Far Pavilions (177 page)

‘With luck, about fifteen minutes,’ observed Wally.

‘Fif—? But good lord, can't you post a few of your sepoys there to hold it?’

‘With around five hundred rifles and muskets able to draw a bead on them from three different directions, and not a shred of cover? Not a chance, I'm afraid.’

‘Then for God's sake what are we going to do? We can't afford to let them get dug in there.’

‘As soon as they try it we make another sortie and chase them out again. And when they come back, we do so again – and if necessary, again. It's our only hope, and who knows, if we make it expensive enough for them they may get tired of it before we do.’

Wally grinned at him and hurried away, and William said bitterly: ‘You'd almost think he was enjoying it. Do you suppose he doesn't realize -?’

‘He realizes all right,’ said Cavagnari sombrely, ‘probably better than any of us. England will lose a first-rate soldier in that boy. Listen to him now -he's cracking jokes with those men out there. Amal Din tells me that the Guides would do anything that Hamilton-Sahib asked of them, because they know that he would never ask them to do anything that he would not do himself. A good boy and a born leader of men. It's a pity… Ah well, I'd better get back to my loophole.’

He dragged himself from the chair he had slumped into on his return, and stood clutching the back of it, and William said anxiously: ‘Are you sure you are all right, sir? Oughtn't you to lie down?’

Cavagnari gave a crack of laughter. ‘My dear boy! At a time like this? If a jawan with a smashed leg is prepared to sit at a window to take pot shots at the enemy provided someone props him up first, I can surely do the same when all I have suffered is a slight crease in my head.’ He turned away, and followed by William went back up the stairs to take over the positions that had been occupied during their absence by two of the Escort who had been keeping up a steady fire on the mutineers around the Arsenal, and who now moved up to the roof to join a group of the Guides who were firing at the enemy-held house-tops to the north of the compound.

Another and larger group on the roof of the Mess House opposite had turned their attention to the buildings that lay immediately behind the Residency, and Wally, running up to see how they were getting on and to take stock of the situation, saw from that vantage point that his recent estimate of fifteen minutes had erred on the side of generosity. The mutineers were already creeping back again into the Kulla-Fi-Arangi, and there was nothing for it but to launch a second sortie and clear them out again.

Pelting back down the stairs he collected a fresh party of Guides, snatched Rosie away from setting Paras Ram's shattered leg – apologizing in the same breath to the wounded man and assuring him that he would not keep the Doctor-Sahib long – and turned and ran across the courtyard and up the Envoy's staircase to fetch William and Cavagnari. But the sight of the older man's face made him change his mind.

Wally had lost none of his old admiration for his Chief, but he was a soldier first and foremost, and he had no intention of jeopardizing his men unnecessarily. He needed William, but he refused point-blank to allow Cavagnari to accompany them: ‘No, I'm sorry, sir, but any fool can see you ain't fit and I can't take the risk,’ said Wally brutally. ‘If you collapsed we'd only have to stop and pick you up, and that could mean throwing away the lives of several valuable men. Besides, it wouldn't do 'em any good to see you fall. Come on, William, we haven't got all day…’

Ash and Nakshband Khan, together with several hundred of the enemy, witnessed that second sortie, and seeing that only three of the four Sahibs took part in it, drew their own conclusions. The enemy, being convinced that one of the Sahibs had been slain, were greatly heartened, while Ash and the Sirdar (who had noted the bandage about Cavagnari's head and realized that he had been wounded) were correspondingly dismayed, because they knew that if he were to die it could have a serious effect on the spirits of the beleaguered garrison.

Once again the firing had of necessity slackened off, and once again the waste ground had been cleared. But this time at the cost of two lives and another four men wounded, two of them severely.

‘We can't go on like this, Wally,’ gasped Rosie, wiping the sweat out of his eyes as he directed the stretcher-bearers to carry the injured men into the rooms that he had set aside as hospital wards. ‘Do you realize that as well as these we've already had over a dozen men killed and God knows how many wounded?’

‘ I know. But then we've accounted for at least ten of their men to every one of ours – if that's any comfort to you.’

