KOTAH.
A TALE OF THE INDIAN MUTINY.
It was on a soft and warm night in April that we were encamped not far from the margin of Lake Erie, in expectation of the Fenian raiders, who were having armed picnics, and threatening a plundering invasion of Upper Canada. We were simply an advanced post, consisting of my company of the Royal Canadian Rifle Regiment, and some two hundred volunteers, farmers and their sons. For some time past there had been considerable alarm along the Canadian frontier. General Mead, of the United States army, was at Eastport with his staff, and the Federal gun-boat Winooske was cruising off that place, on the look-out for an alleged Fenian vessel.
Numerous armed meetings had taken place in the State of Maine, and a great embarkation of the brotherhood in green was expected to take place at Ogdensburg, the capital of St. Lawrence, which has a safe and commodious harbour; but luckily the whole affair ended in bluster and rumour. The only fire we saw was that of our bivouac, and the only smoke that of the soothing weed, while we sat by "the wolf-scaring faggot," and drank from our canteens of rum-and-water, singing songs, and telling stories to wile the night away.
The picturesque was not wanting in the group around that blazing fire of pine wood. The Royal Canadians, in their dark green tunics, faced with scarlet; the volunteers, in orthodox red coats or fringed hunting-shirts, with white belts worn over them, were all bronzed, rough, and bearded fellows, hardy by nature and resolute in bearing, led, in most instances, by old Queen's officers, who had commuted their commissions, and turned their swords into ploughshares on farms by the banks of the New Niagara, or the shores of the vast Erie, whose waters stretched in darkness far away towards the hills of Pennsylvania.
"Come, captain, tell us a story of other lands and sharper work than this," said one of the Canadian volunteers, as he proffered me his tobacco-pouch, which was prettily embroidered with wampum; "tell us something about the mutiny in India. You served there, as we all know."
"Yes," said I, as the memory of other times and other faces—faces I should never look upon in this world again—came over me, "I served there in the —th Dragoons, and can relate a strange story indeed—of discipline overdone—of that which we hear little about in our service, thank heaven—tyranny; and of a young hero, who, without a crime, was sentenced to die the death of a felon!"
"We know," said one of my subs, "that the mutiny is always a bitter subject with you."
"I lost much by the destruction of Indian property, and so had to begin the sliding-scale."
"What kind of scale is that?"
"Sloping from the cavalry to the line."
"But the story, captain!" urged the volunteers.
"Well, here goes," said I; and after a pause and a sip at the canteen, began thus:—
"The narrative I am about to tell you was not one in which I figured much personally, save as member of a court-martial; but it details suffering with which I was familiar—the miserable fate of Sergeant Anthony Ernslie, a fine old soldier, and his son Philip, a brave young fellow—a mere lad—both of whom were in my troop during the Crimean war, and afterwards in the memorable mutiny, the horrors of which are so fresh in the minds of all.
"I had not been long with the regiment before I discovered that a deeply-rooted enmity existed between our sergeant-major, Matthew Pivett, and my troop-sergeant, Ernslie, and that it had been one of long standing, having originated in jealousy when both were privates quartered at Canterbury, and both were rivals for the affection of a pretty milliner girl. She, however, preferred Ernslie, then a horse artilleryman; but when our corps was under orders to join the army of the East, Ernslie volunteered for general service in the cavalry, and, by the chance of fate, was placed in my troop of the —th Dragoons, where his steady conduct, fine appearance, and strict attention to duty, soon caused me to recommend him for promotion, and he gained his third stripe with a rapidity that did not fail to excite the remark of the envious.
"Yet his life was rendered miserable by the sergeant-major—a stern, wiry, sharp-eyed, loud-voiced, and vindictive man; and more than once, when I interposed my authority to keep peace between them, has Ernslie told me, with tears in his eyes, that 'he cursed the day on which he left the ranks of the Horse Artillery to become a dragoon!'
"A senior, when perpetually on the watch to worry a junior, may easily find opportunities enough for doing so. Thus Ernslie's belts were never pipe-clayed quite to the taste of Pivett, and at the staff inspection before parade, faults were ever found with his horse, harness, and everything. He was put on duty at times out of his turn, and not in accordance with the roster. A complaint to the adjutant or myself always altered these errors; but the sting of annoyance remained. At drill a hundred petty faults were found with him, and he was perpetually accused of taking up wrong dressings, distances, and alignments, till, in his anger and bewilderment, the poor man sometimes really did so, and then great was the delight of Pivett!
