It would be easy to write, or sing, a new and more wonderful Odyssey made up of the valiant combats, the wild adventures, and the distressful wanderings of little groups of Englishmen and Englishwomen, upon whom the tempest of the Mutiny broke.
Forbes-Mitchell, for example, tells the story of Robert Tucker, the judge at Futtehpore. Tucker was a great hunter, and also, like many Indian officials, an earnestly religious man, with an antique sense of duty. When the Mutiny broke out he despatched every European to Allahabad, but refused to move himself. This solitary Englishman, in a word, was determined to defend Futtehpore against all comers! Believing the native officer in charge of the police to be loyal, he sent a message to him asking him to come and make arrangements for the protection of the Treasury. This “loyal” official sent back word that the judge Sahib need not trouble himself about the Treasury; that, in the cool of the evening, he, with his “loyal” police, would come down and dismiss the dog of a judge himself to Hades!
Tucker had a hunter’s armoury—rifles, smooth-bores, and hog spears. He loaded every barrel, barricaded every door and window, and waited quietly, reading his Bible, till, when the cool breath of evening began to stir, he saw the police and the local budmashes, with the green banner of Islam fluttering over their heads, marching down to attack him. Tucker was offered his life on condition that he abandoned his Christianity. Then the fight broke out. For hours the musketry crackled, and was answered by the sharp note of Tucker’s rifle. Before midnight the brave judge lay, riddled with bullets and pierced with many spear-thrusts, dead on his own floor. But all round his house were strewn the bodies of those who had fallen before his cool and deadly aim.
Later on, at Kotah, a similar tragedy took place, the story of which is told by George Lawrence. Major Burton, the Resident at Kotah, with his two sons—one aged twenty-one, the other a lad of sixteen—and a single native servant, held the Residency for four hours against native troops with artillery, and a huge crowd of rioters. The Residency was at last set on fire, and Major Burton proposed to surrender on condition that the lives of his sons were spared. The gallant lads indignantly refused to accept the terms. They would all die together, they declared. They were holding the roof of the Residency against their assailants, and, as Lawrence tells the story, “they knelt down and prayed for the last time, and then calmly and heroically met their fate.” The mob by this time had obtained scaling-ladders. They swept over the roof, and slew the gallant three. Major Burton’s head was cut off, paraded round the town, and then fired from a gun.
One of the most surprising of these personal adventures was that which overtook the Deputy Commissioner of Delhi, Sir T. Metcalfe. Wilberforce, in his “Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian Mutiny,” tells the tale, and says he heard it twice over from Sir T. Metcalfe’s own lips—though Wilberforce’s stories sometimes are vehemently suspected to belong to the realm of fiction rather than of sober history. His account of Metcalfe’s adventure, however, is at least ben trovato.
Metcalfe escaped from Delhi on horseback, hotly pursued by some native cavalry. His horse broke down, and in despair Metcalfe appealed to a friendly-looking native to conceal him from his pursuers. The man led him to a cave, told him he would save him if possible, and, striking his horse on the flank, sent it galloping down the road, while Metcalfe crept through the black throat of the cave into concealment. Presently Metcalfe heard his pursuers ride up, fiercely question his protector, and finally propose to search the cave.
On this my friend burst out laughing, and, raising his voice so that I must hear, he said, “Oh yes, search the cave. Do search it. But I’ll tell you what you will find. You will find a great red devil in there; he lives up at the end of the cave. You won’t be able to see him, because the cave turns at the end, and the devil always stands just round the turn, and he has got a great long knife in his hand, and the moment your head appears round the corner he will slice it off, and then he will pull the body in to him and eat it. Go in; do go in—the poor devil is hungry. It is three weeks since he had anything to eat, and then it was only a goat. He loves men, does this red devil; and if you all go in he will have such a meal!”
Metcalfe guessed that he was intended to hear this speech and act upon it. The cave, a short distance from the entrance, turned at right angles. He stood with his sword uplifted just round the corner, while a line of dismounted cavalry, in single file, one daring fellow leading, came slowly up the cave. As soon as the leader put his head in the darkness round the corner, Metcalfe smote with all his strength. The fellow’s head rolled from his body, and his companions, with a yell of terror, and tumbling one over another in the darkness, fled. “Did you see him?” demanded Metcalfe’s friend outside. “Do go back; he wants more than one.” But the rebel cavalry had had enough. The men who had gone up the cave declared that they had actually seen the red fiend, and been scorched by the gleam of his eyes; and, mounting their horses, they fled.
“Why did you save my life?” Metcalfe asked his protector. “Because you are a just man,” was the reply. “How do you know that?” asked Metcalfe. “You decided a case against me in your court,” was the unexpected reply. “I and all my family had won the case in the inferior courts by lying, but you found us out, and gave judgment against us. If you had given the case for me I would not have saved your life!”
Wilberforce tells another tale which graphically illustrates the wild adventures of those wild days. Early one morning he was on picket duty outside Delhi, and in the grey dawn saw two men and a boy hurrying along the road from the city. They were evidently fugitives, and, telling his men not to fire on them, Wilberforce went forward to meet them. When the group came up the boy ran forward, threw his arms round Wilberforce’s neck, and, with an exclamation in English, kissed him. The “boy” was a woman named Mrs. Leeson, the sole survivor of the Delhi massacre. She had been concealed for more than three months by a friendly native, and had at last escaped disguised as an Afghan boy.