Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

Suddenly the British attack came to a halt. The Druids small-arms’ men had a field-piece with them but before they could assemble it the landing-party was ordered to fall back on the beach.

Even as the retreat was under way, another flag was hoisted on the Druid . Captain Mee took a look and turned to Kesri: ‘The signal’s up. We’re to move forward to support the marines.’

Kesri snapped off a salute: Ji, Kaptán-sah’b.

The sepoys and their contingent of supporters were already on deck. The barrels of the howitzers and mortars, each of which weighed several hundred pounds, had been lowered into a cutter earlier; now the rest of the unit followed.

The camp-followers went first, led by the bhistis, their shoulders bowed by the weight of their water-filled mussucks; then came the medical attendants with rolled-up litters, and after them the gun-lascars, bearing the disassembled parts of a howitzer and its gun-carriage. Maddow, the newly recruited gun-lascar, was carrying a pair of hundred-pound wheels as if they were toys, one on each shoulder.

When the sepoys’ turn came, Kesri positioned himself at the head of the side-ladder so that he could observe the men as they filed past: they were unblooded troops after all, going into action as a unit for the first time. As such Kesri would not have been surprised to detect signs of nervousness or distraction on their faces — but he saw saw none of those fleeting, uneasy movements of the eyes that were always a sure indication of skittishness. None of the sepoys so much as glanced at him as they stepped down the ladder: to a man their eyes were fixed on the knapsack ahead. It pleased Kesri to see them moving smoothly, like spokes in a wheel, with their minds not on themselves but on the unit: it meant that the hard work of the last many months had paid off, that their trust in him was so complete that they knew, even without looking, that he was there, his presence as certain and dependable as the hand-rail that was guiding them down the ladder and into the longboat waiting below.

The boat’s tow ropes had already been attached to the Enterprize : the craft surged ahead as soon as Captain Mee and the subalterns had boarded. The sound of the steamer’s paddle-wheel drowned out the rattle of gunfire in the distance; the crossing seemed to take only a few minutes and then they were racing over the gangplank to join the marines at their beachhead.

As the sepoys formed ranks bhistis came running through, pouring water into their brass lotas. In the column beside them, the marines were urinating where they stood, in preparation for the advance. Knowing that there would be no time to relieve themselves once the attack began, the sepoys followed suit.

Captain Mee took command now, ordering the columns to advance, with the marines on the right flank. They ran up the slope at a steady trot and as they came over the top of the elevation, the order to fire rang out. This time the sepoys and marines were able to throw up a thick curtain of fire, even as bullets were whistling over their own heads.

With volley following on volley, the charcoal in the gunpowder created a great cloud of black smoke, reducing visibility to a yard or two. Coughing, spluttering, the sepoys were half-blinded by the acrid smoke and half-deafened by the massed roar of the muskets. But there was no check in their stride: the habits ingrained by their training — hundreds of hours of daily drills — took over and kept them moving mechanically forward.

Kesri was in ‘coverer’ position, in line with the first row of sepoys. After the start of the battle his attention shifted quickly from the opposing lines to his own men. Many a time had he spoken to the sepoys about the surprises of the battlefield — the unpredictability of the terrain, the din, the smoke — yet he knew all too well that the reality always came as a shock, even to the best-prepared men.

Above the booms of the cannon and the steady rattle of musket-fire he caught the sound of a bullet hitting a bayonet, an eerie, vibrating tintinabullation. Looking into the smoke, his eyes sought out the ghostly outline of the sepoy whose weapon had been struck: he was holding his musket at arm’s length, gaping at the Brown Bess as though it had come alive in his hands and were about to skewer him. With a couple of steps Kesri crossed to his side and showed him how to kill the sound, by placing a flat palm upon the metal. Next minute, right behind him, there was the abrupt, metallic pinging of a musket-ball, ricocheting off the brass caging of a sepoy’s topee. The man who had been hit would be deafened by the sound, Kesri knew: the noise would reverberate inside his skull as though his eardrums were being pounded by a mallet. Sure enough, the sepoy — a boy of seventeen — had fallen to his knees, with his hands clasped over his ears, shaking his head in pain. Leaping to his side, Kesri pulled the boy to his feet, thrust his fallen musket into his hands, and pushed him ahead.

In the meantime, the gun-lascars had assembled their gun-carriage; the howitzers opened fire together with the marines’ field-piece. From the squat barrels of the howitzers came dull thudding sounds as they lobbed shells into the fortifications; from the field-piece came deep-throated roars as it hurled grapeshot and canister directly into the ranks of the opposing infantry.

Seeing the Chinese line waver, Captain Mee, who was in the lead, raised his sword to signal a charge. A great howl — Har, har Mahadev! — burst from the sepoys’ throats as they rushed forward. When they emerged from the curtain of smoke, bayonets at the ready, the Chinese line swayed and began to turn; all of a sudden the opposing troops scattered, melting away into the forested hillside.

Now it was all Kesri could do to bring the men to heel: they were in the grip of that euphoria that seizes soldiers after a battle is won, a thing as elemental as the blood-lust of an animal after a hunt. This was when they were at their most dangerous, their discipline at its shakiest: Kesri ran after them, brandishing his sword and shouting dreadful threats as he dhamkaoed and ghabraoed them back into formation — yet in his heart, he was glad that their initiation into combat had happened in this way, in a minor skirmish rather than a pitched battle. As he watched them, sulkily falling back into line, a great pride filled Kesri’s heart: he realized that he would never know a love as deep as that which bound him to this unit, which was largely his own creation, the culmination of his life’s work.

*

Neel was watching from the crest of a nearby hill, along with Zhong Lou-si and his entourage: for him, as for them, the engagement had, through most of its duration, confirmed certain widely held beliefs about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese and British forces. One of these was that British superiority at sea would be offset by Chinese strength on land; that the defenders’ overwhelming advantage in numbers would allow them to repel a ground invasion.

No one in Zhong Lou-si’s entourage was surprised by the damage inflicted by the British broadsides; they were well aware by now of the lethal firepower of steamers, frigates and other Western warships. The defenders too had been warned beforehand and had made preparations to wait out a bombardment. It was the ground assault that would be the real test, they knew, and when it was launched they had taken satisfaction in the minuscule size of the first landing-party — a total of fewer than three hundred men! They were jubilant when the marines and small-arms’ men were forced into retreat by the thousands of Chinese troops that poured out to oppose them. At that moment Compton and his colleagues had felt that their beliefs had been vindicated and the battle had been won.