Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/567

Rh the next enemy you will have to fight is your own army.' And his words will come true, if we don't look out."

"Then do you really think there is any danger of the whole army ever turning against us?"

"I don't know exactly about that. The native officers and the old soldiers will hardly be such fools as to throw up their pensions, and then the Hindoos and Mussulmans wouldn't care to row in the same boat, so that there are a good many chances in our favour; but I confess I should like to see every native regiment cut down to eight hundred strong, and half-a-dozen more European regiments ordered out."

Yorke noticed that while they were talking, Braddon had more than once filled his glass. This was the first time he had been witness to the habit in which it was suspected by the regiment that the latter indulged, and he would fain have interposed with a word of caution and remonstrance. But a sense of delicacy restrained him at first, and now his companion was beyond remonstrance. His voice had become thicker; and when, a few minutes later, Yorke got up to go away, he was becoming indistinct in his utterance and loud in his denunciation of the authorities; and the young man went off to his bungalow sad at heart at witnessing the falling away of his brother officer, good soldier and clever man as he was, and with the latter's forebodings about the future of the army still in his ears. Braddon and Falkland had used almost the same words. Was, then, the confidence he had expressed to Miss Cunningham in the loyally of his regiment a mere foolish infatuation, as baseless as his dream of gaining her love?

 

more idle days were passed in the torpor of heat and false security, before the great storm broke out, engulfing at once some of the small European communities in India scattered over the country, surprised and defenceless, while others for a time endured only the bitterness of expectation. Rumours of the outbreak at Meerut and Delhi reached Mustaphabad in a few hours, and to the horror and indignation aroused by the first news, there soon followed unspeakable dread and suspense as the tidings came from one station after another of treacherous risings and murder and anarchy, and those who had so far escaped felt that the same catastrophe might at any moment overtake themselves. Here, as in every place where there were both white and black troops, the gravity of the situation was vastly aggravated by the difficulty of framing a plan of action; for to make preparations might have been to accelerate the outbreak. And the position of the officers of the native regiments was peculiarly embarrassing; for while they seemed to be regarded by the rest of the community as if in some way unwittingly the cause of the calamity, and shared for the time the odium aroused by the misconduct of the sepoys in other places, they for their part were not only precluded by their position from taking the precautions which the other European residents made, against a treacherous outbreak of their men — they would also certainly be the first victims. Right bravely, however, they faced the danger, professing unlimited confidence in their men — a confidence which, whatever they felt, they exemplified by sending their beds down to the parade-ground, and sleeping there unarmed in front of the men's huts on the edge of the plain, the armed sentries marching to and fro beside them. And at times, indeed, when talking to the men — men who had never before been otherwise than docile and respectful, it seemed impossible to doubt their protestations of loyalty, their declarations even of detestation at the conduct of the regiments which had mutinied, and their professions of eagerness to be led against the common enemy. And yet a change had come over them which could not but be observed — a certain sullenness of manner, a look as if of suspicion that they were suspected, which the officers in vain endeavoured by their own appearance of confidence to ignore. Nobody else, however, expressed any confidence in the sepoys, or hesitated to avow the expectation that sooner or later they would follow the example of the mutineers elsewhere; and the officers of the hussars and European artillery were all for marching down on the native lines and disarming the sepoys by force, with sabres and grape ad libitum if the latter should show their teeth; and Brigadier Polwheedle, who was ready to hear advice from every one who offered it, although quite unable to make up his mind about it, received numerous proposals to this effect from the self-constituted critics of the situation; for military etiquette had disappeared for a time under the first excitement of the crisis, and people walked in and out of the brigade-office as