Tales of terror Chapter 33: Part 33

to the worst, comrades, not a shell, not a gun, nor an ounce of powder, if we can help it, shall fall into the hands of the rebels, for we will blow the whole place into ruins, and find our graves beneath them.’ A tremendous cheer was the answer he received, and then the gallant band set to work to be prepared for whatever might happen. The outer gate was closed, and strongly barricaded. Guns were brought out and loaded with double charges of grape and canister, and placed in such a position that they commanded the approaches. While these preparations were developing Shelton received orders to do all in his power to hold a house which had been used as a Government depôt, and contained accoutrements and other stores, besides a number of rifles. He procured an ample supply of ammunition from the magazine, and he had with him a sergeant and a corporal. Blanche would have refused to have left him, even supposing he had wished it, but he knew there was nowhere he could send her to where she was likely to be safer than there. And so she insisted on being furnished with a revolver--which she had learned to use since her arrival in India--and she vowed that she would stand by his side to the death. The morning sun was rising in a glory of crimson splendour when the mutineers, stained with blood and dust and grimed with powder, swarmed over the Jumna and clattered into Delhi. Under the windows of the palace they surged, and called for the king--that white-haired, treacherous old villain, who believed that his hour of triumph had struck, and that the house of Moghul would be restored to its ancient splendour. The rebels were admitted by the Mohammedan guard, and then they almost shook the wall with a thunderous shout of ‘Glory to the Padishah and death to the Feringhees!’ Swelled now by their comrades of the palace they swarmed into the town, cutting down every European they met, and a detachment rushed for the house held by Shelton and his sweetheart and his two other companions. The lower doors and windows had been barricaded; and from the upper windows a well-delivered fire checked for a moment the onrush of the mutineers. But it was only for a moment. Some of their number had gone down into the dust, but that only served to still further madden the survivors, who stormed the house, to be beaten back, however, once more by the defenders’ fire. Recovering themselves, they fired a volley at the windows, and one of the bullets struck the corporal dead. Shelton saw now that it would be impossible to hold the place for many minutes, and he turned with anxious gaze to the beloved woman at his side. Her face was pale as death, but she was calm, and in her hand she still grasped the smoking revolver. Every barrel was empty, and she had sent at least four of the rabble to their account. ‘My beloved,’ he exclaimed in a tone of despair, ‘I fear that hope of saving you has passed.’ ‘Yes, darling,’ she said, quietly. ‘Hope for us in this world has gone; but we shall be united in the next. Load the revolver again.’ He quickly thrust a cartridge into each barrel, and returned it to her, and at the same moment he saw his brave and only remaining soldier companion go down, shot through the head. Then he kicked in the head of a barrel of powder he had taken the precaution to have brought up, and passing his arm round Blanche’s waist he was about to fire his revolver into the powder, when he suddenly changed his mind, and said hurriedly: ‘Darling, I believe we can escape and find safety in the fort.’ ‘Where you go, I will go,’ she answered. Hurriedly fixing a few feet of slow match to the powder barrel he lighted the loose end; then taking Blanche’s hand they hurried down the stairs, revolvers in hand. They gained the back door, which led into the garden, and by almost superhuman effort they removed the barricading of the door and rushed out and cleared the garden before their escape was discovered. But at that moment there was a tremendous explosion, and the house they had just left crumbled to ruins. For some minutes the mutineers were scattered by the shock, and it seemed as if the brave Shelton and the equally brave Blanche would gain shelter. But they were seen, and a swarm of mounted soldiers sped after them. Placing Blanche against a wall Shelton stood in front of her, and emptied his revolver at the advancing horsemen, and two of their number pitched from their saddles, but the next moment the faithful lovers fell, clasped in each other’s arms, and riddled with bullets. In life they had loved and hoped, and in death they were not divided; their hopes would become fruition in a better and a brighter world. In the meantime how fared it with the brave defenders of the fort? Baffled in their attempt to obtain possession of the house the mutineers rushed to the magazine with their rallying cry of ‘Deen, deen!’ Willoughby and his noble band were prepared for them. They had concentrated their nine-pounder guns, and behind them had piled up as much ammunition as they had had time to procure. A few yards away was a heap of powder, and a train carried from it into the magazine itself, where the heads had been knocked out of many of the barrels and the powder scattered, with loaded shells placed in it. There were tons of powder, shells, and explosives of all kinds; and when further defence was found to be impossible the train was to be fired. While the howling troopers on horse and foot were speeding to the fort, mounted messengers were sent from the king to demand from Willoughby the surrender of the place. ‘Back to your royal master, slaves,’ was the haughty and defiant answer, ‘and tell him to come himself and we will surrender the ruins, together with our corpses, to him.’ The messenger made known this defiant answer to the mutineers, who were now clamouring round in a surging, jostling mass, and a determined rush was made for the gate. But they fell back as a withering storm of grape shot tore through them. That storm was most destructive in its effects; but the soldiers and the rabble that had joined them from the slums and dens of the city were too strongly bent on slaying the Feringhees to allow themselves to be defeated by the slaughter of some of their number. So gathering themselves together again, they howled ‘Deen, deen!’ and made another rush, but once more they were hurled back by the blast of fire and shot. Seldom in the annals of warfare has there been a more stubborn, more heroic, defence made by a handful of men against a host of trained soldiers than was made by Willoughby and his comrades; for, be it remembered that they were fighting regiments of soldiers who had been trained and drilled in the art of warfare by the English themselves, and, as often proved before and since, the Sepoy makes almost as good a fighting-man as his white brother, although he perhaps lacks in that stubbornness and unconquerable determination which are peculiarly characteristic of the Englishman. But in the case we are dealing with the Sepoys were stubborn enough. They knew, indeed, that it was death or victory with them. And they quite believed that if they could but obtain the immense accumulation of ammunition stored in the Delhi arsenal, not only could they hold the city of the Moghuls against all the armies of England, but that they could actually conquer India. For it was big guns and shot and shell they wanted, and from nowhere else could they obtain them save Delhi. It was, therefore, their only hope, and it may safely be asserted that not one amongst them deemed it possible that the stores would not fall into their hands, as it was well known that only nine men held the fort. But what they did not know was that those nine men were unconquerable. It is no disparagement of the rest to say that Willoughby, by his magnificent example, inspired the others to greater deeds of valour. When on the evening of the 1st of May, as he sat on the verandah of the colonel’s bungalow at Meerut, he had stated that he would blow the magazine up rather than surrender it, he made no idle boast. But his belief was, as he and his noble companions worked the guns and kept the howling foe at bay, that the necessity to destroy the magazine would not arise, since they would be able to hold out till succour reached them from Meerut. For not knowing the extent of the disaster which had overwhelmed that station, he naturally expected some portion of its strong garrison would immediately be despatched to Delhi’s relief. But, alas! when the hoofs of the mutinous troopers’ horses rung upon the bridge that spanned the Jumna before Delhi, they sounded the death-knell of every British resident in the city, with some three or four exceptions. There is an expressive Hindostanee word, _lachar_, which means helpless and something more; and at this awful crisis in our Indian rule the English were certainly lachar. They might slay many of their foes, but they could not save their lives or property. Such as were soldiers knew that it was one of the risks attending their profession of arms that they might be called upon at any moment to fight for and lay down their lives. But it was hard, it was pitiable, it was maddening, that the dear women and sweet children should fall a prey to the brutal and tiger-like ferocity of the revolted soldiers, and there is no doubt that the thought of their loved ones nerved many an arm to fight with the heroism of desperate despair. For five long hours did Willoughby keep the host at bay; and often and often during those dreadful hours did he rush to the bastion on the river face and turn his gaze in the direction of Meerut, hoping to see the succour he expected coming in the shape of a regiment of English soldiers speeding on with all the speed their chargers were capable of. But the plain was misty with dust and heat; and not a living thing was in sight beyond the river save some vultures that hovered lazily in the heated air as if waiting patiently for the feast they