Life in an Indian Outpost Part 16

"Here, sir, is your hat-rack," I said, showing a bamboo pole stuck in the flooring, its top split open into several points held apart by a cone of wood, thus providing a number of pegs. I drew his attention to an ingeniously-made writing-table with pigeon-holes and drawers. Then we pa.s.sed into the inner room. Here a comfortable bed had been formed by driving the ends of six forked sticks, arranged in a parallelogram, into the earth. In the forks four light poles had been laid and fastened, making the head, foot and sides of the bedstead. Then across from side to side were tied split bamboos, which formed a bottom as elastic as steel springs. On it was laid a gra.s.s mat, three inches thick, as a mattress. The best bed ever turned out by Maple's could not have been more comfortable. Against the walls stood a bamboo dressing-table and a washstand. On the latter was an enamelled iron basin, the only article I could not replace from the jungle. But above it hung a length of hollow bamboo filled with water and pierced near the bottom by a hole now plugged. I withdrew the plug; and the water poured down into the basin.

The General gazed around admiringly.

"These contrivances are very clever," he said; "and there is no doubt that now your sepoys know how to make themselves and their officers very comfortable with the help only of jungle materials. All this is very ingenious and practical."

After lunch the General inspected the defences and asked to see the sepoys man them. I led him up the ladder into the _machan_ or platform occupied by the sentry in a tree over the river-bank. The men were all shut up in their huts.

"Give the alarm," I said to the sentry.

He gathered in his hand the strings leading from the _machan_ to the officers' and section-leaders' quarters and pulled them. Throughout the fort we could faintly hear the stones rattling in the suspended tins.

Instantly the fronts of the huts were raised; and the men of each section came silently out in line and went straight to the loopholes they had been posted to.

"That is the best device I have seen yet," said General Bower. "The whole camp can be simultaneously aroused at once without any noise being heard by an approaching enemy, who would remain in ignorance of the fact that the defenders were on the alert. Consequently they would come on confidently in fancied security until they exposed themselves to a sudden fire at close range."

Climbing down from the _machan_ he inspected the b.o.o.by trap. At a signal, men inside the wall cut the creepers supporting the outer end of the bamboo platform which fell on its hinges and sent an avalanche of rocks into the _nullah_ below.

As soon as it was dark we went out on to the gallery projecting over the river-bed. From it cords led to bombs buried in the sand and piled around with stones. They were made of bamboos filled with powder and fitted with a rifle cartridge so arranged that, on pulling the cord, a rock fell on a nail which struck the cartridge-cap and exploded the bomb.

We fired these off one after another. The explosions hurled the stones in all directions with terrific force. Captain Balderston had devised an arrangement similar to the old Roman catapults for throwing hand-grenades over a hundred yards. He gave us an exhibition of this. On the sand of the river-bed bonfires had been piled to be set on fire by flares ignited by men tripping against cords laid along the ground.

These were now worked; and the flames rose high and lit up the _nullah_ clearly, so that anyone in it was plainly visible from the fort.

Our dinner that night in the thatched bamboo hut dignified by the t.i.tle of "Officers' Mess" was quite a festive affair. Our forest fare was much appreciated by our visitors; for it comprised _sambhur_ soup, roast jungle fowls and the delicate venison of a barking deer. But the river was not called upon to supply the liquor for our feast. General Bower was as full of good stories as ever; and long after the sepoys had turned in for the night their slumbers must have been disturbed by the hearty laughter of their Sahibs in the Mess.

The next two days were occupied in doing manoeuvres through the jungle.

At the conclusion of the inspection General Bower ordered me to form up the detachment and made a little speech to the men. He praised all ranks for their keenness and efficiency and complimented them on the ingenuity displayed in the construction of the fort.

"You have made its defences so strong," he said, "that without artillery it would be almost impossible for an a.s.sault on it to be successful. I am very pleased with what you have done and at hearing from your Major Sahib how well and how willingly you have worked. I shall give this detachment a very good report."

The Indians, like other races, love their meed of praise; and at the General's words the sepoys' faces beamed. Contrary to strict ideas of discipline Subhedar Sohanpal Singh, standing in front of his company, turned to his men and cried:

"Three cheers for the General Sahib!"

And as General Bower, having said good-bye to us and mounted his elephant, disappeared in the jungle on his way to the railway station, the hearty cheers of the sepoys followed him.

For the remainder of our stay in Buxa Duar Fort Bower served to accommodate officers and men whenever we went down into the forest for military training. On one occasion we had some useful practice in night-firing from it. In the cleared s.p.a.ce around it and in the river-bed targets were placed to represent an attacking army. A hundred yards from the defences bonfires, to be lit by flares ignited by cords leading into the fort, were arranged. When darkness fell these were set alight. The leaping flames showed up the targets, at which the sepoys fired through the loopholes of stockade and wall with very good results.

At the time I had an American Cavalry officer on a visit to me. This was his first experience of the Indian Army at work; and he was very much impressed by it.