‘It's none at all – when I'm knowing that those divils out there outnumber us by twenty to one, and that as soon as the lot that left for their cantonments get back here, it'll be nearer fifty or a hundred to one…
Accha,
Rahman Baksh,
mai aunga
(all right, I'm coming) – Look, Wally, isn't it time we tried another letter to that scutt of an Amir?…
Accha, accha. Abbi arter
(I'm coming now).’

The doctor hurried away, and Wally handed his sabre to his bearer Pir Buksh, and taking the Havildar with him went over to the barracks to see how things were with the sepoys who were firing from the shelter of the parapets, and if anything could be done to improve the defences of that building against the mass attack that would surely come if the Amir failed to send help. There had still been no reply to the letter that had been taken out by the chupprassi Ghulam Nabi, and now Sir Louis wrote another and sent it by the hand of one of the Mohammedan servants, who volunteered to see if he could not get through by way of the temporarily cleared Kulla-Fi-Arangi, and from there through the King's Garden.

‘Keep to the south side of the barracks and seek what cover you can between there and the stables, instructed Sir Louis. ‘The jawans will distract the enemy with rapid fire until you reach the wall. God be with you.’

William sent an orderly to find Wally and tell him what was planned, and to ask for covering fire. And presently the messenger slipped away to the accompaniment of a barrage of shots, and having run the gauntlet of the open stretch of compound between the barracks and the near wall of the Kulla-Fi-Arangi, scrambled over it… to be seen no more.

Somewhere between that low mud wall and the palace, the fate that Allah is believed to tie about the neck of all His creatures may have lain in wait for him; or perhaps he had friends or relatives in Kabul or elsewhere in Afghanistan, and decided to take refuge with them in preference to carrying out an appallingly hazardous mission. All that is certain is that his message never reached the palace, and that he himself vanished as completely as though he had been no more than a grain of sand on the autumn wind.

In the barracks Wally and Havildar Hassan, assisted by half-a-dozen sepoys, several syces and some of the Residency servants, had been barricading the doorless stairways that led up in the thickness of the wall on either side of the archway to the long strips of roof that surrounded the canvas-covered central courtyard. This would leave them with only a single stair – case – the one at the far end near the door that gave on the Residency lane – but at least, in the event of a mass attack from the front, the men on the roof would not have to worry about the enemy storming up from below when or if Wally's makeshift outer door went down.

Their position was already precarious enough without that, and Rosie had erred in imagining that Wally did not realize the extent of the casualties that the garrison had suffered. Wally not only knew, but had been mentally crossing them off one by one and re-arranging the disposition of his little force, carefully husbanding his resources and doing everything he could to avoid risking the life of a single man unnecessarily, or allowing their morale to sink. His own was still high, for the sight of a familiar blue and white jar had told him that Ash was somewhere around, and he felt confident that Ash would not be idle.

Ash could be relied on to see that the Amir was informed of the parlous plight of the British Mission, even if every minister and high official in the entire Afghan Government was bent on concealing it. He would manage it somehow, and help would come. It was only a question of holding out long enough and not allowing themselves to be overrun… ‘
Shabash,
Hamzulla!
Ab mazbut hai
… That should fox the hosts of Midian,’ said Wally. ‘Now if we can -’

He stopped, listening to a new sound: a deep, slowly gathering roar that he had been aware of for the past few minutes as a distant background to the tumult raging beyond the north-western limits of the compound, but that now, unmistakably, was coming nearer. Not ‘
Dam-i-charya
’ this time, but ‘
Ya-charya
' – the war-cry of the Suni sect of Moslems, rolling towards him with ever-increasing speed and growing louder, nearer and fiercer until even the solid barrack walls seemed to shake to the rhythmic thunder of that rabble-rousing battle cry –

‘It is the troops from the cantonments,’ said Wally. ‘Bar the doors and get back into the Residency, all of you. Tell Jemadar Jiwand Singh to choose his men and be ready for another sortie. We may have to clear them out of that waste ground again.’ He turned and made for the stair at the far end of the barrack courtyard, and leaping up it ran forward along the roof above the Mohammedan quarters to the shorter strip of roof above the archway.

