Even amidst the din of the cannonade we could hear them cheering in the entrenchments across the river, and the blare of their military bands, with drums throbbing and cymbals clashing, and then the salvoes from the British guns died away, and the smoke cleared over our distant positions; the trumpets in the Sikh camp were sounding the cease-fire, and presently the last wraiths dispersed above their positions also, and Sam Khalsa and John Company looked each other in the eye across a half-mile of scrubby plain and patchy jungle, like two boxers when their seconds and supporters have left off yelling abuse, and each scrapes his feet and flexes his arms for the onset.
With the enemy snug behind his ramparts, it was for Gough to make the first move, and he did it in classic style, with a straight left. Sardul caught at my arm, pointing, and sure enough, far off on our right front, steel was glinting through the last of the mist; he had a little spy-glass clapped to his eye, but now he passed it to me and my heart raced as I saw the white cap-covers and red coats spring into close vision in the glass circle, the fixed bayonets gleaming in the first sunlight, the officers and drummers to the fore, the colour stirring in the breeze—I could even make out the embroidered "X", but it can only have been in imagination that I heard the fifes sounding:
The gamekeeper was watching us, For him we did not care,
For we can wrestle and fight, my boys, And jump o'er anywhere … as the Tenth Lincoln came on in line, their pieces at the port, with the horse guns bounding past their flank, and alongside them the shakos and white belts of the Native Infantry, and then another British colour, but I couldn't make out which, and again our guns began to crash as Paddy poured his last rounds of covering fire over their heads and the dust billowed up on the Khalsa's right front.
The Sikh batteries exploded in a torrent of flame, and I saw our line stagger and recover and come on again before the clouds of smoke and dust hid them from sight. On the extreme right a great body of horse emerged from the entrenchments, swinging wide to charge our rocket batteries whose missiles were weaving in above the advancing infantry and exploding on the breastworks. The Sikh horse rounded our flank and went for the rocket stand like Irishmen on holiday, but the battery commander must have seen his danger and given the word to raise the frames, for he let them come to point-blank range before loosing the whole barrage at ground level, whizzing in to burst among the horsemen, and the charge dissolved in a cloud of white smoke and orange flame.
_ The staff men beside us were suddenly shouting and pointing: while Gough's left wing was closing through the smoke on the Sikhs' right front, out on the plain, beyond the scrub and jungle, there was a stirring in the heat haze; tiny figures, red, blue, and green, were coming into view, long extended lines of them, with the horse guns in the intervals between. I swung the glass on them, and here were the yellow facings of the 29th, there the buff of the 31st, everywhere the red coats and cross-belts of the Native Infantry … the red and blue of the Queen's Own … on the flank the dark figures of the 9th Lancers and the blue coats and puggarees of the Bengali horsemen … the crimson-streaked plumes of the 3rd Lights … the little goblin figures of the Gurkhas, trotting to keep up, and even as I watched there was a flash of silver rippling along their front as the great leaf-bladed knives came out. The whole of our army was on the move towards the centre and left of the Khalsa's position—twenty thousand British and Native foot, horse, and guns coming in against odds of three to two, and the Sikhs' heavy metal was ranging on them, kicking up the dust-plumes all along the great arc of our advance,
Now all the forward entrenchments were exploding, sweeping the ground with a hail of grape and canister, blotting out the scene in a thick haze of dust and smoke. I caught my breath in horror, for it was Ferozeshah all over again, with that raving old spud-walloper risking every-thing on the sabre and the bayonet, hand to hand—but then the Sikhs had been groggy from Moodkee, in positions hastily dug and manned, while now they were entrenched in a miniature Tones Vedras, with ditch-and-dyke works twenty feet high, enfiladed by murderous camel-swivels and packed with tulwar-swinging lunatics fairly itching to die for the Guru. You can't do it, Paddy, thinks I, it won't answer this time, you'll break your great t hick Irish head against this fortress of shot and steel, and have your army torn to ribbons, and lose the war, and never see Tipperary again, you benighted old bog-trotter, you -
"Come!" calls Sardul, and I tore my eyes away from that billowing mirk beyond which our army was advancing to certain death, and followed him down the muddy slope to the bridge of boats. They were big barges, lashed thwart to thwart and paved with heavy timbers which made a road as straight and solid as dry ground—hollo, says I, there's a white sapper in the woodpile, damn him, for no Punjabi ever put this together. We drummed across with the troop at our heels and came into the rear of the Khalsa position—their last line of defence where the general staff directed operations, aides hurried to and fro between the tents and hutments, carts of wounded rum-bled through to the bridge, and all was activity and uproar—but it was a disciplined bedlam, I noticed, in spite of the deafening crash of guns and musketry rolling back from the lines.
There was a knot of senior men grouped round a great scale model of the fortifications—I caught only a glimpse of it, but it must have been twenty feet across, with every trench and parapet and gun just so—and a splendid old white-bearded sirdar with a mail vest over his silk tunic was prodding it with a long wand and bellowing orders above the din, while his listeners despatched messengers into the sulphurous reek which blotted out everything beyond fifty yards, and made the air nigh unbreathable. This was clearly the high command—but no sign of Tej Singh, general and guiding spirit of the Khalsa, God help it, until I heard his voice piercing the uproar, at full screech.
"Three hundred and thirty-three long grains of rice?" he was shouting, "Then get them, idiot! Am I a storekeeper? Fetch a sack from the kitchen—run, you pervert son of a shameless mother!"
Close by the bridgehead was a curious structure like a huge beehive, about ten feet high and built of stone blocks. Before it, in full fig of gold coat, turbaned helmet, and jewelled sword-belt, stood Tej himself—he wasn't above ten yards from the staff conference, but they might have been in Bombay for all the heed each paid to the other. Before him cringed a couple of attendants, a chico held a coloured brolly over his head, and at a table near the beehive's entrance an ancient wallah in an enormous puggaree was studying charts through a magnifying glass, and making notes. Watching the scene with some amusement was an undoubted European in kepi, shirt-sleeves, and a goatee beard.
That is what I saw, through the drifting smoke and confusion; the following, above the thunder of the great battle in which India was being lost and won, is what I heard—and it's stark truth:
Ancient wallah: The inner circumference is too small! According to the stars, it must be thirteen and a half times the girth of your excellency's belly.
Tej: My belly? What in God's name has my belly to do with it?