Tales of terror
loaded with double charges of grape and canister, and placed in such a
position that they commanded the approaches.
While these preparations were developing Shelton received orders to do
all in his power to hold a house which had been used as a Government
depôt, and contained accoutrements and other stores, besides a number
of rifles. He procured an ample supply of ammunition from the magazine,
and he had with him a sergeant and a corporal. Blanche would have
refused to have left him, even supposing he had wished it, but he
knew there was nowhere he could send her to where she was likely to
be safer than there. And so she insisted on being furnished with a
revolver--which she had learned to use since her arrival in India--and
she vowed that she would stand by his side to the death.
The morning sun was rising in a glory of crimson splendour when
the mutineers, stained with blood and dust and grimed with powder,
swarmed over the Jumna and clattered into Delhi. Under the windows of
the palace they surged, and called for the king--that white-haired,
treacherous old villain, who believed that his hour of triumph had
struck, and that the house of Moghul would be restored to its ancient
splendour. The rebels were admitted by the Mohammedan guard, and then
they almost shook the wall with a thunderous shout of ‘Glory to the
Padishah and death to the Feringhees!’
Swelled now by their comrades of the palace they swarmed into the town,
cutting down every European they met, and a detachment rushed for the
house held by Shelton and his sweetheart and his two other companions.
The lower doors and windows had been barricaded; and from the upper
windows a well-delivered fire checked for a moment the onrush of the
mutineers. But it was only for a moment. Some of their number had gone
down into the dust, but that only served to still further madden the
survivors, who stormed the house, to be beaten back, however, once more
by the defenders’ fire. Recovering themselves, they fired a volley at
the windows, and one of the bullets struck the corporal dead.
Shelton saw now that it would be impossible to hold the place for many
minutes, and he turned with anxious gaze to the beloved woman at his
side. Her face was pale as death, but she was calm, and in her hand she
still grasped the smoking revolver. Every barrel was empty, and she had
sent at least four of the rabble to their account.
‘My beloved,’ he exclaimed in a tone of despair, ‘I fear that hope of
saving you has passed.’
‘Yes, darling,’ she said, quietly. ‘Hope for us in this world has gone;
but we shall be united in the next. Load the revolver again.’
He quickly thrust a cartridge into each barrel, and returned it to her,
and at the same moment he saw his brave and only remaining soldier
companion go down, shot through the head. Then he kicked in the head of
a barrel of powder he had taken the precaution to have brought up, and
passing his arm round Blanche’s waist he was about to fire his revolver
into the powder, when he suddenly changed his mind, and said hurriedly:
‘Darling, I believe we can escape and find safety in the fort.’
‘Where you go, I will go,’ she answered.
Hurriedly fixing a few feet of slow match to the powder barrel he
lighted the loose end; then taking Blanche’s hand they hurried down
the stairs, revolvers in hand. They gained the back door, which led
into the garden, and by almost superhuman effort they removed the
barricading of the door and rushed out and cleared the garden before
their escape was discovered. But at that moment there was a tremendous
explosion, and the house they had just left crumbled to ruins. For some
minutes the mutineers were scattered by the shock, and it seemed as if
the brave Shelton and the equally brave Blanche would gain shelter.
But they were seen, and a swarm of mounted soldiers sped after them.
Placing Blanche against a wall Shelton stood in front of her, and
emptied his revolver at the advancing horsemen, and two of their number
pitched from their saddles, but the next moment the faithful lovers
fell, clasped in each other’s arms, and riddled with bullets. In life
they had loved and hoped, and in death they were not divided; their
hopes would become fruition in a better and a brighter world.
In the meantime how fared it with the brave defenders of the fort?
Baffled in their attempt to obtain possession of the house the
mutineers rushed to the magazine with their rallying cry of ‘Deen,
deen!’ Willoughby and his noble band were prepared for them. They had
concentrated their nine-pounder guns, and behind them had piled up as
much ammunition as they had had time to procure. A few yards away was a
heap of powder, and a train carried from it into the magazine itself,
where the heads had been knocked out of many of the barrels and the
powder scattered, with loaded shells placed in it. There were tons of
powder, shells, and explosives of all kinds; and when further defence
was found to be impossible the train was to be fired.
While the howling troopers on horse and foot were speeding to the fort,
mounted messengers were sent from the king to demand from Willoughby
the surrender of the place.
‘Back to your royal master, slaves,’ was the haughty and defiant
answer, ‘and tell him to come himself and we will surrender the ruins,
together with our corpses, to him.’
The messenger made known this defiant answer to the mutineers, who were
now clamouring round in a surging, jostling mass, and a determined
rush was made for the gate. But they fell back as a withering storm
of grape shot tore through them. That storm was most destructive in
its effects; but the soldiers and the rabble that had joined them from
the slums and dens of the city were too strongly bent on slaying the
Feringhees to allow themselves to be defeated by the slaughter of some
of their number. So gathering themselves together again, they howled
‘Deen, deen!’ and made another rush, but once more they were hurled
back by the blast of fire and shot.