Looking over the loopholed parapet and the kneeling sepoys who were firing from behind it, he saw that the high ground by the Arsenal was a solid mass of frenzied humanity that was surging forward, thrust on by the pressure of thousands more behind, towards the flimsy barricades that separated the Mission's compound from the surrounding lanes and houses. The mutinous troops who had run back to their cantonments to fetch arms were back again in force, and not alone – they had brought others with them, the remaining Herati regiments who had been cantoned there, and thousands more
budmarshes
from the city. Even as he watched, they reached the barricades, and trampling them down, overran the cavalry lines and occupied the gutted stables.

In front of them, leading them, ran a wizened figure who waved a green banner and screamed to those behind him to kill the Infidels and show no mercy. Wally did not recognize him, but even at that range Ash did. It was the fakir whom he had seen earlier that day at the pay parade: Buzurg Shah, whom he had also seen on other occasions, calling for a Jehad in the more inflammable sections of the city.

‘Destroy them! Root out the Unbelievers. Kill. Kill!’ shrieked Fakir Buzurg Shah. ‘In the name of the Prophet smite and spare not! For the Faith. For the Faith.
Maro
!
Maro
*
–!

‘
Ya-charya
!
Ya-charya
!’ yelled his supporters as they fanned out over the compound and began to fire at the heads of the sepoys behind the parapet on the barracks.

Wally saw one of his men fall backwards, shot between the eyes, and a second slump sideways with a bullet through his shoulder, and did not wait for more. It was no longer a question of clearing the waste ground, but of driving the mob out of the compound; and three minutes later Ash saw him lead a third sortie, racing out through the arch of the barracks with William at his side. But this time neither Kelly nor Cavagnari had been with them: Cavagnari because Wally still would not hear of his coming, and Rosie because by now his hands were too full with the care of the wounded to allow him to take part in another charge.

The fight had been a fiercer one than the two previous sorties into the waste ground, for though once more the marksmen on the rooftops, both inside and outside the compound, were forced to hold their fire for fear of killing their own men, the odds against the garrison had lengthened considerably. The Guides were now outnumbered by fifty to one, and would have been outnumbered by even more if space had permitted, since the forces opposing them included a full three regiments of armed and mutinous soldiers as well as every disaffected, hostile or bloodthirsty citizen in Kabul. But their very numbers proved a handicap to the Afghans, for they not only hampered each other, but in the fury and stress of battle no man could be sure that he was not attacking one of his own side, as with the exception of Wally their opponents were not in uniform.

The Guides, on the other hand, knew each other too well to make any such mistake. Moreover, their sepoys carried rifles with fixed bayonets while the two Englishmen and both the Indian officers were armed with service revolvers as well as sabres; and in the murderous hand-to-hand fighting that followed, every revolver shot told, for knowing that there would be no chance to reload, the men of the Escort held their fire until the last possible moment. But the mob had not followed their example, and in the initial rush to reach the Mission compound every Afghan had discharged his musket – many of them into the air – so that now they could only oppose steel to the rifle and revolver bullets of their adversaries.

The Guides had made the best possible use of that tactical error, and followed it up so fiercely with bayonet and sabre that the Afghans gave ground before the fury of their attack. Unable to flee because of the pressure of those at the back, who could not see and urged them forward, hampered by the bodies of the dead and wounded on whom they trod as the fight swayed to and fro, they turned at last and began to attack those behind them; and suddenly panic flared like a fire through dry grass and the mob were turning and clawing at each other in an attempt to escape. Retreat became a rout, and within seconds the compound was clear except for the dead and wounded.

Between them, the little band of Guides had fired exactly thirty-seven shots in the course of that brief engagement, of which no less than four – all heavy bullets fired from Lee-Enfield rifles at a distance of six yards – had smashed straight through the chest of an enemy soldier to kill a second behind him. The remainder had accounted for one man apiece, while a dozen more had been bayonetted and eight cut down by sabres.