"'For what,' said he one day, bitterly, 'for what did I ever leave my old regiment?'
"'No good, most likely,' sneered Pivett.
"'Sir, I won my three good-conduct rings there.'
"'By a fluke, of course,' replied Pivett; adding, in a loud voice, 'Silence!' to check the rising retort of the other.
"As Shakespeare has it—
"'That in the captain's but a choleric word
Which in the soldier is rank blasphemy.'
And so it came to pass that whenever Ernslie ventured to remonstrate, his oppressor invariably sent him to his room under arrest, and twice—a great insult to a sergeant—to the guard-house; but though the charges of mutiny and insubordination were always 'quashed' by the colonel, poor Ernslie felt, as he told me, 'that he was a doomed man, and safe to come to grief some day, for the sergeant-major had sworn an oath to smash him!'
"His son Philip, a private in the troop, saw and felt all this. The lad's smothered hatred and fear of the sergeant-major were great; but he did his duty well and steadily, and contrived to elude notice. Ernslie was proud of his handsome boy, and thanked heaven in the inmost recesses of his heart when the war was over in the Crimea, for there father and son had ridden side by side in the famous charge of the Heavy Brigade, and both had escaped almost scatheless; but when we were ordered to India, to stem with our swords the great tide of the terrible mutiny, the father's anxieties were revived again.
"When our transport was off the Cape de Verd Islands, Ernslie came to my cabin in great distress, to announce that his wife had just died. I knew that the poor woman had been ailing for some time past, and the sickness incident to the rough weather we encountered put an end to her sufferings, and she died in the arms of her son, for her husband was with his watch on deck, and the sergeant-major would not permit him to go below.
"She had died at daybreak, and by noon that day the body, swathed in her bedding, and lashed round with spun-yarn, lay on a grating to leeward, with a twenty-pound shot at the feet, and a Union Jack spread over it. By sound of trumpet, our men fell into their ranks, and, like the sailors, all stood bare-headed, silent, and grave, for a funeral at sea is the most sad and solemn of all. There was a heavy breeze at the time, and the ship was flying before it with her courses and head-sails only, and the bitter spray swept over us in drenching showers.
"The adjutant read the burial service. At a given signal the grating was lifted, and the body vanished with a splash under the ship's counter. Close by me stood Sergeant Ernslie and his son. Clutching the mizen shrouds with one hand, and Philip by the other, he bent his pale face over the quarter, as if to give a farewell glance at the corpse; but it was gone—gone for ever!
"Ernslie was barely forty; but now he looked quite old and haggard, and his hair was streaked with gray. He saw Pivett standing near him, as the men were dismissed, and passing forward or below; and as if he felt and knew that the original cause of enmity had passed away, he held forth his hand, and said, in a choking voice, for grief had softened his heart—
"'You'll shake hands with me now, sergeant-major, won't you?'
"But Matthew Pivett answered only by a scowl, and crossed to the windward side of the deck. So even by the side of that vast and uncouth grave their hatred was not quenched; and I had twice to interfere for Ernslie's protection before our transport ran up the Hooghly, and landed us at Calcutta, from whence the river steamers took us up country to Allahabad, where our remount awaited us, and we took the field at once, under Brigadier-General R——.
"If Ernslie's tormentor spared his son, it must have been through some lingering regard for the dead mother, or some soft memory of the love he once bore her, and Ernslie was thankful that Philip escaped, for the lad was passionate and resentful, and had vowed to his father in secret that he would 'yet serve out the sergeant-major.'
"One morning, long before daybreak, we were on the march towards the province of Ajmir, where a noted rebel, Hossein Ali, was at the head of a great force. We had endured the most unparalleled heat; for days the sky had been as a sheet of heated brass above our heads, and the cracked and baked earth as molten iron under foot. Cases of sunstroke had been incessant, and many of our horses perished on the march.
