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, or 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 on to 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 pandies, 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 the 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!*(*Take care!) 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 under-stood, and grabbed his wrist.
' 'E's right, sir! Them swine'll just sarf karot 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 wimmen 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 on to 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 the 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 — Azeemoolah 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 Azeemoolah 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 dispatched 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 Azeemoolah 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 the steamy heat as the sun came up; the worst of it was getting the women and children and wounded properly stowed inboard — I remember thinking it was ironic that my experience of packing howling niggers into the slave-ship Balliol College some years before should come in so handy now. But there you are — any special knowledge comes in useful, sooner or later.
By God, though, the niggers had been easier to handle. I reckon I must have carried twenty 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 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 fifty of our folk, Vibart's rearguard mostly, left on the wreck-strewn, mud-churned slope; Wheeler and Moore and Vibart were all together, and as I came 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 foresworn swine up yonder —' and he shook his fist towards the temple on the knoll, where Azeemoolah was sitting with Tantia Tope 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 down 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 and Ewart protested when the pandies dragged off tour 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 Pathan orderly of yours —
