[61] "The Black Water," i.e. the sea, which no orthodox Hindoo can cross without loss of caste.
APPENDIX C
A FEW WORDS ON SWORD-BLADES
A short time back I read an article on sword-blades, reprinted I believe from some English paper. Now, in a war like the Mutiny sword-blades are of the utmost importance to men who depend on them either for taking or preserving life; I will therefore state my own experience, and give opinions on the swords which came under my observation, and I may at once say that I think there is great room for improvement in our blades of Birmingham manufacture. I consider that the swords supplied to our officers, cavalry and artillery, are far inferior as weapons of offence to a really good Oriental tulwâr. Although an infantry man I saw a good deal of sword-practice, because all the men who held the Secundrabâgh and the Begum's Kothee were armed with native tulwârs from the King of Oude's armoury, in addition to their muskets and bayonets, and a large proportion of our men were killed and wounded by sword-cuts.
In the first place, then, for cutting our English regulation swords are too straight; the Eastern curved blade is far more effective as a cutting weapon. Secondly, our English swords are far too blunt, whereas the native swords are as keen in edge as a well-stropped razor. Our steel scabbards again are a mistake for carrying sharp blades; and, in addition to this, I don't think our mounted branches who are armed with swords have proper appliances given to them for sharpening their edges. Even in time of peace, but especially in time of war, more attention ought to be given to this point, and every soldier armed with a sword ought to be supplied with the means of sharpening it, and made to keep it with an edge like a razor. I may mention that this fact was noticed in the wars of the Punjâb, notably at Râmnugger, where our English cavalry with their blunt swords were most unequally matched against the Sikhs with tulwârs so keen of edge that they would split a hair.
I remember reading of a regiment of British cavalry charging a regiment of Sikh cavalry. The latter wore voluminous thick puggries round their heads, which our blunt swords were powerless to cut through, and each horseman had also a buffalo-hide shield slung on his back. They evidently knew that the British swords were blunt and useless, so they kept their horses still and met the British charge by lying flat on their horses' necks,[62] with their heads protected by the thick turban and their backs by the shields; and immediately the British soldiers passed through their ranks the Sikhs swooped round on them and struck them back-handed with their sharp, curved swords, in several instances cutting our cavalry men in two. In one case a British officer, who was killed in the charge I describe, was hewn in two by a back-handed stroke which cut right through an ammunition-pouch, cleaving the pistol-bullets right through the pouch and belt, severing the officer's backbone and cutting his heart in two from behind. It was the same in the Balaclava charge, both with the Heavy and the Light Brigade. Their swords were too straight, and so blunt that they would not cut through the thick coats and sheep-skin caps of the Russians; so that many of our men struck with the hilts at the faces of the enemy, as more effective than attempting to cut with their blunt blades.
In the article on English sword-blades to which I have referred, stress is laid on the superiority of blades of spring steel, tempered so that the tip can be bent round to the hilt without breaking or preventing the blade assuming the straight immediately it is released. Now my observations lead me to consider spring steel to be totally unfitted for a sword-blade. The real Damascus blade that we have all read about, but so few have seen, is as rigid as cast-iron, without any spring whatever,—as rigid as the blade of a razor. The sword-blade which bends is neither good for cut nor thrust, even in the hands of the most expert and powerful swordsman. A blade of spring steel will not cut through the bone; directly it encounters a hard substance, it quivers in the hand and will not cut through. Let any sword-maker in Birmingham try different blades in the hands of an expert swordsman on a green tree of soft wood, and the rigid blade of well-tempered steel will cut four times as deep as the blade of highly tempered spring steel which you can bend into a circle, tip to hilt. My opinion is that the motto of a sword-blade ought to be the same as the Duke of Sutherland's—"Frangas non flectes, Thou mayest break but not bend"; and if blades could be made that would neither break nor bend, so much the better.
I believe that the manufacture of real Damascus steel blades is a lost art. When serving in the Punjâb about thirty years ago, I was well acquainted with an old man in Lahore who had been chief armourer to Runjeet Sing, and he has often told me that the real Damascus blades contained a large percentage of arsenic amalgamated with the steel while the blades were being forged, which greatly added to their hardness, toughness, and strength, preserved the steel from rust, and enabled the blades to be sharpened to a very fine edge. This old man's test for a sword-blade was to get a good-sized fish, newly caught from the river, lay it on a soft, yielding bed,—cotton quilt folded up, or any soft yielding substance,—and the blade that did not cut the fish in two across the thickest part behind the gills, cutting against the scales, at one stroke, was considered of no account whatever. From what I have seen no sword-blade that bends, however sharp it may be, will do that, because the spring in the steel causes the blade to glance off the fish, and the impetus of the cut is lost by the blade quivering in the hand. Nor will any of our straight sword-blades cut a large fish through in this manner; whereas the curved Oriental blade, with a drawing cut, severs it at once, because the curved blade presents much more cutting surface. One revolution of a circular saw cuts much deeper into wood than one stroke of a straight saw, although the length of the straight saw may be equal to the circumference of the circular one. So it is with sword-blades. A stroke from a curved blade, drawn through, cuts far deeper than the stroke from a straight blade.[63]