Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

Now Shireen too paused to dab her eyes. ‘It’s only now that I’ve begun to understand how life takes those turns.’

Mrs Burnham gave her a long, searching look and then came to sit beside her. ‘Things have changed for you, haven’t they, Shireen,’ she said gently, ‘ever since Mr Karabedian came into your life?’

Shireen was choking now; all she could do was nod.

‘But Shireen,’ Mrs Burnham whispered, ‘you’re very lucky you know. You are a widow; you can remarry.’

‘That’s impossible,’ said Shireen adamantly. ‘My children, my family, my community — they would never forgive me. And I have a duty to them after all.’

Mrs Burnham slipped her hand into Shireen’s and gave it a squeeze.

‘Have we not done enough by our duty, Shireen? Do we not also have a duty to ourselves?’

The question caught Shireen unawares, shocking her into silence. She was still trying to think of an answer when a steward stepped in to say that Karabedian-sah’b was at the front door.

*

Once the bombardment had started, the banjee-boys were allowed a brief rest: they seated themselves on the ground, in a sheltered spot. As the barrage intensified they could feel the shock-waves coursing through the earth and into their bodies. The sound was so loud that Raju had to clap his hands over his ears.

Then Dicky jogged his elbow: ‘Look — over there.’

Glancing down the line Raju spotted a man coming towards them with something that looked like a dead goat on his back.

‘It’s the bhisti, bringing water,’ whispered Dicky. ‘This is it — it’s going to start now. The bhisti always comes before the charge.’

When the bhisti reached him Raju drank his fill from the spout of the mussuck before filling his water-flask. Then, following Dicky’s example, he popped a sweet into his mouth.

Just as abruptly as it had begun the barrage stopped. A strange, crackling quiet followed, in which screams could be heard, echoing over from the Chinese lines. Then Captain Mee shouted, ‘Fix bayonets!’ and the fife-major began to call out orders in rapid succession. Suddenly the boys were all on their feet, advancing in echelon, in pace with the sepoys who flanked them on both sides.

Even though Raju had practised the manoeuvre many times he found himself struggling for breath, head spinning. In drills no one warned you about the dust, or the pall of smoke; nor did they tell you that the sepoy beside you might stumble on a cannonball’s crater and lurch towards you in such a way that his bayonet would miss your face by inches. The noise too was almost overpowering, the sheer volume of it: the thudding of feet, the pounding of drums, the ‘Har-har-Mahadev’ battle-cry of the sepoys, and above all that, the whistle and shriek of shots passing overhead. And cutting through all that noise was the eerie, reverberating sound of bullets hitting bayonets.

Raising his eyes, Raju saw that they were now very close to the walls of the fort: he could see the heads of the defenders, topped with conical caps, desperately trying to aim their antiquated matchlocks, which were fired not with a trigger but by holding a slow-burning wick over the touch-hole.

Then all of a sudden the advance stopped.

‘Prepare to fire!’ shouted Captain Mee and the sepoys fell to their knees to prime their muskets. On the next command the soldiers and sepoys threw up a curtain of fire, to cover the sappers who were racing ahead to plant explosives along the breastworks.

The respite came as a godsend to Raju; his throat was parched, his nose clogged with dust, his eyes smarting from the smoke. Within seconds his flask was empty and when a bhisti appeared it seemed as if a prayer had been answered; Raju clung to the spout, sluicing water over his face and into his mouth; he would have emptied the mussuck if Dicky hadn’t shouldered him aside.

In the distance, at the foot of the hill, down by the water, there was another eruption of flame as the Queen and the Nemesis began a second bombardment, aimed, this time, not at the fortifications on the hill but the gun-emplacements along the shore. Then came an explosion that silenced everything else: it was the blast of the sappers’ charges, going off under the breastworks on the hill. When the smoke and debris had cleared Raju caught a glimpse of Major Pratt, with his sabre drawn, racing towards a breach in the walls, followed by a company of marines.

The banjee-boys jumped to their feet, expecting that B Company would be the next to charge into the breach. But then suddenly the fife-major sprang up in front of them: instead of signalling a charge they were to pipe the sepoys’ column into wheeling to the left, on the double.

What was happening? Were they advancing or retreating? Raju did not know or care; his only thought was of staying in step with the other banjee-boys.

They were going downhill now, so the pace accelerated steadily until the whole detachment seemed to be running headlong. One by one the fifers gave up trying to blow on their instruments; there was not enough breath in their lungs. Glimpsing blue waters ahead, Raju realized that they were almost at the bottom of the hill.

Then the road made another turn and they found themselves on an incline that led to the rear of the fort. They saw that the ramparts had crumbled under the bombardment from the two steamers; they saw also that the vessels were still abreast of the battery. The strip of water between them and the shore was filled with the bodies of defendants: some were still alive, thrashing about helplessly. The sailors on the steamers’ decks were picking them off, one by one.

Kesri was in the first rank when the rear of the fort came into view. He saw that hundreds of Chinese soldiers were pouring out of the gates. He guessed that they were being driven out of the walls by the marines, who had attacked the shore-side battery after storming down from the hilltop fort. Now the remaining defendants were rushing out to meet the sepoys in a headlong charge: having endured a bombardment of terrifying intensity they seemed almost to welcome the prospect of hand-to-hand combat.

But the sepoys were prepared for the onrush; falling to their knees they met the charge with a barrage of bullets, mowing down the vanguard and causing panic in the ranks behind. And then, with the Chinese front lines already decimated, the sepoys fell upon the milling survivors at close quarters, with swords and bayonets.

When the two lines collided the shock reverberated through the column. The pace slowed so abruptly that Raju bumped up against the fifer in front of him. Brought suddenly to a halt, Raju and Dicky stood motionless, fifes hanging uselessly in their hands. All around them metal was clanging on metal, drowning out the cries of dying men.

Slowly as the carnage unfolded, Raju and Dicky were pushed ahead by the irresistible weight of those behind them. After a few paces they found themselves stepping over the heaped bodies of slaughtered defenders. Almost without exception the clothes of the Chinese soldiers were scorched or burned — this was true even of those who were still on their feet. When hit by a bullet or a bayonet their clothing would burst into flame and they would light up like torches.

Suddenly the fife-major materialized again, within the cloud of smoke; he told Raju and Dicky to get to work, slinging corpses off the road. Tucking their fifes into their belts they took hold of a pair of lifeless ankles and dragged the corpse to the side of the road, where the hillside sloped into the water, a few yards away. As the body rolled down they noticed that the narrow strip of shore between the road and the channel was filled with the corpses of defenders. They were lying in piles, two or three deep in some places. Many had rolled into the water; the channel seemed to be full of them, floating like logs. On some, the clothes were still burning.