"On this morning our thirst was excessive, for the tanks of a temple on which we had relied for water had become dry in the night, and the bheesties, or water-carriers, attached to the regiment, had deserted to Hossein Ali, and most of us were without liquid of any kind in our canteens.
"Among others situated thus was Sergeant Ernslie, who had been on patrol duty until the last moment. His son Philip was the orderly of the colonel, and while that officer's horse was getting a drink, he had contrived to fill his canteen from the bucket, and held it invitingly to Ernslie, just as the corps filed past, for the colonel had not yet mounted. Agonized as he was with thirst, to resist the temptation was impossible; so Ernslie galloped to where his son stood, a hundred yards distant or so, near the hut of palm-leaves which had formed the colonel's quarters.
"'To your troop, Sergeant Ernslie! back to your troop, sir!' cried the sergeant-major, in a voice of thunder.
"Ernslie heard the voice of his enemy, but still rode towards his son, and took a long draught from his canteen before turning his horse and galloping back to his troop.
"'How dare you leave the ranks when on the line of march?' resumed Pivett, heedless in his fury that this was interfering with me. 'Fall in with the quarter guard!' he added, in his most bullying tone; 'and consider yourself under arrest!'
"'I shall do neither one nor the other,' replied Ernslie, trembling with passion. 'I am under the orders of the captain of the troop—not yours. Keep your own place, or, by heaven, I shall make you!'
"And in his just anger, Ernslie was rash enough to shake his sword with the point towards Pivett—an unmistakable threat. So the colonel was compelled to place him under arrest, in the face of the whole regiment.
"'At last you have fixed me, sergeant-major!' said he, calmly, but bitterly, as he sheathed his sword, and turned to the rear; 'but if you look for your true character, you will find it in the "Military Dictionary."'
"'Likely enough; but under what head? Discipline?'
"'No. Tyrant! See how that is defined!'
"The sergeant-major did look, and saw that Colonel James therein defines, 'Petty tyrants—a low, grovelling set of beings, who, without one spark of real courage within themselves, execute the orders of usurped or strained authority with brutal rigour;' and as he read on Pivett grew pale with rage.
"At the first halt of the brigade, a general court-martial, of which I was the junior member, sat, by order of General R——. An example was wanted; so Ernslie was reduced to the ranks.
"Our parade next morning was a gloomy one, as we formed a hollow square of close columns of regiments, near the ruins of a great Hindoo temple. The sun was yet below the horizon, and in the dim, cold light, the face of Ernslie looked pale and ghastly as he was marched into the square, a prisoner, between two armed troopers, one of whom, with execrable taste, the sergeant-major had contrived should be his own son, Philip.
"The sergeant was nervous in bearing and restless in eye; but his mind seemed to be turned inward. He was thinking, perhaps, of the terrors of the day at Balaclava, of the dead wife he had committed to the deep, or of the boy who stood scheming revenge by his side; but it was not until he felt the penknife of the trumpet-major ripping the worthily-won chevrons from his sleeve that a groan escaped his lips, a flush crossed his haggard face, and his soul seemed to die within him.
"Then he slunk to the rear of his troop, a broken and degraded man. Philip's dark eyes were full of fire, and, if a glance could have slain, the career of Matthew Pivett had ended there.
"We all felt for the sergeant, and knew that in the vindication of discipline he had been made a victim; but that night the Queen lost a good soldier, for Ernslie was absent from roll-call—he had disappeared without a trace, and the sergeant-major openly declared his belief that he had deserted to the rebel Sepoys, under Hossein Ali.
"The truth was, though we knew it not at the time, that Ernslie, when wandering alone and unarmed near our camp, communing with himself in a storm of grief and misery, had actually been waylaid and carried off by some of Hossein's scouting Sepoys, who by that time were tired of slaughtering and torturing the white Feringhees. They spared him, and discovering somehow that he had once been a golandazee, or gunner, they chained him naked to a field-piece, and kept him to assist in working their cannon against us in Kotah, the place which we were on the march to besiege and storm.
"So poor Anthony Ernslie's name was further disgraced by being scored down as a deserter in the regimental books.
