Thus, cantonment life went on pretty much the same as usual—the parade after gunfire, the officers and ladies riding or driving on the course, or the former idling in the verandas of the bungalows, sipping iced drinks or brandy-pawnee, studying the last Bengal Hurkaru or the thermometer; and the pandies cooking their food—rice and chillies, chupatties and ghee, under the glaring sun, in their own lines, and careful that the baleful shadow of no European passer should, during the process, fall across it. Our chief fear was that the approach of some thousand natives and deserters, led by Koer Sing, steeped in slaughter and flushed with conquest and crime, might in an hour change the face of things, and find us fighting for bare existence with the very men who shared the garrison duty of the cantonment with us.
Captain Basil Heron, who commanded us—a handsome man, in the prime of life, a great favourite with us all, and the leader in all manly sports and schemes for our welfare—with Captain Dalton, who commanded the Punjaubees, began to take quietly some measures to render the Residency, the only brick edifice there, more defensible than it was, a place wherein to place the European women and children in case of emergency.
Captain Heron had a wife—a fair and delicate English girl—and one little child, on whom they both doted; and when I saw the expression of haggard anxiety their faces wore, and the faces of others who had such charges to love and protect, I thanked Heaven that then and there I had neither wife nor child to care for, nor aught to look after but my old 'Brown Bess.'
Rumours that precautions were being taken spread like lightning through the native lines, and Buktawur Sing, the Subadar-Major of the Punjaubees, a grotesquely ferocious-looking fellow, with a large hook nose, and black mustachios of such enormous length that they floated over his shoulders, went to Captain Heron, and, with his base eyes full of tears, besought him not to send the ladies and children out of the cantonments, as the whole of his regiment had sworn on the waters of the Ganges 'to be true to their salt.' Captain Heron heard this promise doubtfully; but Mrs. Heron, who sat there with her baby crowing in her lap, its fat fingers clutching at the golden curls that clustered round her forehead, besought her husband to believe him.
But although he salaamed and bowed very low indeed, my particular chum and comrade, Bill Brierly, who had been more than twelve years in India, expressed to me his firm belief that this was all acting, and that 'the time was at hand when we might look out for squalls!'
And I was sure Bill was right, for I had been on duty as an orderly in the veranda on the evening when Buktawur Sing quitted the captain's bungalow, and there was no vestige of his crocodile's tears as he passed me; but a broad grin spread over his brown face, and a cruel leer came into his eyes as he paused for a few seconds, and listened to the voice of Mrs. Heron, who was singing at the piano.
Despite the promises of Buktawur Sing, Captain Heron, as senior officer, posted a picquet at some distance from the cantonments on the road to Nagode, to cut off communication with the two regiments there—at least, to prevent any concerted movement being arranged; and all postal matters being then at a standstill, we knew little about what was going on around us, but heard only vague and terrifying rumours.
On a night early in July, I was detailed for the picquet on the Nagode road, and Captain Heron resolved to accompany it, though it was under Mr. Drayton of Ours, a middle-sized and handsome fellow, with a delicate-looking face, and much of that self-esteem and imperturbable confidence of character peculiar to many young Englishmen. He had seen service, too, and had on his breast the Crimean medals.
As we paraded in front of Captain Heron's bungalow, he came forth with his sword and revolver, and his pretty young wife clinging to his arm.
'Are you compelled to go, Basil?' she asked.