The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

Moore, pushing at the boat in this fashion, with broken collar-bone, was shot through the heart. Ashe and Bowden and Glanville shared the same fate. Soon the dying and the dead on the deck of this shot-pelted boat were as many as the living. “We had no food in the boat,” wrote Mowbray Thomson afterwards; “the water of the Ganges was all that passed our lips. The wounded and the dead were often entangled together in the bottom of the boat.”

When evening came the boat ran heavily aground. Under the screen of darkness the women and children were landed, and the boat, with great effort, floated again; the Sepoys accompanying the operation with volleys of musketry, flights of burning arrows, and even a clumsy attempt at a fire-ship. “No one slept that night, and no one ate, for food there was none on board.”

When day broke the tragical voyage was continued, still to an accompaniment of musketry bullets. At two o’clock the boat stranded again. “Major Vibart,” says Mowbray Thomson, “had been shot through one arm on the preceding day. Nevertheless, he got out, and, while helping to push off the boat, was shot through the other arm. Captain Turner had both his legs smashed, Captain Whiting was killed, Lieutenant Harrison was shot dead.” These are sample records from that strange log.

Towards evening a boat, manned by some sixty Sepoys, appeared in pursuit, but it, too, ran upon a sand-bank, and this gave the sahibs an opportunity at which they leaped with fierce joy. From the sorely battered boat, which had been pelted for nearly two days and nights with bullets, a score of haggard and ragged figures tumbled, and came splashing, with stern purpose, through the shallows. And then, for some twenty breathless minutes, the Sepoys, by way of change, instead of being hunters, became the hunted, and only some half-dozen, who were good swimmers, escaped to tell their comrades what the experience was like. Mowbray Thomson tells the story in disappointingly bald prose. “Instead of waiting for them to attack us,” he says, “eighteen or twenty of us charged them, and few of their number escaped to tell the story.”

Night fell black and stormy, and through falling rain and the sighing darkness the boat, with its freight of dead and dying, drifted on. It recalls the ship of which Tennyson sang, with its “dark freight, a vanished life.” In the morning it was found that the boat had drifted into some backwater whence escape was impossible. The Sepoys lined the bank and fired heavily. Vibart, who was dying, but still remained the master spirit of the little company, ordered a sally. “Whilst there was a sound arm among them that could load and fire, or thrust with the bayonet,” says Kaye, “still the great game of the English was to go to the front and smite the enemy, as a race that seldom waited to be smitten.”

Mowbray Thomson and Delafosse, with some twelve men of the 82nd and 34th, clambered over the side of the boat, waded ashore, and charged the Sepoys, who fled before them. They pressed eagerly on, shooting and stabbing, but presently found new crowds of the enemy gathering in their rear. The gallant fourteen faced about, and fought their way back to where they had left the boat. Alas! it had vanished.

They commenced to march along the river-bank in the direction of Allahabad, with an interval of twenty paces between each man, so as to make the fire of their pursuers less deadly. Shoeless, faint with hunger, bareheaded, they fought their way for some miles. Their pursuers grew rapidly in numbers and daring. One Englishman had fallen; the others wheeled suddenly round, and seized a small Hindu temple, determined to make a last stand there. There was just room enough for the thirteen to stand upright in the little shrine. Their pursuers, after a few minutes’ anxious pause, tried to rush the door; but, as the historian of the fight puts it, “there was no room for any of them inside”—though, as it turned out, a good deal of room was required outside for the dead bodies of those who had made the attempt.

An effort was made to smoke out, and then to burn out, the unconquerable sahibs. When these devices failed, gunpowder was brought up, and arrangements made for blowing the entire shrine, with its indomitable garrison, into space. Seeing these preparations, the British charged out. Seven of them, who could swim, stripped themselves, and headed the sally, intending to break through to the river.

Seven naked sahibs, charging through smoke and flame, with levelled bayonets, would naturally be a somewhat disquieting apparition, and the seven had no difficulty in breaking through their enemies, and reaching the Ganges. The other six, who could not swim, ran full into the Sepoy mass, and died mute and fighting.