"The forces which we accompanied, under General R——, consisted of the 8th Royal Irish Hussars, H.M. 72nd Highlanders, 83rd and 95th Regiments, together with the 13th Bengal Native Infantry, a corps which had not yet revolted, but was sorely mistrusted.
"The enemy in Kotah consisted entirely of mutineers, but chiefly those of the 72nd Bengal Infantry, whose scarlet coats were faced with yellow, exactly like those of the 72nd Highlanders, now advancing against them; and we considered it a curious coincidence that two regiments bearing the same number should meet in mortal conflict.
"Our march was a severe one; each of our horses had not less than twenty stone weight to carry, irrespective of forage, and yet there was not a sore back or a broken girth either in our ranks or in those of the 8th Hussars, when, after traversing a mountainous but fertile and well-watered district, we came in sight of Kotah (which had been the seat of a Rajpoot-rajah), on the east bank of the Chumbul. It is a large town, girt by massive walls, defended by bastions and deep ditches cut out of the solid rock. Its entrances were all protected by double gateways.
"Both strong and stately looked the fortified town, when, under the scorching blaze of an Indian sun, and a hot, red sky, amid which the hungry vultures floated, we saw it and the palace of the rajah, with all its lofty white turrets, the roofs of bazaars and temples, crowning a steep slope that was covered by teak, tamarind, and date palm trees, all of lovely green. In the foreground lay a vast lake, with the superb temple of Jugmandul, a mass of snow-white marble, rising in its centre, its peristyles and domes reflected downward in the deep and dark-blue water.
"The rajah had fled. In his palace Hossein Ali, an ex-kote-havildar, or pay-sergeant of the revolted 72nd B.N.I., reigned supreme; and its marble courts and chambers were yet stained by the blood of our women, children, and other defenceless people, who had been slain therein, after enduring indignities and torments that maddened those who came, like us, to avenge them; and, full of the memories of those deeds, with the other horrors of Cawnpore and Delhi to inflame us, we pushed the siege with relentless vigour, though Hossein's men, with seventy pieces of cannon, gave us quite enough to do, and our sappers worked in vain to undermine the enormous walls.
"Night and day, amid slaughter, wounds, sunstroke, and cholera, we pounded away at each other with the big guns. Officers and men worked side by side at them and in the trenches, aiding or covering the sappers in their scheme of a mine, till we were all as black as the Pandies with gunpowder, dust, and grime, and till the once gay uniform of ours had given place to flannel jerseys and rags; our helmets to linen puggerees, or solar-hats; our pantaloons to cotton knickerbockers and Cawnpore boots; and even those who had been the greatest dandies among us were seldom seen without a scrubby beard, a shovel, a revolver, and Chinshura cheroot. In short, we were more like diggers or desperadoes than her Britannic Majesty's dragoons.
"With a working party composed of men of various corps, one morning, before daybreak, I was assisting the sappers at the mine, while the enemy, with shot, shell, and rockets, did all they could to retard or dislodge us. It was a horrid place, I remember, encumbered by dead camels and horses—yea, and men, too, in every stage of decomposition, where the gorged vultures hovered lazily among fallen ruins and whitening bones.
"'Jack Sepoy thinks it no sin now to bite the greased cartridge—the scoundrel!' said one of my men, as a bullet broke the shovel in his hand.
"'Sin—as little as to cut the throats of our wives and children in cold blood!' added another, with a fierce oath.
"'Fighting for glory is a fine thing,' said young Philip Ernslie, resting on his pickaxe; 'but fighting for a shilling per day, with a penny extra for beer, is a different affair.'
"'But we are fighting for revenge, Phil,' said a soldier, whose wife and children had perished at Meerut.
"'True,' replied Ernslie, through his clenched teeth; 'and times there are, by Jove! when even revenge may be just and holy!'
"'Silence!' growled Sergeant-Major Pivett, still in pursuance of his feud.
"'Down, men—down!' cried I, 'for here comes a shell.'
