Guns to the Far East (27 page)

Between the courts and buildings occupied by the Residency defenders and the newly captured Moti Mahal lay a scant four hundred and fifty yards of shell-torn ground but, although the distance was trifling, the passage was a dangerous one. Every foot of the way was under continuous fire from guns and muskets in the Kaiser Bagh and from a tall, sandbagged tower, built as an observatory, to the right of the Mess House, which was strongly defended. An officer of Havelock's Force, Lieutenant Moorsom of H.M.'s 52nd, however, successfully ran the gauntlet from a building known as the Engine House, whilst Henry Kavanagh, unable to restrain himself, dashed over in the opposite direction, to be received with cheers by the comrades he had thought never to see again. Ten minutes later, General Sir James Outram and Brigadier-General Havelock, with their respective Staffs, made the perilous crossing to greet their Commander-in-Chief on the road outside the Moti Mahal.

The prolonged outburst of cheering, which signified that the 140-day siege of the Residency was over, reached the men of the
Shannon
Brigade as they continued to work their guns. Their target now was the massive bulk of the Kaiser Bagh Palace—occupied in force by several thousand picked sepoy troops and the key to the rebels' position in the city—a vast maze of buildings, courtyards, and gardens, crowned by gilded domes and cupolas, and defended by batteries of eighteen-and twenty-four-pounder guns. To have taken it by storm would have cost thousands of lives and Sir Colin Campbell, intent only on evacuating the garrison of the Residency without further loss, had decided to bypass it.

“Our task,” William Peel told his officers, later that evening, “is to make the Pandies believe that an assault will be made on the Kaiser Bagh. To convince them, we must bombard the infernal place night and day, while first the sick and wounded and the women and children, and then the garrison, are withdrawn from the Residency. They will be taken by road to the Sikanderbagh—most of them, including the women, on foot—and from there, where
doolies
will meet them, to the Dilkusha and the Martinière, and finally to the Alam Bagh and Cawnpore. All these buildings are held by our troops and, to protect our left flank, Brigadier Russell's brigade has occupied a line of enclosures and houses between here and the Dilkusha. The evacuation will begin the day after tomorrow— the nineteenth. It is hoped that the garrison can be withdrawn by the twenty-third. Between then and now, gentlemen, we have to keep our guns firing … even if they melt! It'll be watch and watch for your guns' crews, and the small-arms men, when they're not on picket, will erect screens out of canvas or any material that comes to hand, and dig a shallow trench, to enable the women and children to pass our position without fear of being hit by enemy musketry.”

He went into careful detail and his officers nodded, asking no questions.

“No leave is being granted to enter the Residency,” Peel added. His hand rested for a moment on Phillip's arm. “I'm sorry but I need you all. You must sleep by your guns as and when you can, gentlemen, because this, if it's to deceive the Pandies, must assume the character of a regular breaching and bombardment. We've got to keep them in the Kaiser Bagh and the only way we shall do so is if we afford them no relief from our fire. And—needless, I feel sure, to tell you—two of our 24-pounders are to remain, with Colonel Ewart and four companies of his Highlanders, as rearguard. Nearer the time, I'll call for volunteer crews to man them.” He grinned at them affectionately. “God bless you all, my boys—I know you'll do what has been asked of you in the true
Shannon
spirit.”

They were wearier than they had ever been but they responded with new-found energy. At times, Phillip wondered whether any of them would ever know peaceful sleep again, for the roar of the guns was continuously in their ears; they wakened to it, from catnaps snatched in the trench they had prepared for the evacuation; they ate beside the belching monsters, their food tasting of gunsmoke and burnt powder, their mouths parched and dry. But it had to be done and they endured it with what cheerfulness they could muster, conscious that the success or failure of the garrison's withdrawal depended largely on their efforts.

