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

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

And yet General Wilson in a way was right. Five days afterward Major Hodson wrote in his diary: "The troops are utterly demoralized by hard work and hard drink. For the first time in my life I have had to see English soldiers refuse repeatedly to follow their officers. Jacob, Nicholson, Greville, Speke were all sacrificed to this."

A terrible indictment indeed, against brave men.

Yet not worse than that underlying the chief's order of the 15th, directing the Provost-marshal to search for and smash every bottle and barrel to be found, and let the beer and wine, so urgently needed by the sick, run into the gutters; or his admission three days later that another attempt to take the Lahore gate had failed from "the refusal of the European soldiers to follow their officers. One rush and it could have been done easily--we are still, therefore, in the same position to-day as we were yesterday."

So much for drink.

But the enemy luckily was demoralized also. It was still full of defense; empty of attack.

For one thing, attack would have admitted a reverse; and over on that eastern wall of the Palace, in the fretted marble balcony overlooking the river, there was no mention, even now, of such a word. Reverse! Had not the fourth column been killed to a man? Had not Nikalseyn himself fallen a victim to valor? But Soma, and many a man of his sort, gave up the pretense with bitter curses at themselves. They had seen from their own posts that victorious escalade, that swift, unchecked herding of the frightened sheep. And they--intolerable thought!--were sheep also. They saw men with dark faces, no whit better than they--better!--the Rajpoot had at least a longer record than the Sikh!--led to victory while they were not led at all. So brought face to face once more with the old familiar glory and honor, the old familiar sight of the master first--uncompromisingly, indubitably first to snatch success from the grasp of Fate, and hand it back to them--they thought of the past three months with loathing.

And as for Nikalseyn's rebuff. Soma, hearing of it from a comrade, hot at heart as he, went to the place, and looked down the lane as John Nicholson had done. By all the Pandâvas! a place for heroes indeed! Ali! if he had been there, he would have stayed there somehow. He walked up and down it moodily, picturing the struggle to himself; thinking with a curious anger of those men on the housetops, in the bastion, taking potshots at the unsheltered men below. That was all there would be now. They might drive the masters back for a time, they might inveigle them into lanes and reduce their numbers by tens and fifties, they, men of his sort, might make a brave defense.

Defense! Soma wanted to attack. Attracted by the faint shade of the kikar tree he sat down beneath it, resting against the trunk, looking along the lane once more, just as, a day or two before, John Nicholson had rested for a space. And the iron of failure entered into this man's heart also, because there was none to lead. And with the master there had been none to follow.

Suddenly he rose, his mind made up. If that was so, let him go back to the plow. That also was a hereditary trade.

That night, without a word to anyone, leaving his uniform behind him, he started along the Rohtuck road for his ancestral village. But he had to make a detour round the suburbs, for, despite that annihilation spoken of in the Peace, they were now occupied by the English.