"Humming through the air, but, oddly enough, not whistling, a ten-inch shell fell near me, and, with a thud, half sunk into the soil. Strange to say, it was without a fuze; the touch-hole was simply plugged by a common cork, in which a half-scorched quill-pen was stuck. After lying flat on our faces, and watching it uneasily for some time, and all fearing a snare, or the explosion of some poisonous stuff, I ventured to roll it over with a shovel, and found that it was empty, or quite unloaded. Pivett, who certainly did not lack courage, sprang forward, and, extracting the cork from the fuze-hole, found a scrap of paper attached to it, and on the scrap was written, with ink that seemed to have been composed of gunpowder and water, these words:—
"'I am a prisoner in Kotah. The work of the sappers is useless, for where they are mining the rock is solid. There are seventy guns in this place, and I am chained to one of the seventeen in the right bastion. If the front gate is blown up, the place may be carried at the point of the bayonet, as the way beyond is quite open.
"'A. ERNSLIE, private, H.M. —th Dragoons.'
"'I knew that fellow had deserted to the enemy!' growled the sergeant-major.
"'Silence,' said I, 'and do not be unjust in your hatred.'
"'It's a message-shell, sir, a message-shell, and fired by my father, poor man. Heaven help him!—he is in the hands of the Sepoys!' exclaimed young Ernslie, whom, with the shell and note, I took at once to the general, whose tent was by the margin of the lake.
"This information caused the staff at once to abandon the idea of a mine, and all our energies were now bent against the great gate.
"Though the junior regiment of the division, the 72nd, or Duke of Albany's Own Highlanders, were ordered to furnish three hundred men for a storming party, and at two o'clock on the morning of the 30th of March the grand assault was to be made, while we—the cavalry—were in our saddles, to cover, and if possible assist in the attack, when the great gate was forced.
"'My brave lads, rouse!' I heard the adjutant of the Highlanders cry in the dark; 'quit your dog's sleep—half-dozing and half-waking—and fall in. Fall in, stormers!'
"And while the warning pipes blew loud and shrill, cheerfully they formed by companies, those brave Albany Highlanders; and stately, indeed, looked their grenadiers, with their tall plumed bonnets and royal Stuart tartan; for the highland regiments during the mutiny had not time to adopt Indian clothing, and went at the Pandies in their kilts and ostrich feathers, just as their forefathers did at Madras and Assaye.
"Silently they crossed the river in the dark, where the graceful date palms and the luxuriant mango topes cast a deeper shadow than the starry night upon the water. Then, quitting their boats, they crept close to the great outer wall of Kotah; but so great was the delay in blowing up the gate, that day broke, the Highlanders were seen, and for hours we sat in our saddles helplessly, and saw the enemy pouring shot and shell upon them from the same bastion where we knew poor Tony Ernslie was chained to a gun.
"Suddenly there was a dreadful shock; the wall of the city seemed to open, as it rent and gaped, a blinding cloud of dust and stones ascended into the air, and a shower of wooden splinters, the fragments of the great gate, flew far and wide, as our mine blew the barrier up.
"A mingled shout of 'Scotland for ever!' the old Waterloo war-cry of the Black Watch and the Greys, broke from the Highlanders* again and again, as they rushed in with fixed bayonets, driving back the terrified Sepoys, storming bastion after bastion, and capturing two standards. The other regiments broke in at different points, and after much hard fighting Kotah was ours, and then we rode through the streets cutting down the fugitive rebels on right and left.
* See Scotsman of 28th of May, 1858.
"Philip Ernslie and a few of his comrades made straight for the bastion indicated in his father's note. It was deserted by all save a few dead or dying Sepoys; but a more terrible spectacle awaited the searchers.
"Stripped nude, and nailed to the wall of the bastion by the hands and feet, hung the body of Anthony Ernslie, minus nose and ears, and otherwise horribly mutilated!
"Even this appalling spectacle failed to excite the pity or soothe the hate of the malevolent Matthew Pivett (but we were well used to scenes of horror and barbarity during the mutiny), for he audibly expressed a conviction 'that Ernslie had met his just reward for deserting to the enemy.'
"'I shall make you eat your words before the going down of the sun, by the God who made us, I shall!' said Philip Ernslie, in a low, husky voice, heard only by the sergeant-major, who shrunk back, so impressed was he by the fierce and resolute aspect of the lad, by the deep concentrated loathing that glared in his eyes, making his lips ashy pale, and causing every muscle to quiver; but this emotion was unseen by others, and his threat was unheard, luckily, for if Pivett could have found a witness, he would at once have made young Ernslie prisoner on a charge of insubordination, as he really dreaded his vengeance.
