Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/119

Rh  creatures come to attack us, I'll shoot at them straight, and I'll go on shooting till they stop coming; but I don't bear any malice, and when it's over I'll be right pleased to go and live among them again."

This, the third day of the siege, wore on in perfect quiet; the enemy were evidently discomfited by their failure, and desisted for the present from any further molestation. But a grave difficulty now presented itself, the disposal of the unburied dead. A sickening smell had pervaded the building in the afternoon, the cause of which was known only to the few initiated — the burning of the corpse of the faithful sepoy, whose funeral pyre, lighted in the veranda, formed a heavy drain on the limited supply of firewood available. But the corpses of the enemy could not be got rid of in this way, and more than thirty of these could be counted, some close to the building, others in various parts of the grounds. Two of the bodies were of men not dead, as could be seen by an occasional movement of the limbs, and the younger men, when they perceived it, were for leaving them to perish slowly. "Serve them right," observed Egan, when somebody suggested that he should send a bullet to finish the work, "dying straight off is too good for them;" but Falkland, when the matter was reported to him, ordered that they should be fired at, and after a couple of shots all movement ceased. On this firing taking place, which happened about midday, there was a great show of heads from behind the wall and in Sparrow's house, showing that the blockade was still maintained in force; but it was not replied to.

A notice in Hindustani was now written with a burnt stick on a table-cloth, to the effect that the enemy might carry off their dead without molestation, and hung over the side of the building from the roof, but no answer was made to it.

"I suspect they mean to poison us out," said Braddon to Falkland, as they surveyed the position from the roof.

"That would hardly be like Hindus," replied the colonel; "no, I suspect they think we mean to lay a trap for them. It is a pretty commentary on the sort of confidence in our good faith we have succeeded in inspiring our sepoys with."

Something, however, must needs be done. The corpses, under the burning sun, had already swelled up into bloated misshapen masses, and a swarm of crows had settled down to their loathsome feast, joined in the afternoon by the more cautious vultures, some of which had already alighted on the ground, while others, in ever-increasing numbers, circled in the air above.

"Young Yorke is a better engineer than I am," said Falkland, again discussing the situation with Braddon later in the day. "We ought to have occupied Sparrow's house in the beginning, and we shall have to do so now, coute qui coute."

"Won't it be rather a weakening of our strength, sir? We should have to leave a dozen men there at least, and we are none too many here as it is."

"So I objected, when Yorke proposed it, but the place is a regular thorn in our side. By occupying that house, you see, and knocking some loopholes through the wall in the other side, we should be able to command the park wall right and left, — take it regularly in flank, for the house projects beyond the line of the wall. In fact the whole of one side of this building would be set free, and it is only on this side that we need fear anything from them. But that is not my chief reason," continued Falkland; "we absolutely must get rid of these carcasses. Now there is a well over yonder, just by the wall, which we should get access to by taking the house, and we could throw the bodies into it and cover them with earth. The thing must be done to-night, too, or we shall be all poisoned to-morrow. The air down below is bad enough already as it is."

Thus was the plan settled. It was kept as quiet as possible; and the brigadier, who hobbled after Falkland into a side-room to discuss the details of the enterprise, was enjoined not to let his wife or the ladies know of the matter. Falkland determined to make the venture at midnight, by which time the occupants of Sparrow's house would probably be asleep, and, from what Yorke had seen the night before, keeping no guard; this would admit of intrenching the place before dawn.

At midnight, accordingly, a party of six climbed through a gap made in the portico breastwork, — Falkland, Yorke, Braywell, Sparrow, an officer of the 80th, and the jemadar, — and ranging themselves in line at two paces' distance from each other, made a rush swiftly but silently across the lawn. At the same moment, another party of six, led by Major Passey, rose out of the covered way and made for the same point. Braddon had remonstrated privately with Falkland at being left out of the business, but the latter said that it was