XI.
There could be no retreat that day and no thought of it. Jundhra and Doonha were in ruins. The bridges were down behind them and Hanadra lay ahead. The British had to win their way into it or perish. Tired out, breakfastless, suffering from the baking heat, the long, thin British line had got—not to hold at bay but to smash and pierce—an over-whelming force of Hindus that was stiffened up and down its length by small detachments of native soldiers who had mutinied.
Numbers were against them, and even superiority of weapons was not so overwhelmingly in their favor, for those were the days of short-range rifle-fire and smoothbore artillery, and one gun was considerably like another. The mutinous sepoys had their rifles with them; there were guns from the ramparts of Hanadra that were capable of quite efficient service at close range; and practically every man in the dense-packed rebel line had a firearm of some kind. It was only in cavalry and discipline and pluck that the British force had the advantage, and the cavalry had already charged once and had been repulsed.
General Turner rode up and down the sweltering firing-line, encouraging the men when it seemed to him they needed it and giving directions to his officers. He was hidden from view oftener than not by the rolling clouds of smoke and he popped up here and there suddenly and unexpectedly. Wherever he appeared there was an immediate stiffening among the ranks, as though he carried a supply of spare enthusiasm with him and could hand it out.
Colonel Carter, commanding the right wing, turned his head for a second at the sound of a horse's feet and found the general beside him.
“Had I better have my wounded laid in a wagon, sir?” he suggested, “in case you find it necessary to fall back?”
“There will be no retreat!” said General Turner. “Leave your wounded where they are. I never saw a cannon bleed before. How's that?”
He spurred his horse over to where one of Bellairs' guns was being run forward into place again and Colonel Carter followed him. There was blood dripping from the muzzle of it.
“We're short of water, sir!” said Colonel Carter.
And as he spoke a gunner dipped his sponge into a pool of blood and rammed it home.