Barclay of the Guides

by Herbert Strang

"You two follow him," said Ahmed.

And the others got up, and went without a word.

Ahmed found that the back doors were slightly made and frail. They would ill sustain a vigorous assault. So he got the doctor to give orders that a quantity of heavy furniture should be collected in the passage leading to them—material for blockading it if the doors were battered down. While perambulating the lower part of the house, he noticed some bales, containing Minghal Khan's possessions, which had been laid against the wall of the compound, in readiness for instant removal. These he carried, with the khansaman's assistance, to the upper part of the house. Then he removed all provisions—a very scanty store—from the servants' quarters, and conveyed the water-pots, filled by the bhisti that morning, to the dining-room. This done, he felt that the garrison was prepared to meet the storm.

But when he returned to the surgery, the doctor gave a further order.

"Find a long plank," he said, "as wide as the stairs—nail two together, if you cannot find one wide enough—and drive nails through it so that their points stand up."

The necessary material was soon found. When it was thickly studded with nails, the doctor bade them make a hole in it, pass a rope through the hole, and tie it to the newel of the staircase. Ahmed guessed the purpose it was designed for; for the present he laid it on its side, so that there was free passage up and down the stairs.

It was a full hour before the attack was resumed. Looking from a window, Ahmed saw the street beyond the compound thronged with rebels, some sepoys, but the majority Irregulars. Ladders were placed against the wall, and the enemy began to swarm up. There was a volley from the defenders collected at the door of the house. Several of the men who had mounted the wall fell back; others, finding themselves unsupported, gave way before the rush of their opponents, who dashed across the compound and thrust their bayonets fiercely upwards. For a moment the top of the wall was clear, but the defenders had fired their pieces, and Ahmed knew that a determined rush by the enemy must swamp the little band. The question was, Would this rush come before the men could reload? They were hard at work charging their muskets. He shouted to the Sikhs in the house to come to the support of their comrades, and then ran to the back to see how things were faring there.

Ahmed was surprised to find things very quiet in that direction. He heard the sound of a pistol-shot from above. The doctor had stationed himself at the back window, which had been partially shuttered, and fired one pistol while the khansaman loaded the other. He was a fine pistol-shot. The wall at the back prevented the mob in the narrow lane from firing at the window. But, as soon as a head showed itself above the wall, the doctor never failed to hit. For a few minutes the mutineers were baffled, but they soon rose to the situation, swarmed into a house on the other side of the lane, beyond pistol-shot, and began to fire at the shuttered window with their muskets. In a minute or two the doctor was forced from his position. A splinter from the woodwork had slightly wounded him; to stay where he was would have been merely to court death.

Once more the enemy in the lane were emboldened to climb the wall and gain the roof of the colonnade. They also swarmed into the gardens of the next houses, and began to mount the wall from three sides. One of the corporals had ordered the men to reserve their fire until the enemy began to leap down into the garden, knowing that half-a-dozen men within were equal to many times their number dropping one by one from the roof of the colonnade. But the situation was now changed. It was not a question of two or three to one, but thirty or forty to one, and a very determined rush by the enemy might cut the men off from the house altogether. Ahmed saw the danger. Rushing across the garden, he called to the Sikhs to make a dash for the doorway. The men instantly obeyed; in the excitement of the moment they did not stop to question who it was that was giving them orders; it was instinctive with them to obey commands delivered in that sharp, decisive way. But the corporal did not understand the words: he only saw the Sikhs rushing back to the house; and he turned on Ahmed and began to ask, in the lurid vernacular of the British soldier, what he meant by interfering. There was no time to answer. The enemy seized this moment to charge. Ahmed with his sword cut down one of the men before he had recovered from his leap: the corporal's bayonet disposed of another. Then the Englishman became alive to the danger, and with Ahmed sprinted across the garden to the house. One of the Sikhs was waiting to slam the door as soon as they got through. Another, just behind, stood with levelled musket, and took a snap-shot at the man immediately behind Ahmed. The mutineer fell, tripping up the man following him, and giving Ahmed the fraction of a second that was necessary to slip in behind the corporal and bar the door. Two other Sikhs at once occupied the loopholes, and in another second or two their fire brought down two of the leading mutineers.

The doctor, meanwhile, had cried to the other men to post themselves at the back windows, the shutters of which also were loopholed, and they too fired among the throng now crowding into the garden from three sides. There were not wanting men of courage among the assailants, and several of them rushed up to the windows with the idea of firing through the loopholes, which were plainly to be seen, if only by the smoke filtering through them; but the inside of the house being higher than the outside, they were unable to reach high enough to get an aim. All they could do was to fire at the shutters, and a scattered volley of bullets thudded upon them. For the most part they embedded themselves in the woodwork. One or two actually penetrated the loopholes, but being fired from below, they failed to hit the men behind, who had retired slightly from the windows to reload.