything shall be done as you say, and the white regiment shall save its honour. It is a small matter, and words are cheap."
The sergeant-major ground his teeth. The honour of the J.L.I.'s was not at all a small matter to him; he meant to save it, even if it cost his own life, and that of every single officer and man in the regiment, to do it.
"Is everything arranged finally for Sunday?" he asked.
"Sunday morning," said the babu, nodding, "at the usual time for church parade."
THE regiment behaved itself, and waited in grimly concealed impatience until Sunday came. Not a man was in cells on any charge, but the big stone gaol was full of civil prisoners, and the Colonel made his usual round of inspection just before church time, followed by all his officers. The rear of the procession was brought up by a sergeant, and the sergeant-major stayed with the regiment, mustering them company by company for parade.
The sergeant chanced to be one of the men's keenest ringleaders, and he had learned his part perfectly; as the junior subaltern followed the rest through the huge arched gateway into the gloom beyond, the sergeant stepped back quickly and slammed the immense teak doors behind him. As the clang of its shutting and the rattle of the big iron bolt told that the officers were prisoners within the gaol, a bugle-call rang out across the barrack square, and the regiment fell in in a hurry, breaking all precedent on church parade by bringing their rifles and ammunition-pouches with them.
Eyes glanced uneasily from left to right up and down the lines, looking for signs of flinching, but no one spoke. Men say little under the stress of that sort of excitement. They felt uneasy, for the lines seemed lonely and unusual without their officers.
"'Tshun!" barked the sergeant-major, and they came to attention, eyes straight in front of them, from force of habit. He gave them no time to think, for he read their condition exactly, and he saw fit to lead them to the climax as they were.
"Form fours!" he ordered.
Then he marched them round to the maidan, to the spot just outside the city wall where it had been agreed the surrender should take place. They were lined up outside the city almost before the imprisoned officers had had time to wonder what was happening, and why no one came to let them out.
The sergeant-major stood and faced them—the one lone man among nine hundred who was unafraid. The men were afraid of what they were doing, for it is not exactly every Sunday that a British regiment mutinies.
"Listen!" he ordered. "The success of this depends on your not letting these natives think that you're afraid of them. Remember that!"
A murmur answered him—a low growl, half wonder, half disgust. They were not afraid of natives.
"Leave the talking to me. I'll listen to what the Indian says, and then translate."
Then he turned his broad, well-hollowed back to them and waited for the babu, standing right out alone in front of the regiment like a white statue of drilled inscrutability; and behind him the regiment rustled and shifted feet with a noise such as trees make when a light breeze blows through them. Blackmore heard it and understood; the game was half won already—but only half won.
The ranks stiffened, and the sergeant-major stared steadily in front of him as Chundha Ram advanced across the maidan. He was followed by a big, silent mob of men—silent in expectation of coming loot and slaughter; they were clothed in every colour of the rainbow, and armed with every imaginable weapon, from matchlock to service rifles, and from axes to spears made out of household implements.
It was a big, unwieldy mob, formidable only for its numbers. Chundha Ram halted it within two hundred paces of the regiment; then he stepped up to address the sergeant-major.
"Are you ready to surrender?" he asked, with just the least suspicion of insolence in his voice, but speaking in Hindustanee, as agreed.
Blackmore played his part promptly.
"And why should we surrender?" he asked. "And to whom?"
"You will see," said the babu oilily, and waving his hand in a magnificent gesture towards the mob behind him—"you will see that we have you at a great disadvantage—an overwhelming disadvantage. You are few, and we are many. Surely you would be afraid to fight. Your officers, too, seem frightened; they are hiding in the gaol."
Black Mike turned to the men behind him.
"This man says," he roared, pitching his rasping voice till it echoed against the city wall, and every single man heard every word he said, "that you've got to surrender to him or else he'll hand you over to his mob. He says that your officers are hiding in the gaol, and that you're too big cowards to fight that mob without them. He thinks that you're afraid of him."
The growl that followed that announcement disturbed Chundha Ram considerably. Black Mike eyed him with something not unlike amusement, and the babu flushed darkly underneath his olive skin.
"Well?" asked Chundha Ram.
"They don't seem quite to understand you. Try some more talk."
The babu tried it. He spoke now in English, ignoring the sergeant-major, and addressing the men directly; and with each sentence that he uttered he damned his cause more completely. Soon the men were too amazed even to listen.
"As promised, we will show you mercy!" said the babu, trying vainly to compromise between politeness to the soldiers and bombast for the sake of the mob behind him. The regiment rustled—too amazed to speak. He drew nearer, mistaking the shifting feet for a sign of indecision.
"You were only hirelings in the first instance. The Company has paid you little and has given you ill-treatment; now why should you befriend the Company when I offer you more money and kind treatment? Why should you be killed? Why should I order my men here to make an end of you? You should surrender to our much more powerful force, and accept our clemency." He paused to regain his breath, and to let the effect of his grandiloquent speech sink in.
"To Hell with him!" shouted someone, and the murmuring ranks began to roar wholesomely.
"What's your answer?" demanded the sergeant-major's rasping voice.
"Tell him to go to!"
This from a hundred men; and there came the click and snap of loading rifles. Black Mike leaped suddenly aside and slipped to his proper place behind the regiment.
"At two hundred yards!" came his accustomed voice, the voice they had heard and obeyed so often. "Ready!—present!—fire!"
Chundha Ram never realised what hit him. He curled up and died where he had stood, and seven or eight hundred bullets sped past him to find their billets in the howling mob he had led. The regiment was saved now and the game was won, if Black Mike knew anything at all of men.
"Form fours!" he bellowed, and they hinged into the fresh formation like a clockwork mechanism.
