On the Face of the Waters: A Tale of the Mutiny

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"And mine shall be his portion too," broke in a new arrival breathlessly, preparing to fire at the prostrate foe; but the first speaker knocked aside the barrel with an oath.

"Not while I stand by, since devils choose the best men. As 'tis, having women in our houses 'twere best to take precautions." He stooped down as he spoke, and muttering spells the while, raised a little heap of dust at the lad's head and feet and outstretched arms--a little cross of dust, as it were, on which the young body lay impaled.

"What is't?" asked a haughty-looking native officer, pausing as he rode by.

"'Tis a hell-doomed who went possessed, and Dittu makes spells to keep him dead," said one.

"Fool!" muttered the man. "He was drunk, likely. They get like that, the cursed ones, when they take wine." And he spat piously on the red coat as he passed on. So they left the lad there lying face down in the growing gloom, hedged round by spells to keep him from harming women. Left him for dead.

But the scoffer had been right. He was drunk, but with the Elixir of Life and Love which holds a soul captive from the clasp of Death for a space. So, after a time, the cross of dust gave up its victim; he staggered to his feet again; and so, tumbling, falling, rising to fall again, he made his way to the haven where he would be, to the side of a dead woman.

And the birds, startled from their roosting-places by the stumbling, falling figure, waited, fluttering over the topmost branches for it to pass, or paused among them to fill up the time with a last twittering song of goodnight to the day; for the sun still lingered in the heat-haze on the horizon as if loath to take its glow from that corona of red dust above the northern wall of Delhi, mute sign of the only protest made as yet by the master against mutiny.

And now he had left the city to its own devices. The rebels were free to do as they liked. The three thousand disciplined soldiers, more or less, might have marched out, had they chose, and annihilated the handful of loyal men about the Flagstaff Tower. But it was sunset--sunset in Rumzân. And the eyes of thousands, deprived even of a drop of water since dawn, were watching the red globe sink in the West, hungrily, thirstily; their ears were attuned but to one sound--the firework signal from the big mosque that the day's fast was over. The very children on the roofs were watching, listening, so as to send the joyful news that day was done, in shrill voices to their elders below, waiting with their water-pots ready in their hands.

Then, in good truth, there was no set purpose from one end of the city to another. From the Palace to the meanest brothel which had belched forth its vilest to swell the tide of sheer rascality which had ebbed and flowed all day, the one thought was still, "What does it mean? How long will it last? Where is the master?"

So men ate and drank their fill first, then looked at each other almost suspiciously, and drifted away to do what pleased them best. Some to the Palace to swell the turmoil of bellicose loyalty to the King--loyalty which sounded unreal, almost ridiculous, even as it was spoken. Others to plunder while they could. The bungalows had long since been rifled, the very church bells thrown down and broken; for the time had been ample even for wanton destruction. But the city remained. And while shops were being looted inside, the dispossessed Goojurs were busy over Metcalfe House, tearing up the very books in their revenge. The Flagstaff Tower lay not a mile away, almost helpless against attack. But there was no stomach for cold steel in Delhi on the 11th of May, 1857. No stomach for anything except safe murder, safe pillaging. Least of all was it to be found in the Palace, where men had given the rein to everything they possessed--to their emotions, their horses, their passions, their aspirations. Stabling some in the King's gardens, some in dream-palaces, some in pigstyes of sheer brutality. Weeping maudlin tears over heaven-sent success, and boasting of their own prowess in the same breath; squabbling insanely over the partition of coming honors and emoluments.