Part 41 (2/2)

”They killed his girl at Meerut,” said his company officer in a whisper, and Herbert Erlton, standing by, set his teeth and glanced back, blue eye meeting blue eye with a sort of triumph.

For it was the 7th of June, and the blow was to be struck, the challenge given at last.

Nearly a month, thought Herbert Erlton, since it had happened. He had spent much of the time in bed, struck down with fever; for he had regained Meerut with difficulty, wounded and exhausted. And then it had been too late--too late for anything save to hang round hungrily in the hopes of that challenge to come, with many another such as he.

But it had come at last. The camp was ringing with cheers for the final reinforcement, every soul who could stand was coming out of hospital, and the air, new washed with rain, and cool, seemed to put fresh life, and with it a desire to kill, into the veins of every son of the cold North.

And now the dusk was at hand. The men, half-mad with impatience, laughed and joked over each trivial preparation. Yet, when the order came with midnight, weapons were never gripped more firmly, more sternly, than by those three thousand Englishmen marching to their long-deferred chance of revenge. And some, not able to march, toiled behind in hopes of one fair blow; and not a few, unable even for so much, slipped desperately from hospital beds to see at least one murderer meet with his reward.

For, to the three thousand marching upon Delhi that cool dewy night, sent--so they told themselves--for special solace and succor of the Right, there were but two things to be reckoned with in the wide world: Themselves--Men. Those others--Murderers.

The fireflies, myriad-born from the rain, glimmered giddily in the low marshy land, the steady stars shone overhead, and Major Erlton looked at both indifferently as he rode, long-limbed and heavy, through the night whose soft silence was broken only by the jingle of spurs and the squelching of light gun-wheels in water-logged ruts; save when--from a distance--the familiar tramp, tramp, of disciplined feet along a road came wafted on the cool wind; for the column in which he was doing duty moved along the ca.n.a.l bank so as to take the enemy, who held an intrenched position five miles from Alipore, in flank. But Herbert Erlton was not thinking of stars or fireflies; was not thinking of anything. He was watching for other lights, the twinkling cresset lights which would tell where the Murderers waited for that first blow. He did not even think of the cause of his desire; he was absorbed in the revenge itself, and a bitter curse rose to his lips, when just before dawn the roll of a gun and the startled flocks of birds flying westward told him that others were before him.

”Hurry up, men! For G.o.d's sake hurry up!” The entreaty pa.s.sed along the line where the troopers of the 9th Lancers were setting shoulders to the gun-wheels, and everyone, men and officers alike, was listening with fierce regret to the continuous roll of cannon, the casual rattle of musketry, telling that the heavy guns were bearing the brunt of it so far.

”Hurry up, men! Hurry up. That's the bridge ahead! Then we can go for them!”

Hark! A silence; if silence it could be called, now that the shouts, and yells, and confused murmur of battle could be heard. But the guns were silent; and hark again. A ringing cheer! Bayonet work that, at last, at last! And yonder, behind the fireflies in the bushes? Surely men in flight! Hurrah! Hurrah!

When Major Erlton returned from that wild charge it was to find that one splendid rush from the 75th Regiment had cleared the road to Delhi. The Murderers had been swept from their shelter, their guns--some fighting desperately, others standing stupidly to meet death, and many with clasped hands and vain protestations of loyalty on their lips paying the debt of their race. But one man had paid some other debt, Heaven knows what; and the Rifle Brigade cleared the road to Delhi of an English deserter fighting against his old regiment.

It had not taken an hour; and now, as the yellow sun peered over the eastern horizon, a little knot of staff officers consulted what to do next.

What to do? Herbert Erlton and many another wondered stupidly what the deuce fellows could mean by asking the question when the jagged line of the Ridge lay not three miles off, and Delhi lay behind that? Could any sane person think that England had done its duty at sunrise, even though forty good men and true of the three thousand had dealt their first and last blow?

But if some did, there were not many; so, after a pause, the march began again. Westward, by a forking road, to the flat head of the Lizard lying above the Subz-mundi, eastward toward the tail and the old cantonment. And this time the bayonets went with the jingling spurs, and together they cleared the green groves merrily. Still, even so, it was barely nine o'clock when they met the eastward column again at Hindoo Rao's house and shook hands over their bloodless victory.

For the eastward force had lost one man, the westward seven, despite the fact that the retreating Murderers had attempted a rally in their old lines.

Nine o'clock! In seven hours the ten miles had been marched, the battle of Budli-ke-serai won, and below them lay Delhi. Within twelve hundred yards rose the Moree Bastion, the extreme western point of that city face which, with the Cashmere gate jutting about its middle and the Water Bastion guarding its eastern end, must be the natural target of their valor--a target three-quarters of a mile long by twenty-four feet high.

Seven hours! And the Murderers had been driven into the city, while the men had gained ”twenty-six guns and the finest possible base for the conduct of future operations.” For the Ridge, the old cantonments were once more echoing to the master's step, and the city folk, as they looked eagerly from the walls, had the first notice of defeat in the smoke and flames of the sepoy lines which the English soldiers fired in reckless revenge; reckless because the tents were not up, and they might at least have been a shelter from the sun.

But the Delhi force, taken as a whole, was in no mood to think; and so perhaps those at the head of it felt bound to think the more. There was Delhi, undoubtedly, but the rose-red walls with their violet shadows looked formidable. And who could tell how many Murderers it harbored? A thousand of them or thereabouts would return to Delhi no more; but, even so, if all the regiments known to have mutinied and come to Delhi were at their full strength, the odds must still be close on four to one. And then there was the rabble, armed no doubt from the larger magazine below the Flagstaff Tower, which, alas, had found no Willoughby for its destruction on the 11th of May. And then there was the May sun. And then--and then----

”What's up? When are we going on?” asked Major Erlton, sitting fair and square on his horse, in the shadow of the big trees by Hindoo Rao's house, as an orderly officer rode past him.

”Aren't going on to-day. Chief thinks it safer not--these native cities----”

He was gone, and Herbert Erlton without a word threw himself heavily from his horse with a clatter and jingle of swords and scabbards and Heaven knows what of all the panoply of war; so with the bridle over his arm stood looking out over the b.l.o.o.d.y city which lay quiet as the grave. Only, every now and again, a white puff of smoke followed by a dull roar came from a bastion like a salute of welcome to the living, or a parting honor to the dead.

Was it possible? His eyes followed the familiar outline mechanically till they rested half-unconsciously on some ruins beside the city wall. Then with a rush memory came back to him, and as he turned hurriedly to loosen his horse's girths, the tears seemed to scald his tired angry eyes. Yet it was not the memory of Alice Gissing only, which sent these unwonted visitors to Herbert Erlton's eyes; it was a wild desperate pity and despair for all women.

And as he stood there ignoring his own emotion, or at least hiding it, one of the women whom he pitied was looking up with a certain resentful eagerness at a man, who, from the corner turret of that roof in the Mufti's quarter, was straining his eyes Ridgeways.

”They must rest, surely,” she said sharply; ”you cannot expect them to be made of iron----”; as you are, she was about to add, but withheld even that suspicion of praise.

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