"About dark that evening the sergeant-major was returning from the bungalow of the colonel, where, with the adjutant, he had been preparing lists of casualties and for our march on the morrow, when we and the 8th Hussars were to surround a village that was full of fugitive mutineers. The day had been one of toil, of strife, and heat; now the atmosphere was steamy and moist, and Pivett was enjoying by anticipation the comforts of a hearty supper and a cool sleep in his tent, the sides of which his tatty-wetter had, no doubt, soused well with cold water.
"To reach the cavalry camp he had to pass through a ravine, not far from the town wall—a narrow place, full of prickly and thorny shrubs, where the beautiful silky jungle grass grew in such wild luxuriance that, in some instances, it was almost breast-high, and where the perfume of the many aromatic plants came floating on the puffs of warm air.
"Traversing the narrow path on foot, with his sword under his arm, he was suddenly confronted in the dusk by Philip Ernslie, who resolutely barred the way. He, too, had his sword by his side, but in each hand he had a holster pistol. His features were pale as those of a corpse, and might have passed for such, but for the nervous twitching of his lips as he spoke.
"'You know, Matthew Pivett, for what purpose I am here?'
"'Mutiny and murder, likely enough,' replied Pivett, who was a stern and resolute man. 'Give up those pistols—fall back, and return to your quarters, or I shall cut you down.'
"'Draw your sword but one inch from its sheath, and I shall send a bullet through your brain!' replied Philip, cocking one of the pistols. 'You maddened my poor father by your systematic tyranny for years; you had him reduced and degraded, and driven desperate from among us. You wronged his memory this morning, and taunted even his mutilated remains——'
"'Scoundrel! what then? Would you dare to murder me?' exclaimed the undaunted sergeant-major.
"'No, you shall have a chance for your life. Oh, Matthew Pivett, I have long looked for an opportunity like this, when I might meet you face to face; so take your choice of these pistols, for, by the heaven that hears us, you or I must lie dead here to-night!'
"As Philip spoke solemnly and sternly, with clenched teeth and flashing eyes, he thrust a pistol into Pivett's hand.
"'Quarter guard!' shouted Pivett, as he made a resolute attempt to grasp the throat of Ernslie, who thrust him back with the barrel of the other pistol, crying—
"'Stand back, sergeant-major, and keep your distance, or I shall shoot you down like the dog you are!'
"Pivett, who now saw there was no resource but to fight, withdrew a pace or two, and fired straight at Ernslie's head. The ball whistled through the white puggeree, or cap, and slightly grazed his left ear. He gave a ghastly smile, and said—
"'You were rather quick, sergeant-major, but now it is my turn!'
"He levelled his pistol, with a deadly, triumphant, and vindictive aim, straight at the glaring eyes of the agitated Pivett; but the percussion cap must have been defective—it snapped and hung fire.
"'Seize this mutinous rascal!' cried the sergeant-major to a patrol who, on hearing the explosion of the first pistol, came galloping up; and Philip was instantly made prisoner by a party of the 8th Hussars, who had seen the whole situation.
"Another court-martial sat by break of day, in the palace of the Rajah of Kotah, and, wan and haggard, after a sleepless night, fettered by handcuffs, and looking the picture of misery, Philip Ernslie stood before it, charged with violating the forty-first clause of the second section of the Articles of War, which ordain that 'any officer or soldier who shall strike a superior, or use any violence against him, shall, if an officer, suffer death, and if a soldier, death, transportation, or such other punishment as by a general court-martial shall be awarded.'
"The majority of the members of the court were strangers to the lad and his story, and the father's alleged spirit of insubordination, manifested when on the march to Kotah, was now brought forward in the prosecution of the son. The court was but an epitome of the greater world, where accusation is condemnation. Nothing is so fallible as human judgment, but nothing so pitiless.
"As captain of Philip's troop, I gave evidence of all I knew, and of the good characters borne by father and son; but, after the brief proceedings terminated, and the court was cleared for the consideration of the verdict and sentence, I knew too well what they would of necessity be.
