picket parted before him. Johnson and the jemadar raced likewise between the still-open gates, pushing the two wings of the picket closer to the walls. But the sowars behind had lowered their lances and took the sepoys effortlessly by the point as they galloped through. Those behind found quarry too, and tossed them here and there like bags of flour, fearful screams echoing in the gate arch and the inner walls. Hervey could see others on the walls, running — but away from the gates, not towards. Locke dashed through with the galloper gun, springing from the saddle to help the dafadar and his loader bring it into action. In less than half a minute he had the grape loaded and tamped, but to his dismay there was no rush of mutineers against which to discharge it. ‘Come on,’ he shouted to the NCO, ‘wheel it over there!’ pointing to the nearest barrack-house, a long, low wooden structure with a thatch roof. They strained every muscle to pull it the thirty yards to the corner of the building, swinging the trail round to aim obliquely along its front, point-blank. Locke seized the portfire from a sowar and put it to the touch-hole. The gun went off with a terrific roar, made all the greater by echoing from the walls. The devastation astonished them: the whole of the front — doors, slatted windows, joists, everything — was stove in, and bits of burning wadding set light to the thatch. Sepoys began tumbling out, yelling, screaming, to be caught in another enfilade by Locke’s gun, reloaded with impressive address. Sowars cantered about the maidan, taking sepoy after hapless sepoy on the point of the lance. Scarcely a shot was fired in return, and none with any aim or success. But Hervey knew well enough this was but the crust with which they were engaged: there were hundreds — perhaps twenty hundred — mutineers in the lines beyond, and these must soon rally. He ran across to Locke. ‘There’s the armoury and the magazine,’ he shouted, pointing to where the jemadar had told him.
They were more solid affairs than the barrackblocks, brick-built, with tiled roofs. Nevertheless, the galloper gun’s roundshot managed to dislodge many of the tiles, though it could make no impression on the doors. ‘Jemadar sahib,’ called Hervey, ‘we must get through the roof.’
The notion of climbing to the roof now seemed no more impetuous to the jemadar than anything else he had found the courage to do that night, and he answered Hervey’s imperative with equal eagerness.
The troop dafadar had rallied the rest of the sowars by the gun, keeping half mounted and half ready with their carbines. Hervey thought it unwise yet to take the assault deeper into the cantonment, for he could have little control once they were in more confined quarters. In any event, burning thatch had blown aloft from the barrack- house and set other roofs alight. He was well satisfied with the confusion as he and the jemadar now climbed through the smashed tiling into the eaves of the armoury. Private Johnson had detached himself from the fray, as so often in the past. His speciality was progging — with nothing express in mind, but with the happy knack of recognizing the potential in any removable device, solid or liquid. A building near the magazine, equally strongly built, looked promising. It had double doors, like a barn. Indeed, it looked as if it were just that. The doors were secured only by a padlock, and padlocks had never proved more than a fleeting hindrance to his work. A hoof-pick became a lock-pick, and in no time the doors were swinging open to reveal the spoils.
The stench sent him reeling, and before he was recovered a press of sepoys loomed. He drew his sabre — a magnificent gesture of defiance in the face of scores of mutineers. But it checked their egress nonetheless, and for what seemed an age Johnson stood with his sword arm extended, holding at bay what he now supposed to be a whole company. At length, one of them stepped forward and bowed, making namaste. Johnson sensed a trick. Then another did the same, and another, and then more shuffled out, all silently making namaste. Private Johnson saw he had a company of sepoys his prisoner, but what he might do with them was not so obvious. Would they return to their quarters with as much docility as they had emerged? He took a step forward and gestured with his sabre for them to go back inside, but the leader bowed once more, held out his hands and spoke with sufficient entreaty in his voice for Johnson to know that something was not as he supposed. Why, after all, had there been a padlock on the outside? Was this the guardhouse? Were they defaulters? Surely not so many? He cursed them roundly for having no English.
The same instinct for the potential in any booty now told him that these sepoys might be of use to his officer, for they appeared to have no weapons and seemed willing to obey his gestured commands — except, that is, to return to their stinking confines. ‘Coom on, then,’ he bellowed in his most stentorian Sheffield. They did. They formed fours and marched in step behind him out onto the maidan and towards where Locke and the gun stood steady as a Waterloo square. ‘Mr Locke, sir, I think these men want to be us friends,’ he called.