At Christmas, Balderston and I invited friends to come to us for a shooting camp. Fort Bower served us as a residence; and from it we sallied out every morning into the forest on our elephants. On Christmas Day we added to our usual fare of jungle fowl and venison a plum pudding and mince-pies sent out from England, brewed punch, and in the heart of the jungle, thousands of miles from home, kept the feast in the good old fashion.

CHAPTER XV

FAREWELL TO THE HILLS

The Proclamation Parade--An unsteady charger--"Three cheers for the King-Emperor!"--The Indian Army's loyalty--King George and the sepoys--A land held by the sword--An American Cavalry officer's visit--Hospitality of American officers--Killing by kindness--The brotherhood of soldiers--The bond between American and British troops sealed by blood--U.S. officers' opinion of us--A roaring tiger--Prince Jitendra Narayen--His visit to Buxa--An intoxicated monkey--Projected visits--A road report--A sketch fourteen feet long--The start--Jalpaiguri--A planters' dinner-party--Crossing the Tista River--A quicksand--A narrow escape--Map-making in the army--In the China War of 1860--Officers' sketches used for the Canton Railway survey--The country south of the hills--A sepoy's explanation of Kinchinjunga--A native officer's theory of the cause of earthquakes--Types on the road--After the day's work--A man-eater--A brave postman--Human beings killed by wild animals and snakes in India--Crocodiles--Shooting a monster--Crocodiles on land--Crossing the Torsa--Value of small detachments--The maligned military officer--A life of examinations--The man-killing elephant again--Death of a Bhuttia woman--Ordered home--A last good-bye to a comrade--Captain Balderston's death--A last view of the hills.

When our Christmas shoot ended I returned to Buxa with our guests in time to hold the Proclamation Parade; for on 1st January, 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, and on this date every year the event is celebrated in military Stations throughout our Eastern Empire by a parade of troops in garrison. Even in our little outpost we did not forget to honour the day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I WAS MOUNTED ON A COUNTRYBRED PONY."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AN ELEPHANT LOADED WITH MY STORES AND BAGGAGE."]

On the drill ground a flagstaff had been erected, from which flew the Union Jack. The two companies of the detachment, officers and men in their full-dress uniform of scarlet and blue, were drawn up in line facing it. Captain Balderston rode a pony recently purchased from a planter, which strongly objected to soldiers and refused to go near the troops. No persuasions of its rider could induce it to approach the line; and when Balderston called the men to attention on my arrival and the rifles were brought smartly to the "slope," his disobedient charger swung round and bolted with him off the parade ground, jumping a ditch and nearly ending both their careers in a deep _nullah_. I was mounted on a country-bred pony which I had brought from Darjeeling and trained to troops. Deprived of the a.s.sistance of my second in command I started the parade. After the royal salute had been given, the men fired the _feu de joie_, when the rifles are discharged one by one along the front rank from right to left and back again in the opposite direction down the rear rank. Then taking off my helmet I gave the command "Three cheers for the King Emperor!"; and the hills re-echoed the shouts of the sepoys. A useless ceremony this, to the Little Englander; yet one fraught with deep meaning and stirring the heart to the core; for at that moment throughout the Indian Empire from the Himalayas to Colombo, from Aden to Mandalay, the cheers of His Majesty's soldiers, white and black, were ringing in loyal chorus.

Fifty years ago, in the dark days of the Mutiny, the revolted sepoy regiments faced their erstwhile comrades in battle; but the guilt of that black crime has long ago been purged in blood and obliterated by faithful service; and to-day the Kaiser-i-Hind has no more loyal soldiers than the men of his Indian Army. Until a few years ago the Sovereign was only a name to the warrior races that fill its ranks. But King George by his visits to India has made them realise his existence.

He has given his Indian subjects what Orientals always desire, the knowledge that they have a living monarch. And by so doing he has changed the vague loyalty of the sepoys into a real and affectionate attachment to the person of their ruler. The native troops whom he reviewed, who lined the streets or formed his Guards of Honour in Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta, rejoice to have actually seen their "_Badshah_" (Emperor) and proudly boast of it to others who have not been so fortunate. Only we officers of the Indian Army can fully realise how much this means, how wise were the councils that dictated his visits to India.

For, despite the politician and the civil servant, we hold the land, as we won it, by the sword. No concessions to the clamour of the _babus_ of Bengal will retain the loyalty of this country. It rests on the weapons and in the hearts of the gallant warrior races that aided us to conquer India and help us to retain it. Would that the Englishman in England could realise the fact!