"That evening the chaplain visited the prisoner, who was confined in one of the vaults of the palace, to announce that on the following morning he was to—DIE!
"He spent nearly the whole night with the poor lad, who was quite resigned, and so calm and prepared for his fate that he begged to be left alone for a little sleep before the appointed time; and when the provost-marshal came at gun-fire, he found Philip Ernslie in a profound slumber, with a horse-cloak spread over him, and his head resting on a bundle of straw.
"Never did we parade with more reluctance than on that 31st of March at dawn, and all the corps in and about Kotah, with some others that had marched in during the night, got under arms to witness the execution. It was a lovely Indian morning. The beams of the sun shone redly on the white marble domes and carved minarets of Kotah, and on the turrets of the rajah's stately palace.
"The place where we paraded was a hollow between two hills that were covered with beautiful groves of the peepul-palm and teakwood, and flocks of wild peacocks and green paroquets flew hither and thither as we were massed in columns round the spot, where an open grave was yawning, and where the guard of the provost-marshal—twelve men and a sergeant—stood with their rifles loaded.
"Every face was expressive of intense anxiety to have the whole affair over, and many were very pale.
"Accompanied by the chaplain of the cavalry brigade, who wore a surplice over his black uniform surtout, and praying very devoutly with his fettered hands clasped before him, Philip Ernslie, guarded by an escort, came slowly into the square of regiments, and stopped midway between the firing party and that premature grave that was so soon to receive him. His face was frightfully pale; he looked at that black hole, which yawned so horribly amid the green turf, calmly and steadily, and something of a smile—but not of bravado or derision—stole over his features.
"My heart bled for the poor lad; but I was immensely relieved when our colonel said, in a whisper, as he passed me—
"'The adjutant-general has a reprieve from General R—— in his pocket, so there will be no execution.'
"'Thank heaven!' I exclaimed, fervently.
"'We are but acting out a solemn farce.'
"'For the sake of effect and discipline?'
"'Exactly.'
"'And the sentence, colonel——'
"'Will be commuted to transportation for life.'
"It was a human existence blighted for ever, any way; but now I could look on with more composure.
"The fetters were removed from Philip's hands. He was ordered to take off his cap and listen respectfully to the sentence of the court; and he seemed to do so mechanically, as one in a dream.
"The proceedings of the tribunal were briefly noted, the enormity of the crime forcibly adverted to, and then came the doom—that he was to be shot to death!
"The young man's usually haughty and handsome face was wistful and sad in expression now. He merely bowed his head in meek assent, and in a weak voice asked leave to shake hands with me and some of his comrades. They came forth from the ranks as he named them, and wrung his cold and clammy fingers in silence, and I could see that the eyes of these men were moist with tears; yet they were brave fellows all, and had charged by my side at Inkermann and Balaclava.
"Philip next asked for the sergeant-major, that he might shake hands even with him, and so die at peace with all mankind. But Pivett was absent from parade that morning, and lay seriously ill in his tent, for Asiatic cholera had fastened upon him.
"Philip then turned to the chaplain to signify that he was ready, and, kneeling near his grave, had his eyes covered by a handkerchief.
"The whole scene was now worked up to its utmost intensity, and many officers, who knew not of the reprieve, had taken off their caps to utter a silent prayer for the spirit that was so soon to appear before its Maker.
"The silence was profound, and we heard only the Chumbal rushing on its course to meet the Jumna, till the voice of the provost-marshal rang in the air—
"'Firing-party—ready!' and softly the rifles were cocked.
"'As you were!' cried the adjutant-general, with a bright expression of face; 'half-cock, and order arms! Prisoner, stand up! you are, I rejoice to say, mercifully reprieved.'
"Philip Ernslie did not hear the words apparently, for his head sank forward on his breast.
"The provost-marshal took his hand to assist him to rise; but the poor lad fell forward on his face, dead—stone dead—without a wound. The sudden revulsion of feeling had killed him.
"So he was actually buried in that unconsecrated ground, beneath the shadow of the walls of Kotah; but, ere we marched next day, another grave was formed beside him.
"It contained the remains of Sergeant-Major Pivett; and, during a long career of service, I have met with few events which created so profound a sensation among the troops as this little tragedy."