Phillip, anxious for news of Harriet, hid his anxiety. Enquiries for her, difficult to pursue in his present circumstances had so far yielded no concrete result but he clung obstinately to the hope that his sister and her children were alive and waited with ever-growing impatience for the evacuation to begin. Preparations were well advanced; the guns of the Artillery brigade were moved to strategic positions along the canal and the road to Dilkusha, and young Arthur Clinton, reporting again for duty during the afternoon, was sent with his nine-pounder and a scratch crew to cover the road between the Moti Mahal and the Sikanderbagh. That evening, the most severely wounded men of the Residency garrison were carried safely along the hurriedly prepared route and, although Brigadier Russell's thinly spread brigade had to beat off two attacks near the canal bridge at dusk, the attackers vanished with the coming of darkness and the
doolies
crossed over the canal unmolested.

The following afternoon, it was announced that the women and children, with the rest of the sick, were leaving the Residency entrenchment. They took a considerable time to pass through the intervening palaces and walled enclosures, and the light was fading when the head of a long, slow-moving procession of carriages, bullock carts, and litters reached the sap below Phillip's gun position. Here all had to dismount from their conveyances in order to walk in single file along the scarp, past an area of open ground which was under fire from the Kaiser Bagh, and then up a slight slope on the far side, protected from enemy musketry only by the makeshift wood and canvas screens Peel had devised. Many of the women and most of the older children were already on foot, Phillip saw, and he turned his glass on them, only to lower it a few moments later when he realised that, in the dim light, it was impossible to make out individual faces among the crowd.

“Commander Hazard …” Peel's voice came from behind and he spun round, startled, not having heard his approach for the thunderous clamour of the guns, whose fire—by order of the Commander-in-Chief—must continue, despite the women's presence.

“Sir?” he acknowledged, a hand to his ear as Peel drew level with him.

“Take a party of twelve small-arms men, if you please,” the
Shannon
's Captain requested formally. “And give those poor souls what assistance you can. I'll relieve you here.” He added, smiling, “I hope you find her, Phillip—and the children too. Good luck!”

Phillip thanked him and, with his twelve seamen, descended to the sap. Quite a number of the women had already entered it, some walking slowly and feeling their way, others —anxious for an end to their ordeal—picking up their skirts and running as fast as they could, obedient to the advice of their escort to keep their heads low. He crossed to a mudspattered carriage, drawn by two emaciated horses and, opening its door, offered his hand to assist the occupants to alight. They did so apprehensively, staring about them as if unable to believe their eyes and Phillip studied them covertly.

They looked wan and ill, as though for a long time they had been deprived not only of food but also of sunlight and fresh air and he found himself wondering whether he would recognise his sister, even if she were among them. It had been almost seven years since he had seen her; she would have changed, in any event, with the years. The Harriet he remembered had been tall and slim, with long fair hair and the bluest of eyes, a beautiful girl just on the verge of womanhood, vivacious and … one of the women grasped his arm.

“Oh, sir …” She was thin and dark, clad in a torn cotton dress, and she sounded frightened. “Do we really have to run across that trench?”

“I'm afraid you must,” Phillip told her. “But don't worry, it …” He saw her legs then and could not suppress a shudder, for they were grossly swollen and covered with open sores. “I'll get one of my sailors to carry you across,” he amended lamely. “Don't worry, it won't take long.”

He yielded his burden to a stalwart young seaman and returned to shepherd a little group of children into the trench, surprised and faintly shocked by their gravity and silence. They asked no questions, gave no greeting, obeyed his instructions instantly and did not flinch when a shower of grapeshot struck the edge of the parapet, spattering them with dust and stones, and he watched them go, sick with pity. Then another woman claimed his attention, a grey-haired, smiling woman, upon whose arm a pale and sickly girl was leaning. She refused his help, assuring him that she could manage and then asked, still smiling, if he was really a naval officer.

“We heard that a naval party had come to our rescue but until I saw you, I did not really believe it. What ship do you belong to?”

“Her Majesty's ship
Shannon,
ma'am,” Phillip answered.

“God bless you!” the grey-haired woman said quietly and he saw that there were tears in her eyes, although the smile remained. As he walked beside her to the trench, he asked about Harriet but she shook her head. “I'm sorry, I don't know for certain. Mrs Dorling, you say, from Sitapur? I remember the ladies from Sitapur arriving, just before the siege began but I … I'm not sure. So many of us have died, you see—the Chaplain, the Reverend Harris, told me only a little while ago that he had conducted five hundred funerals. His wife might know—she's in that carriage just behind us. I'm so sorry I cannot help you.”