They were in fours, and ready to move in any direction before the mob of Hindus had recovered from the shock of their terrific volley, or even knew there would be no surrender.
"Right!" roared Black Mike at the top of his lungs. "By the left—double! Left wheel!"
He led them at the run back along the city wall and through the gate they had emerged from, and before even the men themselves had had time to realise that they had sloughed their role of mutineers, they were formed up, panting, before the gaol gate, and facing the direction from which the enemy would come. Then Black Mike swung the gaol door open, and let light in on the astonished officers. The Colonel emerged into the sunlight first.
"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded.
"All present and correct, sir," answered Black Mike, licking up his right hand to the salute. "Take charge, sir, quick! They'll be here in a second!"
The Colonel looked around him and took charge. A glutton he might be, and a bad officer in peace time, but he was a man of action and prompt decision when it came to fighting. There was surely no time to waste on argument, and his commands began to ring out loud and clear almost before the words were out of the sergeant-major's mouth. And the men obeyed them on the instant; they had had enough of mutiny.
Picked men, stationed by Chundha Ram on every roof-top, began an intermittent fire on the front of the gaol; these were the men who were to have shot down the soldiers one by one after their surrender, and the J.L.I.'s had a chance to see what fate had really awaited them. Nine or ten men were down already.
The Colonel marched them inside the gaol, and stationed them as best he could to defend the place—some on the roof, some at the embrasures, and the remainder down below as a reserve to act when needed.
THEN the amazing happened. It was one of those terrific things that happen once in a thousand years when the right man springs on the right horse, and rams his heels in at the right ten-thousandth of a second. The right horse was the Colonel's charger—a chestnut Kathiawari gelding that had stood tied up outside the gaol gate, and the man was Black Mike, the sergeant-major.
He leaped on the horse, rammed in his heels, and rode—straight for the rebel ranks. The defenders of the gaol gasped as they watched him, for there were twenty thousand armed natives swarming towards the big square through every street and alley. They were scattered yet, but they saw him, and rushed in with a yell to meet him. Swords clove the air an inch behind him, bullets screamed past him, eddying whirls of black humanity scrambled to block his way. They grabbed at his rein, and he beat them off with a stirrup, brandishing the leather in his hand. They shot his helmet off, and riddled the flapping cloth of his open tunic with bullet holes, and men threw themselves prone, trying to hamstring the horse under him; but Black Mike rode straight as a die, at, through or over everything.
The maddened charger reared and plunged and leaped, and Black Mike flogged it with the leather strap; the natives howled and blocked the road in front of him, but as a shuttle shoots through a loom, he burst through a gathering mob of twenty thousand men—a flogging, flashing, unexpected bolt of grim determination—and getting clean through untouched, to the plain beyond, headed for Jullundra.
"The man's mad," said the Colonel; "stark, staring, raving mad!"
"He's gone for the guns," said someone, and the Colonel nodded.
"Now, men," he shouted, "the guns should be here within two hours; we've got to hold this place till they get here."
The guns! The men roared now at the thought of them. A week ago they were worried about the guns, but things had somehow altered.
You must go to India where the thing happened, and hear it from the lips of Indians whose fathers saw Black Mike ride, to get a real idea of how he saved the gaol and the lives of the men who held it. They will tell you that he rode straight through the ambuscade that Chundha Ram had set two-thirds of the way to Jullundra; he knew where it should be, for he had placed it, and he rode through it to be sure that it was there, and that his trip with Chundha Ram had not been a trick to throw him off his guard.
A hell of bullets greeted him, and a hundred men sprang out to seize his horse, but he rode straight through them—silent and untouched. They say there that a legion of devils rode with him, and that the Kathiawari gelding that he rode breathed fire from his nostrils and sent green fire flashing from his heels. That, of course, is nonsense, and the truth is that Black Mike was a man, and the gods of war favour such as he.
He burst like a bomb into Jullundra, and shouted the alarm; and he very nearly got locked up in the guard-room as a lunatic, for nobody believed him. But he convinced them somehow that at least there was need for action—the bullet-holes through his riddled tunic were proof enough of that. So the four batteries thundered out on to the maidan, with their ground scouts spread out like a fan in front of them, and the gun teams plunging in answer to the lash. And in front of the ground scouts, on a fresh horse, rode Black Mike, the sergeant-major of the J.L.I.'s. He showed them where the ambuscade was hidden, and led them round it.
Grapeshot was too much for the mutineers. They melted before the guns like snow under a hot sun, and the gaol was saved.
Next day came news of the general outbreak that had burst out like a flame through disaffected India, and the guns and the J.L.I.'s set out to reach Delhi by forced marches, for every man was needed to strike a blow at the heart of the rebellion. As they filed behind the guns through the bazaar, two paces behind the regiment, in among the dust and flies and heat-haze, marched a straight-backed man who, loaded up with sixty pounds of haversack, preached the art of marching in raucous undertones:
"Keep your places in the fours here! Less talking, and keep some o' the dust out o' your throats! Save your breath for marching! Now then—Left!—Left!—Left!"
As he passed a corner house in the bazaar there came the tinkling of a stringed instrument, and a girl's voice sang in Hindustanee: "They will make thee King, my master!" He laughed aloud this time; there was no need to bite his sleeve. He needed no job as King; he was Black Mike, the sergeant-major of the J.L.I's, who had saved the honour of the regiment, and then the regiment itself, to fight for England. Three weeks hence he would salute his Colonel and report, "All present and correct," in front of Delhi, having nursed the men all the way by forty-mile-a-day stages. Why make him King? The British army has built its reputation on the bones and brains of such as he.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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