[35] Bedstead.
[36] The lowest Hindoo caste.
CHAPTER X
THE STRANGE STORY OF JAMIE GREEN
When we returned to Cawnpore, although we had been barely two months away, we found it much altered. Many of the burnt-down bungalows were being rebuilt, and the fort at the end of the bridge of boats had become quite a strong place. The well where the murdered women and children were buried was now completely filled up, and a wooden cross erected over it. I visited the slaughter-house again, and found the walls of the several rooms all scribbled over both in pencil and charcoal. This had been done since my first visit in October; I am positive on this point. The unfortunate women who were murdered in the house left no writing on the walls whatever. There was writing on the walls of the barrack-rooms of Wheeler's entrenchment, mostly notes that had been made during the siege, but none on the walls of the slaughter-house. As mentioned in my last chapter, we only halted one day in Cawnpore before crossing into Oude, and marching to Oonâo about the 10th of February, we encamped there as a guard for the siege-train and ordnance-park which was being pushed on to Lucknow.
While at Oonâo a strange thing happened, which I shall here set down. Men live such busy lives in India that many who may have heard the story at the time have possibly forgotten all about it, while to most of my home-staying readers it will be quite fresh.
Towards the end of February, 1858, the army for the siege of Lucknow was gradually being massed in front of the doomed city, and lay, like a huge boa-constrictor coiled and ready for its spring, all along the road from Cawnpore to the Alumbâgh. A strong division, consisting of the Forty-Second and Ninety-Third Highlanders, the Fifty-Third, the Ninth Lancers, Peel's Naval Brigade, the siege-train, and several batteries of field-artillery, with the Fourth Punjâb Infantry and other Punjâbee corps, lay at Oonâo under the command of General Sir Edward Lugard and Brigadier Adrian Hope. We had been encamped in that place for about ten days,—the monotony of our lives being only occasionally broken by the sound of distant cannonading in front—when we heard that General Outram's position at the Alumbâgh had been vigorously attacked by a force from Lucknow, sometimes led by the Moulvie, and at others by the Begum in person. Now and then somewhat duller sounds came from the rear, which, we understood, arose from the operations of Sir Robert Napier and his engineers, who were engaged in blowing up the temples of Siva and Kâlee overlooking the ghâts at Cawnpore; not, as some have asserted, out of revenge, but for military considerations connected with the safety of the bridge of boats across the Ganges.
During one of these days of comparative inaction, I was lying in my tent reading some home papers which had just arrived by the mail, when I heard a man passing through the camp, calling out, "Plum-cakes! plum-cakes! Very good plum-cakes! Taste and try before you buy!" The advent of a plum-cake wallah was an agreeable change from ration-beef and biscuit, and he was soon called into the tent, and his own maxim of "taste and try before you buy" freely put into practice. This plum-cake vendor was a very good-looking, light-coloured native in the prime of life, dressed in scrupulously clean white clothes, with dark, curly whiskers and mustachios, carefully trimmed after the fashion of the Mahommedan native officers of John Company's army. He had a well-developed forehead, a slightly aquiline nose, and intelligent eyes. Altogether his appearance was something quite different from that of the usual camp-follower. But his companion, or rather the man employed as coolie to carry his basket, was one of the most villainous-looking specimens of humanity I ever set eyes on. As was the custom in those days, seeing that he did not belong to our own bazaar, and being the non-commissioned officer in charge of the tent, I asked the plum-cake man if he was provided with a pass for visiting the camp? "Oh yes, Sergeant sâhib," he replied, "there's my pass all in order, not from the Brigade-Major, but from the Brigadier himself, the Honourable Adrian Hope. I'm Jamie Green, mess-khânsama[37] of the late (I forget the regiment he mentioned), and I have just come to Oonâo with a letter of introduction to General Hope from Sherer sâhib, the magistrate and collector of Cawnpore. You will doubtless know General Hope's handwriting." And there it was, all in order, authorising the bearer, by name Jamie Green, etc. etc., to visit both the camp and outpost for the sale of his plum-cakes, in the handwriting of the brigadier, which was well known to all the non-commissioned officers of the Ninety-Third, Hope having been colonel of the regiment.