Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/680

668 some orderlies of mine sent out to patrol the road, and warn you if there was danger ahead."

Soon other fugitives arrived in haste and flurry; Captain Buxey in his buggy, Major and Mrs. Peart and their daughter in a carriage, the bazaar-sergeant's East-Indian wife with a couple of children, a Mustaphabad shopkeeper, and later on several officers of the 80th on horseback. There had been no regular attack on the European residents; on the signal-gun being fired, the sepoys of the 80th (the regiment left at Mustaphabad) had turned out and formed on parade, a few of them only leaving the ranks and opening a desultory fusilade towards their front into the darkness. The officers of the regiment, whose horses were ready saddled, had hastened down to the lines from their respective bungalows; but being received with threats and this dropping fire, had turned and ridden slowly off to the residency, whither the other residents had already, at the sound of the firing, made their way.

All the Europeans known to be at the station were now accounted for, except the colonel of the 80th and the bazaar-sergeant. Some of the officers thought they had seen the former in the darkness making for the parade, but had lost sight of him. The bazaar-sergeant, as his wife related, had sent her and the children off in his pony-carriage, and said he would go down and try to keep things straight in the bazaar.

 

night wore on, the glare from the burning cantonments growing ever brighter, till the rays of coming dawn mingled with it. The ladies sat or stood in the drawing-room, or went on the roof to watch the conflagration, finding even at such a time a sort of pleasure in discussing the particulars of their flight, and comparing notes on the property they had brought away; while of the men, some, organized in a little company, patrolled the park, and some rode down the road towards cantonments to see if they could get any tidings of the two missing fugitives.

At last the day arrived to throw its light on the strange-looking group which had escaped the shipwreck of the night — the pallid, dishevelled ladies, the bundles of clothing littering the well-ordered room; outside an equal contrast between the peaceful aspect of the grounds and the condition of the house itself, with the verandas blocked up with sand-bags, and covered with dust and earth, the hasty trenches dug round it, and the tools scattered about, left by the workmen overnight on the scene of their unfinished task.

Soon as the daylight became stronger a strange thing was discerned — a party of sepoys mounting guard over the tents still left standing by the court-house; and to Yorke advancing to discover what this meant, a corporal came down the road to salute and explain matters. There had been a split in the camp, it appeared, and this little party of seventeen men in all had parted with their comrades, and come back to be true to their salt. The detachment, in their hurry to be off, had left their tents standing, and Yorke's, with all his little property, was untouched, and his horse was still standing picketed under a tree. Yet the men, as York went up to greet and praise them, did not seem very proud of their behaviour, and their manner was as if they rather looked to be suspected. A few spirited words from Falkland, however, who had come down on hearing the news, seemed to put them more at their ease. He told Yorke to move them up to the residency. "Let us show perfect confidence in them," he said, "for they deserve it."

"Good gracious! you are surely not going to let those villains come here!" cried Mrs. Polwheedle, as from the portico steps she saw the little party marching up with Yorke at their head. "Stuff and nonsense about loyalty. Loyalty, indeed! Don't talk to me about loyalty," she continued, as Colonel Falkland explained the circumstances; "it's a mere trap for springing upon us and murdering us when we are not expecting it. I am as sure of it as that my name is Martha Polwheedle. The brigadier mustn't allow it. Where is Polwheedle?" And while the lady bustled away in search of her husband, who was trying to recover his dazed senses by pouring water on his head in an adjacent room, Falkland established the sepoys as main guard in the portico, placing Major Peart in command of it, and detaching a couple of sentries to the court-house.

Meanwhile the business of the day was ushered in by the servants bringing tea for the party, just as if nothing had happened, and Falkland set to work to organize matters. While some of the officers were attached to the guard, a part of them rode with him, attended by the half-dozen of the nawab's horsemen whom he 