“Who were they, Father?” a youngster would ask. “Were not our countrymen amongst them? But many were Afghan dogs!”
“Those are the Guides, my son. They have told us lies who said the English had lost their power. Consider, my brothers. How could the Guides be spared from the frontier unless the Sikhs and the Pathans, the Afghans and the Afridis, were on the side of our white rulers? Let our village have no part in this rebellion, else shall we all suffer.”
So province after province was passed, and the people, noticing how proud and confident the Guides looked, thought, “Surely the English are still masters of India.”
And old Sikh and Jat soldiers of “John Company”,[1] men who had been hesitating, who had been offered bribes to fight against the Feringhi, and who had been told that the whites were all being swept into the sea, hesitated no longer. They cleaned their swords, harnessed their horses, and veterans brought their sons, requesting permission to enlist in the new Punjab regiments which John Lawrence, the mighty commissioner of the Punjab, was raising for the reinforcement of the army before Delhi.
[1] The Honourable East India Company, also called “Koompanie Bahadur”, or “The Great Lord Company”.
“The Punjab,” said the leader of the Guide Corps, “is paying back India all she has cost her, by sending troops stout and firm to her aid.”
While still more than a hundred miles from Delhi, the Guides were required to quell a disturbance in a neighbouring district. Captain Daly, impatient at the delay, desired to forward despatches to General Anson, whose army lay some miles to the north of the great city. He consulted Captain Russell.
“Your brother is a plucky youngster,” he remarked, “but what is his friend like? He hasn’t much to say for himself, but I think he’s to be trusted.”
“Paterson seems one of the quiet sort you can depend on,” Jim replied. “If you are thinking of sending them on to the commander-in-chief, I think they’d enjoy the job and would carry it through. I suppose you would give them an escort?”
Daly beckoned the two ensigns, and handing the papers to Paterson, he explained the mission, and advised them to ride as much as possible at night.