"All is_ well!" cries he, and for a blessed second I thought he was going to speed me on my way. "I have spoken with the colonel sahib, and told him … of your diplomatic duty." He dropped his voice, glancing round in the firelight. "The colonel sahib thinks it best that he should not see you himself." Another reckless mutton-head ripe for Staff College, plainly. "He says this is a high political matter … so I am to take you to Tej Singh. Come, I have a horse for you!"
If he'd told me they were going to send me on shooting leave to Ooti I'd have been less astonished, but his next words provided the explanation.
"The colonel sahib says that since Tej Singh is commander-in-chief, he will surely know of these secret negotiations, and can decide what should be done. And since he is in the camp below Sobraon, he will be able to send you to the Malki lat with all speed. Indeed, you will be there sooner than if I released you now."
That was what I'd talked myself into … Sobraon, the very heart of the doomed Khalsa. Yet what else could I have done? When you've just been within an ace of being hanged out of hand, you're liable to say the first thing that comes to mind, and I'd had to tell Sardul something. Still, it could have been worse. At least with Tej I'd be safe, and he'd see me back to Hardinge fast enough … flag of truce, a quick trot across no man's land, and home in time for breakfast. Aye, provided the dogs of war didn't come howling out of the kennel in the meantime … what had Goolab said? "A day or two at most" before Gough stormed the Khalsa lines in the last great battle …
"Well, let's be off, hey?" cries I, jumping up. "The sooner the better, you know! How far is it—can we be there before first light?" He said it was only a few miles along the river bank, but since that way was heavy with military traffic, we would be best to take a detour round their positions (and prevent wicked Flashy from spying out the land, you understand). Still, we should be there soon after dawn.
We set off in the rainy dark, the whole troop of us—he was taking no chances on my slipping my cable, and my bridle was tied firmly to the daffadar's pommel. It was black as sin, and no hope of a moon in this weather, so we went at little better than a walk, and before long I had lost all sense of time and direction. It was my second night in the saddle, I was weary and sore and sodden and fearful, and every few moments I nodded off only to wake with a start, clutching at the mane to save myselffrom falling. How far we came before the teeming down-pourceased and the sky began to lighten, I can't tell, but presently we could see the doab about us, with wraiths of vapour hanging heavy over the scrub. Ahead a few lights were showing dimly, and Sardul reined up: "Sobraon."
But it was only the village of that name, which lies a mile or two north of the river, and when we reached it we must turn sharp right to come down to the Khalsa's reserve positions on the northern bank, beyond which the bridge of boats spanned the Sutlej to the main Sikh fortifications on the southern side, hemmed in by Gough's army. As we wheeled and approached the rear of the reserve lines, fires were flickering and massive shadows looming in the mist ahead, and now we could see the entrenchments on either flank, with heavy gun emplacements commanding the river, which was still out of sight to our front. As we trotted through a sea of churned mud to the lines, trumpets were blaring the stand-to, the Sikh drums were beginning to rattle, troops were swarming in the trenches, and from all about us came the clamour and bustle of an army stirring, like a giant rousing from sleep.
I didn't know, nor did they, as drum and trumpet called them, that the Khalsa was answering its last reveille. But even as we entered the rearmost line, from somewhere far beyond the grey blanket mantling the northern shore ahead of us, came another sound, stunning in its suddenness: the thunder of gunfire echoing along the Sutlej valley in a continuous roar of explosions, shaking the ground underfoot, reverberating through the mists of morning. Beyond our view, on the southern shore, an old Irishman in a white coat was beating his shillelagh on the Khalsa's door, and with a sinking heart I realised that I had come a hare hour too late. The battle of Sobraon had begun.
The best way to view a clash of armies is from a hot-air balloon, for not only can you see what's doing, you're safely out of the line of fire, I've done it once in Paraguay, and there's nothing to beat it, provided some jealous swine of a husband doesn't take a cleaver to the cable. The next best place is an eminence, like the Sapoune at Balaclava or the bluffs above Little Bighorn, and if I can speak with authority about both those engagements it's not so much because I was lashing about in the thick of them, as that I had the opportunity of overlooking the ground beforehand.
Sobraon was like that. The northern bank of the Sutlej at that point is higher than the southern, giving a sweeping view of the whole battlefield, and miles beyond. I wasn't to see it for another hour or so, for when the cannonade began Sardul called a halt, and left me in the care of his troop while he dashed off to see what was up. We waited in the clammy dawn, while the Sikh support troops stood to inspection in the trenches and gun emplacements about us and the gunners stripped the aprons from their heavy pieces, piling the cartridges and rolling the big 48-pound shot on to the stretchers, all ready to load. They were cool hands, those artillerymen, manning their positions quiet and orderly, the brown bearded faces staring ahead towards the battle of barrages hidden beyond the river mist.
Sardul came spurring back, spattering the mud, wild with excitement. Gough's batteries were hammering the fortifications on the southern shore, but doing little harm, and the Sikh gunners were giving him shot for shot. "Presently he will attack, and be thrown back!" cries Sardul exultantly. "The position is secure, and we may go down in safety to Tej Singh. Come, bahadur, it is a splendid sight! A hundred and fifty great guns thunder against each other—but your Jangi lat has blundered! His range is too long, and he wastes his powder! Come and see!"
I believed him. Knowing Paddy, I could guess he was banging away just to please Hardinge, but couldn't wait for the moment when he would turn his bayonets loose. That must be soon, by the sound of it; even if he'd brought the whole magazine from Umballa, he couldn't keep up such a barrage for long.
"Never in all India has there been such a fight of heavy suns!" cries Sardul. "Their smoke is like a city burning! Oh, what a day to see! What a day!"
He was like a boy at a fair as he led the way down through the silent gun positions, and presently we came to a little flat promontory, where a group of Sikh staff officers were mounted, very brave in their dress coats. They spared us not so much as a glance, for at that moment the mist lifted from the river like a raised curtain, and an astonishing sight was unfolded before us.
Twenty feet below the bluff the oily flood of the Sutlej was swirling by in full spate, the bubbling brown surface strewn with ramage which was piling up against the great bridge of boats, four hundred yards long and anchored by massive chains, that spanned the river to the southern shore. There, in a half-moon a full mile in extent, the Khalsa lines lay in three huge concentric semi-circles of ramparts, ditches, and bastions; there were thirty thousand fighting Sikhs in there, the cream of the Punjab, with their backs to the river and seventy big guns crashing out their reply to our artillery positions a thousand yards away. Over the whole Sikh stronghold hung an enormous pall of black gunsmoke, and above the widespread distant arc of our guns a similar pall was hanging, thinner and dispersing more quickly than theirs, for while their batteries were concentrated within that mile-wide fortress, our sixty pieces were scattered in a curved line twice as long—and Sardul was right, their range was too great. I could see our mortar shells bursting high over the Sikh positions, and the heavy shot throwing up fountains of red earth, but causing little damage; far to the right we had a rocket battery in action, the long white trails criss-crossing the black clouds, and some fires were burning at that end of the Sikh lines, but all along the forward fortifications the Khalsa gunners were blazing away in style—Paddy wasn't going to win the shooting-match, that was certain.