The dafadar shot to attention and brought his tulwar to the carry. ‘Subedar sahib!’ he snapped.
The sepoy who had been first to make namaste returned the salute with his hand. He said something unintelligible to either Locke or Johnson, but the dafadar relaxed and sloped his sword.
Locke was quick enough to surmise these were no ordinary mutineers, but he swung the gun round at them nevertheless. The column gasped, and the sepoys began to waver, but their leader calmly made namaste again. ‘We are your prisoners, sahib; we are innocent of any offence,’ he protested in Urdu.
‘Go and get Captain Hervey from that building yonder,’ said Locke, indicating the roofless armoury.
Johnson doubled across the maidan just as the armoury doors flew open to reveal Hervey and the jemadar about to torch a mound of kindling. ‘Sir,’ he shouted, quick to the mark, ‘there’s some ’Indoos as can use them muskets on our side!’ pointing out the piled arms.
Hervey looked unconvinced, or at least puzzled.
‘Sir,’ insisted Johnson, ‘’ave found some prisoners! I don’t know what they’re saying but they seems to want to fight for us.’
The jemadar pushed past him, looked towards the gun and began nodding his head vigorously. It was so, he assured him. ‘They are Rajpoots, sahib! The rajah has one company from Mewar. Rajpoots would not have mutinied like the others!’
There was no time for Hervey to make sense of this difference of loyalties, only to exploit it. Neither was there time for any lengthy interrogation: he must either trust and arm them or fire the armoury at once — and, in any case, he could have no exact idea how many weapons were already in the hands of the mutineers.
‘Very well, Jemadar sahib, call them; let’s arm them and stand our ground in the maidan!’ He spoke, without thinking, in English, but the jemadar knew his thoughts by now, confident at last they could prevail.
The Rajpoots numbered a little short of sixty. At first they had looked a rabble, easily held at bay by Johnson’s sabre. But as soon as they had muskets in their hands they were transformed. They were tall, proud sepoys again, even without uniform (for none was clothed above the waist). Their subedar barked a series of commands, and from this unpromising mass of half-bare disorder three ranks of soldierly-looking musketeers formed before Hervey’s eyes. A company of Jessope’s own Coldstreamers could hardly have had a profounder effect at that moment. He nodded approvingly to the subedar and indicated the direction from which at any minute he expected the mutineers to come like a great wave. The subedar barked more orders —
Hervey himself stood, dismounted, with carbine and sabre, at last with a moment to contemplate their position. He soon wished he had not, for the odds against them were, perhaps, a little short of thirty to one.
They did not have long to wait. They heard the wave before they saw it: howling, shrieking, wailing — chilling the blood quicker than the drumfire at Waterloo. And when the wave came, it was more fearsome than anything he had seen. Hundreds upon hundreds of sepoys, like the wildest beasts of the jungle. Not in any order, like a regular wave, but as a great foaming breaker about to pound upon a beach. The old feeling clasped at his vitals — the mix of paralysing fear and energizing thrill that came when life or reputation faced extinction. He had never faced an assault dismounted before, never had to wait at the halt rather than drive forward to meet it. His throat dried like parchment, and he swallowed rapidly to slake it sufficiently to give the order. Locke discharged the galloper gun as the wave rolled over the maidan. He had double-shotted it, and the two four-pound iron balls scythed through the mass of sepoys with brutal destruction. The great human wave had no knowledge of the gun, though. They heard its report, even in their lust to be about the little force by the gates, and they could hear the screaming and see the limbless and disembowelled. But none seemed to see the cause. Was it a part of their madness? Did any in that primitive swarm have any consciousness? The flames from the buildings dazzled them rather than lit their way, yet they slowed not a bit. Then came a flash like lightning in the face of the wave, and another loud report which for the moment overcame the animal clamour. And more men were writhing in agony. Then the same again as the Rajpoots’ middle rank discharged its volley, and then the same once more from the rear rank. There were dead and dying mutineers where, only seconds before, their leaders would have promised them the blood of the intruders.
