For ever climbing up the climbing wave;
Is it certain that the end for which we struggle so earnestly is good for ourselves or for any one? Sutton had such a mood just now strong upon him. He had been all his life soldiering; a hundred time-honoured phrases had declared it the finest profession in the world; but what did it come to? To be chasing a pack of lawless savages about a country scarcely less savage than themselves, and inflicting a chastisement which no one supposed would be more than temporarily effectual. To drill a handful of freebooters into something sufficiently like discipline to render them effectual as an instrument of destruction; to march up a pass and stamp out the first germs of civilised life by burning a few wretched crops and crumbling hovels; to fire at an enemy always well out of reach, and then march down again; what was there in all this to deserve the thought, the devotion, the sacrifice of life itself, which men so freely gave in its pursuit? Had not life something better worth living for than this? Were not the civilians right who sneered at soldiering as a meet occupation for brainless heads and hands for which, if not kept thus wholesomely employed, Satan was sure to find some less desirable occupation? Thus it came to pass that of all the men who marched in the expedition its leader was the one who was least in love with it.
Two days later Sutton had warmed into his work and was in better spirits. The march had been delightful. The splendid military road, which coiled in and out among the folds of the mountain, robbed the journey alike of anxiety and fatigue. Nothing gives a pleasanter sense of power and triumph over nature than these great engineering exploits. You canter along a splendid road with easy gradients, a scarcely perceptible ascent; there is a precipice above, a precipice below, and no spot anywhere on which, till the hand of science came to make it, a human foot could rest. Every now and then a distant vista reminds you that you are climbing some of the wildest and steepest hill sides in the world. The mountaineers may well cower and fly before a foe who begins with so impressive an achievement, and who cuts his way—resistless as fate itself—across the rocky brow of barriers which it seems half-mad, half-impious to try to scale.
The expedition, Sutton found, was in every way complete. His own regiment was always ready to march at twenty minutes' notice, and the General at Dustypore seemed to have been equally well prepared. The air, despite the hot sun, was fresh and exhilarating; the men were in the very mood for brilliant service. Besides, a peasant who had just been brought in from the district told them that, ten miles across the plain which now stretched away in gentle undulations before them, the enemy was entrenched in strength and intended to show fight. The village had been fortified, the man said, with a wall of earth and stones, and the fighters would be found behind it.
'Then, gentlemen,' cried Sutton, who was standing with a knot of officers at his tent door when the news arrived, 'I propose that we attack them to-night. If we let them have a day to do it in, these scoundrels will give us the slip.'
In half an hour the whole force was on the march. The day was delightfully fresh; the mountain-mists gathered overhead and formed a welcome shelter from the blazing sky. Sutton had his troopers on either flank; then came the tiny battery, looking more like playthings than the grim realities the Armstrongs proved; in the midst of a long line of Native Infantry. The men marched with a will and with the exciting consciousness that in the afternoon there was to be a fight. At noon, when there was a halt to rest the force, the outline of the village wall might be clearly seen, and those who had telescopes could make out an occasional figure creeping stealthily about. There was a little rising ground some half-mile from the village, and here Sutton determined to establish his battery. The tiny telescope-like tubes soon did their work, and the main gate of the village fell inwards with a crash; the mud wall crumbled and fell wherever it was touched, and a thick cloud of dust showed where each ball had lodged. In ten minutes the village was in flames, and Sutton's little army was advancing on it at a run. Presently they got within musket-shot, and bullet after bullet came singing through the air. Sutton was riding, with a trumpeter on the right, half-a-dozen yards in advance of his men; the ground, though firm and safe, grew rougher as they neared the village; and the troops' line was somewhat broken. By this time they could make out the mud wall which had been thrown up in front of the village and measure the paces between it and them. It was a mere nothing, but the men were going at it faster than they should. Two horses were struck and fell heavily just as their riders were pulling them together for the jump. Half-a-dozen more refused: then came the usual scene of rearing, plunging, and dismounted men. There was an instant's check, but only an instant's, for Sutton and the trumpeter were over, and the first dozen men who followed them had knocked the wall level with the ground. Sutton had speedily disposed of two of the hillsmen, who fired their pistols in his face and made at him with their swords; and had galloped up to help the trumpeter, who was having a hard time of it with a Sawar, mounted on a nimble little horse and evidently a competent and practised swordsman. The man turned on his noble antagonist and made a cut which left a deep dent on Sutton's sword-handle. The native had, however, met with more than his match. The others got over just in time to see Sutton cut him down, and his horse gallop wildly off with an empty saddle. The men gave a shout and galloped forward. Then some one from a neighbouring window took a lucky shot. Sutton was at the moment giving an order and pointing with his sword in the direction indicated. His sword flew out of his hand, his arm fell powerless, and his horse, rearing up, fell back upon him. His native aide-de-camp dragged him out from under the horse, which was lying shot through the heart across him. Half-a-dozen men carried him to the rear. Ten minutes later, when the village had been cleared and the troop returned from the pursuit, they found him lying in a crimson pool, insensible, with a broken arm and a bullet-wound in his side, the red stream from which the surgeon, kneeling beside him, was endeavouring in vain to staunch.