Barclay of the Guides

by Herbert Strang

The doctor shouted to the men to fire alternately, one reloading while the other fired. The mutineers crowding into the garden found themselves exposed to a deadly dropping of bullets of which they themselves could see the fatal results, while they were ignorant of what damage their own fire was doing. There was no cover in the garden except the fountain. Every part of it was commanded from the door or one or other of the windows; the fountain would at best shelter only one or two. They found that every bullet fired by the garrison meant the loss of one of their number. There were several rushes and attempts to batter in the door with the stocks of muskets, or to push the muzzles up through the loopholes, but these always met with the same fate as the first, although one Sikh was badly hit by a splinter.

While the men still kept up their fire, Ahmed rushed through to the front, whence he again heard the din of conflict. There had been another rush up the ladders, met by a fusillade and a charge by the garrison under the British corporal. Again the enemy had been hurled back. Ahmed arrived on the scene just in time to see the last man disappearing from the wall, transfixed by the corporal's bayonet.

Again there was silence both at the back and in front of the house. At the back the crowd of mutineers in the garden had been suddenly seized with panic, their comrades dropping one by one beneath the fire of the garrison without being able to do anything effectual in reply. They had swarmed back over the colonnade, and regained the lane behind or the gardens of the adjacent houses.

Ahmed seized the interval of quiet to hurry up to the doctor, whom he found somewhat shaken by his injury, but perfectly calm. He was, indeed, on the point of descending, to take more direct and effectual command than was possible from the room above.

"I have had a knock," he said, with a smile, "but I think I can manage to crawl down."

"Not so, sahib," said Ahmed. "They are good fighters, the men below, and the English naik is a very good man. But if the sahib would go to the roof perhaps he might call down word of what the Purbiyas are doing. The khansaman and I can help the sahib to go up."

"Chup! I am not so bad as that. Lend me your arm."

He went up, supported by Ahmed. Together they crawled across the roof to the parapet and peeped over. There was a confused hubbub below. In the street at the front of the house they saw Minghal Khan with a group of sepoys, but the greater part of the mob consisted of Irregulars, and their numbers were much increased since the beginning of the attack.

For a time there was a lull; but ere long it became apparent that the enemy were intending a new move. Men appeared on the roof of a house on the far side of the road opposite the doctor's gateway. Others at the same time crowded at the upper windows. A preliminary shot from one of the windows showed that the new position occupied by the enemy dominated the compound in front of the doctor's house, for one of the Sikhs was wounded by it. Indeed, the doctor wondered whether the men could be withdrawn safely from their position underneath the front wall. In running the gauntlet over the exposed portion of the compound, many of them would probably fall beneath the muskets of the enemy in the house opposite. Seeing for a moment that there was no threatening of danger from the direction of the lane at the rear, he bade Ahmed crawl over the roof and send the khansaman, who was acting as orderly, to summon four men from the back of the house. These he ordered to keep up a brisk fire on the men on the roof and at the windows of the house opposite. The doctor's house being higher than the latter, the enemy here were at a great disadvantage. They maintained the musketry duel for a few minutes, then vacated the position; but although the roof of the doctor's house was higher than that of the neighbouring buildings, with the exception of one at some little distance, it was not so much higher as to afford, with its low parapet, complete protection. A fusillade from several buildings at once would make the roof almost untenable, if only by reason of the splinters of brickwork.

That the enemy had realized the weakness of the position on the roof was evident some ten minutes later. Shots began to patter upon the parapet from several directions. The commanding building at a little distance was now occupied. Here the besiegers were on more level terms with the besieged, and bullets began to sing across the roof. First one man and then another was hit, either by bullets or by fragments of the parapet.