Shortly after the departure of our guests who had come for the Christmas shoot, I received a long-expected visit from an American officer, Captain Brees, 1st United States Cavalry. Years before, in China, j.a.pan, and California I had foregathered with a cheery Irish subaltern of his regiment, Lieutenant Coghlan, who had won his commission in the fierce fighting in Luzon. And when Captain Brees, their corps being then in the Philippine Islands, arranged to visit India on his way home on leave to his native country, Lieutenant Coghlan guaranteed him a warm welcome from me. For I felt that I owed a debt of grat.i.tude to every officer of the American Army for the kindly hospitality I had received from them in the United States--from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Before I landed in San Francisco, Coghlan, then stationed in Los Angeles and unable to come to meet me, had written to friends of his in regiments quartered in the Army Post in the Presidio, the Golden City's splendid park, and asked them to welcome me in his stead. As soon as I arrived not only they, but a score of other officers of the garrison, had made their way through the ruins of the city not long before devastated by earthquake and fire to give me that welcome to their country. They offered me all the hospitality of their camp and clubs. A Cavalry regiment on the point of departing for their summer training in the famous Yosemite Valley extended a cordial invitation to accompany them and promised me a horse, a tent, and rations. The Field Battery offered to mount me whenever I liked to march out with them. I was asked to every military entertainment; and at every regimental dance my hosts saw that I had my programme full.

One night at a magnificent entertainment at the Fairmont Hotel in celebration of the first anniversary of the earthquake and San Francisco's phoenix-like rising again from the flames, a civilian asked me if I belonged to the Indian Army. On my replying in the affirmative he begged to be allowed to introduce me to two friends of his present that night, American officers on leave from another Station, as they were anxious to meet an officer of my Service. As I shook hands with them, one said:

"We've been looking for a fellow in the Indian Army."

"Which one?" I asked.

"Anyone. It doesn't matter who. We want to kill him," was the alarming reply.

"Good Heaven! why?" I queried apprehensively, backing away from him.

"Say, don't be afraid," he answered, laughingly. "We only mean to kill him with kindness. The fact is that we have just been on leave through India and Burma; and your fellows were so good to us everywhere we went that we have been looking for any stray officer of your army to give us an opportunity of returning their hospitality."

"That's so," said his companion. "Now, what can we do for you? Dine you, wine you, or lend you money?"

And when I told them that the unbounded kindness of their comrades in San Francisco had left me nothing to desire, they were very disappointed.

Between the soldiers of every nationality there is a bond of brotherhood; and never have I found it so strong as between American officers and ours in the too few occasions on which they have met.

"Blood is thicker than water"; and in the China War of 1900 Uncle Sam's troops and the British seemed to form one army. Side by side they fought in the grim combats around Tientsin. On the day when the city was stormed, when the pouches of the gallant 9th United States Infantry were empty, their brave colonel, Lisc.u.m, and a score of men killed, and four officers and seventy-two men wounded out of total of two hundred Americans engaged, a British officer, Ollivant, was killed in trying to replenish their ammunition, another, Major Pereira, was wounded in trying to bring in their injured, and Lieutenant Phillimore and his bluejackets of H.M.S. _Barfleur_ helped them to hold their ground, and brought back their wounded.

In less strenuous days in North China after the fighting, our American friends there told us that they found us very different to their preconceived ideas of the English officer, whom they had pictured as a languidly haughty individual, inseparable from his eyegla.s.s, and prefacing every remark by "I say, by Jove!" They frankly admitted that they had come prepared to dislike us, but had found us on acquaintance not such bad fellows after all.

Similarly Captain Brees confessed to me that he had been obliged to reconstruct all his preconceived ideas of British military men as soon as he had met them. Before his departure from Manila I had sent him letters of introduction to many of our officers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Colombo and Calcutta. He told me that on arriving in Hong Kong he had hesitated to avail himself of them but, hardening his heart, had at last dispatched them to the addresses.

"I can tell you, major," he said, "that, with the ideas I had of what your fellows would be like, I was considerably surprised when several of them swooped down upon me in my hotel and insisted on my transferring myself and my baggage at once to their quarters, where they entertained me royally for the rest of my stay in Hong Kong. The same in Singapore.

And when my ship reached Calcutta, two British officers came on board as soon as the anchor dropped, took me ash.o.r.e, and gave me a bully time there. I tell you that after this you can just inform any of your army friends that, if they visit America, their address is '1st United States Cavalry.' And don't you forget it!"

"Jimmy" Brees was one of the most charming men I have ever known; and everywhere he went in India he made a most favourable impression on all our officers who met him. In Buxa we could not offer him any social gaieties; but we made him free of the jungle, taught him to ride on and shoot from elephants, and did the little we could to entertain him.

Once, after a long day in the forest on Khartoum's back, we climbed up into Forest Lodge to dine and sleep. Exhausted by his tiring experience, Brees had just fallen asleep and I was preparing to follow his example, when I heard a tiger roaring in the jungle close to my lofty tree-dwelling, and apparently approaching us. I was delighted to give my guest the opportunity of at least hearing a tiger and possibly shooting it in the moonlight if it came close enough. So I sprang out of bed, seized my rifle and, posting myself at the window, called out over my shoulder:

"Wake up, Jimmy, wake up! There is a tiger close by."

"Eh? What?" came the sleepy reply.