Playing with Fire: A Story of the Soudan War

by James Grant

Side by side, with a ringing and defiant cheer, these few Britons galloped against the living flood that was led by a sheikh in brilliant floating robes.

'He is the Mahdi—he is the Mahdi!' cried Lindsay, and such Hicks and all who followed him supposed that sheikh, but in mistake, to be.

He was splendidly mounted, and in addition to his Mahdi surcoat and floating robes wore a glittering Dharfour helmet, with a tippet of chain-mail and a long shirt of the same defensive material. Through this the sword of Hicks gave him a deadly cut in the arm, and his sword-hand dropped, but with the other he contrived to hurl a club, which unhorsed the General, who was then slain; but the mailed warrior, who looked like a Crusader of the twelfth century, was hewn down by Roland through helmet and head to the chin, and just as he fell above Hicks all the staff perished then on foot, their horses being speared or hamstrung—all gallant and resolute soldiers, Fraser, Farquhar, Brodie, Walker, and others—fighting back to back or in a desperate circle.

One moment Roland saw the last of them, erect in all the pride and strength of manhood, inspired by courage and despair—his cheeks flushed, his eyes flashing, while handling his sword with all the conscious pride of race and skill; and the next he lay stretched and bleeding on the heap beside him, with the pallor in his face of one who would never rise again.

In that mêlée no less than three Emirs of the False Prophet fell under the sword of Lindsay, who cut his way out and escaped alone; and spattered with blood from the slain, as well as from two sword-wounds in his own body, spurred rearward his horse, which had many a gash and stab, but carried him clear out of the field and onward till darkness fell, and he found himself alone—alone in the desert. There the whitening skeleton of more than one camel—the relic of a caravan—lay; and there the huge Egyptian vultures ('Pharaoh's chickens,' as they are called), with their fierce beaks, great eyes, and ample wings, were floating overhead on their way to the field, for the unburied slain attract these flocks from a wonderful distance.

When his horse sank down, Lindsay remained beside it, helpless and weary, awaiting the blood-red dawn of the Nubian sun.

As he lay there under the stars that glittered out of the blue sky like points of steel, many a memory of the past, of vanished faces, once familiar and still loved; of his home at Earlshaugh, with its wealth of wood and hill; and recollections which had been growing misty and indistinct came before him with many a scene and episode, like dissolving views that melted each other, as he seemed to himself to sink into sleep—the sleep that was born of fatigue, long over-tension of the nerves, and loss of blood.

For weeks he was returned as one of the slain who had perished at Kashgate; but Roland was hard to kill. He had reached Khartoum—how he scarcely knew—ere Gordon, the betrayed and abandoned by England, had perished there; and eventually regained the headquarters of his regiment, then with the army of occupation in Lower Egypt.

Of all this, and much more, with reference to her cousin had Hester Maule read in the public prints; but little or nothing of his adventures in the East could she glean from him, as he seemed very diffident and loth to speak of himself, unlike her father, Sir Harry, who was never weary of his reminiscences of the war in Central India, particularly the siege and capture of Jhansi under Lord Strathnairn, of gallant memory.

So the bearing of Roland Lindsay at the battle of Kashgate and elsewhere had proved that he was worthy of the old historic line from which he sprang; and that there was a latent fire, energy, and spirit of the highest kind under his calm, easy, and pleasant exterior.