Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

It was Mr Burnham himself. Zachary saw that many heads had turned to look in his direction, no doubt wondering who this young newcomer was to be singled out for special attention by the victor of the day.

Despite himself, Zachary was flattered and a blush rose to his face. ‘I’m glad to see you, sir!’ he said, energetically pumping Mr Burnham’s hand.

‘I’m glad to see you too, Reid. Especially here. Is it true that you’ve decided to try your hand at trading?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Zachary.

‘Good man, good man!’ said Mr Burnham, patting him on the back. ‘We need more Free-Traders, especially young, energetic white men like yourself. I’ll visit the budgerow soon — I have a proposition that I think will interest you.’

‘I’ll look forward to hearing about it, sir.’

With a nod and a smile Mr Burnham walked away, leaving Zachary transfixed, almost unable to believe his luck.

*

It was not till late February that some of the expedition’s British soldiers began to arrive in Fort William: one battalion of the 26th, known as the Cameronian, and another battalion from Her Majesty’s 49th Regiment. Together with the two companies of Bengal Volunteers, the total strength of the force assembled in Calcutta now came to a little over a thousand men. To Kesri this seemed a paltry number with which to launch an invasion of a country like China. He was glad to be told by Captain Mee that the force was to be strengthened by a battalion from the 18th Royal Irish Regiment, which was now stationed in Ceylon, as well as a small detachment of Royal Marines. But the single largest contingent was to be contributed by the 37th Madras Native Infantry Regiment — more than a thousand sepoys and a sizeable number of sappers, miners and engineers. In total the force would consist of about four thousand men.

The Cameronians were the first to arrive, after a long march from Patna. They had campaigned all over the subcontinent, over a period of several years, and it soon became evident that their years in India had hardened them against Indians: they never missed an opportunity to hurl abuse at sepoys. Particularly offensive was a colour-sarjeant by the name of Orr, who would unloose torrents of galees for no good reason: ‘cowardly kaffirs’, ‘filthy niggers’, ‘black bastards’ and so on. Kesri had to confront him several times and on a couple of occasions they almost came to blows.

Fortunately the Cameronians were billeted at a fair distance from B Company so it wasn’t hard to stay out of their way; Kesri dreaded to think of what might have happened if they had moved into the empty building that adjoined the Bengal Volunteers’ barracks.

Luckily for the sepoys the neighbouring building was assigned to the 49th who were a rowdy but easy-going lot. To live next to them was an interesting novelty for the sepoys: even though they often campaigned with British units they were rarely billeted in adjoining quarters.

With their loud mouths and swaggering ways the men of the 49th quickly transformed what had previously been a quiet corner of the fort. Every evening they would be off drinking, privates and NCOs alike, each in their own canteens. They would remain in them until the firing of the night gun, which was the signal for the closing of all the canteens on the fort’s precincts. Nor was that the end of their revelries, for they, like many other British soldiers, were ingenious in finding ways to procure illicit liquor. The sweepers and bhisties who serviced their barracks made fortunes by smuggling liquor to them, in all kinds of containers — tubes of hollowed-out bamboo and bladders of goatskin that they would conceal under their dhotis. At all times of the night, cries would break out: ‘Where’s that fuckin beasty? I swear I’ll beat the beast out’a him if I don’t get my grog soon!’

The men of B Company watched these antics with bemused curiosity. Among sepoys it had long been said that alcohol was the white soldier’s secret weapon: it was what made him such a fearsome fighter. It was widely believed that this was the reason why British units were almost always chosen to lead charges in the battlefield — because the stiff doses of liquor that they were given beforehand made them almost suicidally reckless.

Amongst sepoys too it was common to take intoxicants before a battle: this was something that soldiers had always done in Hindustan. But the sepoy’s preferences were for hashish, ganja, bhang and a form of opium known as maajun: these drugs acted on the nerves to create a sense of calm and to make the body insensible to the exertion and fatigue of battle. Alcohol was different: it served as a fuel for the faculties of aggression and it was common knowledge that it was precisely in order to nurture this ‘fighting spirit’ that British commanders paid so much attention to providing liquor to their men.

A wise old subedar had once said to Kesri: It’s alcohol that gives the sahibs their strength; that’s why they drink it from morning to night — if ever they stop they will become weak and go into decline. And if a day comes when they start taking ganja like we do, then you can be sure that their empire is finished.

Kesri began to see the sense of it now. He was by no means averse to sharaab himself — he was especially partial to gin although he liked beer and rum well enough. But European-style liquor of any kind was difficult for sepoys to acquire because they were not allowed to enter the canteens that served white soldiers. Except on certain occasions when they were issued special ‘wet-battas’ of grog, the sepoys had to get their supplies from Native Liquor Shops, which often sold foul-tasting rotgut. A better, though more expensive, alternative was to buy liquor from British soldiers — they all received a daily ration of two drams, which they were sometimes willing to exchange for money. Another option was to pay them to procure liquor from their canteens, and with the arrival of the 49th Kesri found a friend who was more than willing to oblige. He was a burly, weather-beaten sarjeant called Jack Maggs: it turned out that he had once been a fairground pugilist and within a few days of arriving he insisted on leaping into the wrestling pit with Kesri. There followed a hard-fought bout and it was only because Sarjeant Maggs was unfamiliar with the rules of Indian wrestling that Kesri managed to prevail. But the sarjeant took his defeat in good part and he and Kesri soon began to share the odd glass of gin.

At a certain point it fell to Kesri to be of assistance to Sarjeant Maggs in a little matter of a girl in the Laal Bazar who was charging him a good deal more than the approved army rate. Kesri managed to resolve the situation by telling the girl that he would send a police-peon to take her to the Lock Hospital to be checked for venereal disease: the threat was enough to subdue her.

After that the sarjeant became quite forthcoming and it was from him that Kesri learnt that the expedition’s British soldiers were being trained in the use of a new weapon — a percussion-fired musket. Sarjeant Maggs could not stop singing the gun’s praises; he said that it was a huge improvement on their old flintlocks.

Kesri was very attached to his own flintlock, an ‘India-pattern’ Brown Bess, almost six feet long without its bayonet. With the new cylindrical bullets, the musket had a maximum range of about two hundred yards although it was accurate only up to half that distance. But at one hundred yards or less, fired in mass, with volleys of three shots every forty-three seconds, the Brown Bess was lethal. Its long thick barrel, when topped with a bayonet, also made it handy in skirmishes and close combat, which was one reason why Kesri was so attached to it.

Yet, despite all the care that he had lavished on his beloved bandook, Kesri would dearly have loved to get his hands on one of the new percussion-fired muskets, but Sarjeant Maggs told him that there was no immediate chance of that, for they were still being tried out.