cannoned into us, and then as I pulled myself by main force across the crupper I felt a sudden shock, and Ilderim pitched over me and out of the saddle.
Even as I righted myself on the horse's back the whole scene was suddenly bathed in glaring light — some swine had fired a flare, and its flickering illumination shone on a scene that looked like a mad artist's hell. Men and horses seemed to be staggering and going down all round me under the hail of fire, throwing grotesque shadows as they fought and struggled. I saw Rowbotham pinned under a fallen horse only a few yards away; Cheeseman, his face a bloody mask, was stretched supine beside him, his limbs asprawl; Ilderim, with his left arm dangling, was half-up on one knee, clutching at my stirrup. A bare hundred yards ahead the entrenchment was in plain view, with the defenders' heads visible, and some ass standing atop of it waving his hat; behind us, the red explosions of the cannon suddenly died, and to my horror I saw, pounding out under the umbrella of light cast by the flare, a straggling line of riders — sepoy cavalry with their sabres out, bearing down at the charge, and not more than a furlong away. Ilderim seized my stirrup and bawled:
'On, on! Ride, brother!'
I didn't hesitate. He'd turned back to rescue me, and his noble sacrifice wasn't going to be in vain if I could help it. That was certain death bearing down on us; I jammed in my heels, the horse leaped forward, and Ilderim was almost jerked off his feet. For perhaps five paces he kept up, with the yells and hoof-beats growing behind us, and then he stumbled and went down. I did my damnedest to shake him free, but in that instant the bloody bridle snapped, and I hurled out of the saddle and hit the ground with a smash that jarred every bone in my body. A shocking pain shot through my left ankle — Christ, it was caught in the stirrup, and the horse was tearing ahead, dragging me behind at the end of a tangle of leatherwork which somehow was still attached to its body.
If any of you young fellows ever find yourself in this predicament, where you're 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 Gilzai friend to chase after you and slash the stirrup-leather free in the nick of time before your spine falls apart. I was half-conscious and virtually buttockless when Ilderim — God knows, wounded as he was, where he'd got the speed and strength — hauled me up below the entrenchment and pitched me almost bodily over the breastwork. I went over in a shocking tangle, roaring: 'Britannia! Britannia, for Christ's sake! I'm a friend!' and then a chap was catching me and lowering my battered carcase to earth and inquiring:
'Will you have nuts or a cigar, sir?'
Then a musket was being pushed into my hand, and in shocked confusion I found myself at the rampart, banging away at red-coated figures who came out of the smoke and dust, and I know Ilderim was alongside me, relieving me of my revolver and loosing off shots into the brown. All round there was the crash of volleys, and a great bass voice was yelling. 'Odds, fire! Reload! Evens, fire! Reload!' The pain from my ankle was surging up my leg, into my body, making me sick and dizzy, I was coughing with the reek of powder smoke, there was a bugle sounding, and a confused roar of cheering — and the next thing I remember I was lying in the half-light of dawn, with my back against a sand-bagged wall, staring at a big, shot-torn barrack building, while a tall, bald-headed cove with a pipe was getting my boot off, and applying a damp cloth to my swollen ankle.
There were a couple of chaps with muskets looking on, and Ilderim was having his arm bandaged by a fellow in a kepi and spectacles. There were others, moving about, carrying people towards the barrack, and along the parapet there were haggard-looking fellows, white and sepoy, with their pieces at the ready. A horrid smell seemed to hang over the place, and everything was filthy, with gear and litter all over the dusty ground, and the people seemed to be moving slowly. I was still feeling pretty dazed, but I guessed it must all be a dream anyway, for the chap third along the parapet to my left, with a handkerchief knotted round his head, was undoubtedly young Harry East. There couldn't be two snub noses like that in the world, and since the last time I'd seen him I'd been pinned under a sledge in the snows of southern Russia, and he had been lighting out for safety, it didn't seem reasonable that he should have turned up here.
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 earth and rubble parapet five feet high, enclosing two big single-storey barracks, one of them a burned-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 north-west 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 nine hundred people inside it when the siege began, nearly half of them women and children; of the rest four hundred were British soldiers and civilians, and a hundred loyal natives. They had one well, and three cannon; they were living on two handfuls of mealies a day, fighting off a besieging force of more than three thousand mutineers who smashed at them constantly with fifteen cannon, subjected them to incessant musket-fire, and tried to storm the entrenchment. The defenders lost over two hundred 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 three hundred 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 the dooce 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-shot hit the building, shaking the plaster; Wheeler just brushed the debris absently 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 sec 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 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 of 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 the 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 dam' thing they aim at. It's the random shots that
