Rung Ho! A Novel, Talbot Mundy [free ebook reader for ipad .txt] 📗

cities know it, or the men who riot for advantage. It is a welcome ironically offered up to Death—full-throated, and more freighted with moral effect on an enemy than a dozen salvoes of artillery.

The thousands ahead tried hard to turn again and face two attacks at once; but, though the units were efficiently controlled, there were none who could swing the whole. Byng's decimated, forward-rushing fragment of a mixed brigade, tight-reined and working like a piece of mechanism, struck home into a mass of men who writhed, and fell away, and shouted to each other. A third of them was out of reach, beyond the British rear; fully another third was camped too far away to bring assistance at the first wild onslaught. Messengers were sent to bring them up, but the messengers were overtaken by a horde who ran.

Then, like arrows driven by the bows of death, three squadrons took them on the flank as Cunningham changed direction suddenly and loosed his full weight at the guns. Instead of standing and serving grape, the rebel gunners tried to get their ordnance away—facing about again too late, when the squadrons were almost on them. Then they died gamely, when gameness served no further purpose. The Rangars rode them down and butchered them, capturing every single gun, and leaving them while they charged again at the rallying hordes ahead.

The strange assortment of horsed wagons and the lumbering six-horse coach took full advantage of the momentary confusion to make at a gallop for the British rear, where they drew up in line behind the Sikhs, who were volleying at short range in the centre.

Byng detached two companies of British soldiers to do their amateur damnedest with the guns, and, for infantry, they did good service with them; fifteen or twenty minutes after the first onslaught the enemy was writhing under the withering attention of his own abandoned ordnance. But the odds were still tremendous, and the weight of numbers made the ultimate outcome of the battle seem a foregone conclusion.

From the British rear heads appeared above the rising ground; the deserted camp was rushed and set alight. The tents blazed like a beacon light, and a moment later the Ghoorkas retaliated by setting fire to such of the rebel camp as had fallen into British hands.

It was those two fires that saved the day. From the sky-line to the rebel rear came the thunder of a salvo of artillery. It was the short bark of twelve-pounders loaded up with blank—a signal—and the rebels did not wait to see whether this was friend or foe. Help from one unexpected source had reached the British; this, they argued, was probably another column moving to the relief, and they drew off in reasonably decent order—harried, pestered, stung, as they attempted to recover camp-equipment or get away with stores and wagons, by Cunningham, Alwa, and Mahommed Gunga.

In another hour the rebel army was a black swarm spreading on the eastern sky-line, and on the far horizon to the north there shone the glint of bayonets and helmet spikes, the dancing gleam of lance-tips, and the dazzle from the long, polished bodies of a dozen guns. A galloper spurred up with a message for Byng.

“You are to join my command,” it ran, “for a raid in force on Howrah, where the rebels are supposed to have been concentrating for months past. The idea is to paralyze the vitals of the movement before concentrating somewhere on the road to Delhi, where the rebels are sure to make a most determined stand.”

As he read it Mahommed Gunga galloped up to him, grinning like a boy.

“Cunnigan-sahib's respects, General-sahib! He asks leave to call his men off, saying that he has done all the damage possible with only fifteen hundred.”

“Yes. Call 'em off and send Cunningham to me. How did he shape?”

“Like a son of Cunnigan-bahadur! General-sahib-salaam!”

“No. Here, you old ruffian—shake hands, will you? Now send Cunningham to me.”

Cunningham came up fifteen minutes later, with a Rangar orderly behind him, and did his best to salute as though it were nothing more than an ordinary meeting.

“Oh! Here you are. 'Gratulate you, Cunningham! You came in the nick of time. What kept you?”

“That 'ud take a long time to tell, sir. I've fifteen hundred horses about ten miles from here, sir, left in charge of native levies, and I'd like permission to go and fetch them before the levies make off with them.”

“Splendid! Yes, you'd better go for them. What's in the wagons.”

“The Howrah treasure, sir!”

“What?”

“The whole of the Howrah treasure, sir! It's held as security. Howrah guarantees to keep the peace and protect the homes of my men. I guaranteed to hand him back the treasure when the show's over, less deductions for damage done!”

“Well, I'm—Who thought of that? You or Mahommed Gunga?”

“Oh, I expect we cooked it up between us, sir.”

“H-rrrr-umph! And what's in the six-horse coach?”

“A lady and her father.”

“The deuce they are!”

Byng rode up to the lumbering vehicle, signing to Cunningham to follow him.

“General Byng,” said Cunningham. “Miss McClean, sir.”

A very much dishevelled and very weary-looking young woman with a wealth of chestnut hair leaned through the window and smiled, not at the General but at Cunningham. Byng stared—looked from one to the other of them—and said “Hu-rrrr-umph!” again.

“It was she who made the whole thing possible, sir.”

“The very deuce it was!” It began to be evident that Byng was not a ladies' man!

“This is Mr. McClean, sir—Rosemary's father. He helped her put the whole scheme through.”

Byng nodded to the missionary and looked back at Rosemary McClean—then from her to Cunningham again.

“Hu-rrrr-umph! Christian names already! More 'gratulations, eh?”

Rosemary's head and shoulders disappeared and Cunningham looked foolish.

“Well! Send Mahommed Gunga for the horses. Ride over there to where you see General Evans's column and tell him the whole story. Take a small escort and the treasure with you. And—ah—er—lemme see—take this carriage, too. Oh, by the bye—you'd better ask General Evans to make some arrangements for Miss McClean. Leave her over there with the treasure. I want you back with my brigade, and I want you to be some sort of use. Can't have love-making with the brigade, Mr. Cunningham!”

The Brigadier rode off with a very perfunctory salute.

“Isn't he a rather curmudgeony sort of officer?” asked Rosemary the moment that his back was turned.

“Oh, no!” laughed Cunningham. “That's Byng-bahadur's little way, that's all. He's quite likely to insist on being best man or something of that sort when the show's all over! Wait here while I fetch the escort.”