Phillip missed the Chaplain's wife in the confusion, as darkness fell and a hail of musket balls struck the carriage from which she and half a dozen others had just descended, killing its syce and causing the horses to bolt. By the time order had been restored and the straggling line of women resumed the crossing, Mrs Harris and her companions had vanished and he was kept too busy to search for her. There were many who had to be carried now, pathetic, puny children and women too weak and ill to walk, and he and the seamen of his party lost count of the number of times they trudged the length of the sap and stumbled up the slope beyond, to hand their burdens to some soldiers of the escort on the other side.

The moon rose and the enemy fire, although random and inaccurate, increased in volume, and several times the procession had to be halted until it slackened sufficiently to permit them to proceed. It was when he had almost given up hope that he saw a little boy of about five or six, dressed in a grubby white sailor suit, coming towards him. The boy was by himself, marching along with grave purposefulness, a tiny rifle roughly fashioned of wood held to his shoulder with military precision. In the moonlight, his face was so like Harriet's, as he remembered it from childhood, that Phillip guessed instantly who he was.

Dropping to his knees beside the small, erect figure, he asked, his voice not steady, “Tell me, youngster—is your name Phillip Dorling?”

The boy stared at him, his thin, unwashed little face puckered in surprise. “Yes, sir, it is,” he confirmed. Then, puzzled, he looked at Phillip's uniform. “You're a sailor, sir, aren't you? Not an Army officer?”

Resisting the impulse to hug him, Phillip nodded, bracing himself to ask the question. “Is your mother with you? Your mother and your sister Augusta?”

“My mother? Oh, yes, sir—she's just behind. Over there.” He pointed. “Augusta's asleep, I think—she's not very well and Mamma is carrying her. Shall I take you to them, sir?”

“If you please,” Phillip said, his throat tight.

Harriet came to meet him, weary, stumbling with the weight of the child in her arms, but with a glad cry of recognition. He could find no words to say, could only repeat her name, as relief flooded over him. She was thin, as all of them were after the long siege, and the lovely fair hair he remembered was cropped short and flecked with silver but … She was alive and he had found her. He took the sleeping child from her and, with his free arm about her shoulders, led her across the sap.

T
he women and children
reached the Sikanderbagh to find Sir Colin Campbell himself waiting to receive and welcome them and a meal set out on cloth-covered trestle tables. The dead from the battle for its possession had been counted and hurriedly buried but still the taint of death hung over the great, one-hundred-fifty-yard-square enclosure, with its battered walls and shot-pitted buildings and Harriet shuddered as she entered it with the rest.

But Sir Colin's welcome was warm and the food, to those who had existed for almost five months on a near-starvation diet, unbelievably lavish, the sight of fresh meat, white bread and butter, fruit, and great urns of tea almost more than they could bear. Exhausted after her long walk through the shelltorn darkness, Harriet contented herself with cups of tea and a ham sandwich, but little Augusta, waking at last, could scarcely contain her delight at the sight of so much food, pointing to it excitedly.

“Mamma, there is a loaf of bread on the table! I'm certain of it—I can see it with my own eyes!”

Phillip, his mouth crammed, asked suddenly, “Mamma who was that gentleman who spoke to me? The one in sailor's uniform, who carried Augusta through the sap?”

“That,” Harriet told him, tears of happiness misting her eyes, “was your Uncle Phillip, darling … the one you are named after. I never expected to see
him
here.”

At eleven o'clock, the march was resumed, with
doolies
or carts for almost all of them, and they reached the Dilkusha at a little after 2 a.m. There were tents pitched into which they all crowded, to sleep the sleep of the exhausted, after partaking of tea and bread and butter provided for them by the officers of the 9th Lancers. Next morning, they were issued with rations by the commissariat and—indescribable joy, to women who had heard nothing from the outside world for so long— letters from home, which had been held in Cawnpore pending the relief, were distributed.