Seldom in the annals of warfare has there been a more stubborn, more
heroic, defence made by a handful of men against a host of trained
soldiers than was made by Willoughby and his comrades; for, be it
remembered that they were fighting regiments of soldiers who had been
trained and drilled in the art of warfare by the English themselves,
and, as often proved before and since, the Sepoy makes almost as good
a fighting-man as his white brother, although he perhaps lacks in that
stubbornness and unconquerable determination which are peculiarly
characteristic of the Englishman. But in the case we are dealing with
the Sepoys were stubborn enough. They knew, indeed, that it was death
or victory with them. And they quite believed that if they could but
obtain the immense accumulation of ammunition stored in the Delhi
arsenal, not only could they hold the city of the Moghuls against all
the armies of England, but that they could actually conquer India.
For it was big guns and shot and shell they wanted, and from nowhere
else could they obtain them save Delhi. It was, therefore, their only
hope, and it may safely be asserted that not one amongst them deemed
it possible that the stores would not fall into their hands, as it was
well known that only nine men held the fort. But what they did not know
was that those nine men were unconquerable.
It is no disparagement of the rest to say that Willoughby, by his
magnificent example, inspired the others to greater deeds of valour.
When on the evening of the 1st of May, as he sat on the verandah of
the colonel’s bungalow at Meerut, he had stated that he would blow the
magazine up rather than surrender it, he made no idle boast. But his
belief was, as he and his noble companions worked the guns and kept
the howling foe at bay, that the necessity to destroy the magazine
would not arise, since they would be able to hold out till succour
reached them from Meerut. For not knowing the extent of the disaster
which had overwhelmed that station, he naturally expected some portion
of its strong garrison would immediately be despatched to Delhi’s
relief. But, alas! when the hoofs of the mutinous troopers’ horses rung
upon the bridge that spanned the Jumna before Delhi, they sounded the
death-knell of every British resident in the city, with some three or
four exceptions.
There is an expressive Hindostanee word, _lachar_, which means helpless
and something more; and at this awful crisis in our Indian rule the
English were certainly lachar. They might slay many of their foes, but
they could not save their lives or property. Such as were soldiers
knew that it was one of the risks attending their profession of arms
that they might be called upon at any moment to fight for and lay down
their lives. But it was hard, it was pitiable, it was maddening, that
the dear women and sweet children should fall a prey to the brutal and
tiger-like ferocity of the revolted soldiers, and there is no doubt
that the thought of their loved ones nerved many an arm to fight with
the heroism of desperate despair.
For five long hours did Willoughby keep the host at bay; and often and
often during those dreadful hours did he rush to the bastion on the
river face and turn his gaze in the direction of Meerut, hoping to see
the succour he expected coming in the shape of a regiment of English
soldiers speeding on with all the speed their chargers were capable of.
But the plain was misty with dust and heat; and not a living thing was
in sight beyond the river save some vultures that hovered lazily in the
heated air as if waiting patiently for the feast they knew would soon
be theirs.
And during those five hours the mutineers charged again and again at
the gate which was so ably defended, but each time they recoiled,
leaving a heap of their dead. No accurate record has come to us of the
number of their slain on that awful day, but it has been computed at
thousands, for mingling with the soldiers was an immense gathering
of civilians who had armed themselves with all sorts of weapons,
and poured forth to assist in massacring the English. But still the
enormous number of their dead did not deter them. Indeed, the sight
only served to frenzy them still more. Horses and men--soldiers and
civilians--encumbered the ground, victims to the grape and canister
belched forth by the nine-pounders. And the constantly accumulating
heaps made it difficult for the living to reach the gate which they
hoped to batter in. At last, however, they bethought themselves of
ladders. The marvel is that they had not thought of them before. Scores
of ladders were soon procured when once they had been suggested, and
then with shouts and cries that rent the very air the mutineers began
to swarm up the walls.
And now brave Willoughby felt that the supreme moment had come at last.
Never had soldier more nobly, more devotedly, and more heroically done
his duty. But he saw, alas! that his efforts were useless. For the
last time he rushed to the bastion. One more look--a long, anxious
look--over that great plain that was all a quiver with the fierce
heat of the unchecked sun. But not a sign was there of the hoped-for
succour. Meerut had failed them, and there was nothing left now but to
die. Then the splendid hero went back to his guns.
‘Comrades,’ he said, ‘we are abandoned to our fate. Meerut has not
sent, perhaps could not send, us help. But though we are defeated we
are not conquered. We have as soldiers done our duty, and defended
to the last the stores committed to our care. Further defence is
impossible, and there is but one more thing to do, and that is to die.’
He raised his sword as the prearranged sign, word was then passed by
one of his lieutenants to Scully, who stood ready. Scully lit his match