A.W.: It is your excellency's shelter, and must be built in relation to your proportions, or the influence of your planets will not sustain it. I must know your circumference, taken precisely about the navel.
European (producing foot-rule): A metre and a half, at least. Here, this is marked in English inches.
Tej: I am to measure my belly, at such a time?
European: What else have you to do? The sirdars have the defence in hand, and my fortifications will not be overrun if they are properly manned. By the way, three hundred and thirty-three long grains of rice make about three and a quarter English yards.
A.W. (agitated): The measurement must be exact!
European: A grain of rice may be exact in the stars, astrologer, but not on earth. Anyway, three yards of stone will stop any missile the British are likely to throw at us.
A.W.: Not if the circumference is too small! It must be enlarged -
European (shrugging): Or the general must lose weight. Tej (enraged): Damn you, Hurbon … And who in Satan's name are you, and what do you want?
For by this time Sardul Singh was before him, saluting and then whispering urgently. Tej gave a start, and turned an uncomprehending stare at me, as though I'd been a ghost. Then he recovered, beckoned me urgently, and dived into the beehive.47 I followed and found myself in a tiny circular chamber, stuffy and stinking from a single oil lamp. Tej wrenched the door to, and the sound of battle died to a distant murmur. He fairly clutched at me, his chops wobbling.
"Is it you, my dear friend? Ah, thank God! Is this thing true? Is there a secret negotiation?"
I told him there wasn't, that it was a lie I'd told Sardul on the spur of the moment, and he let out a great wail of dismay.
"Then what am I to do? I cannot control these mad-men! You saw them out yonder—they pretend that I do not exist, and take my command away, the mutinous swine! Sham Singh directs the defence, and your army will be dashed to pieces! I did not seek this engagement! Why, oh why, did Gough sahib force it upon me!" He began to rave and curse, beating his fat fists on the stone. "If the Jangi lat is beaten, what will become of me! I am lost! I am lost!" And he subsided on the floor, a quaking blubber in his gold coat, weeping and railing against Gough and Sham Singh and Jeendan and Lal Singh, and anyone else he could call to mind.
I didn't interrupt him. It may have been the sudden quiet of that little refuge, but for the first time in hours I found myself able to think, and was deep in fearful calculation. For here I was, by the strangest turn of fate, prisoner in the heart of the enemy's camp, at the supreme moment of imperial crisis, while all yet hung in the balance—and a small voice in my coward soul was telling me what had to be done. Only to think of the risk set me shaking … anyway, it all depended on one thing. I waited until Tej's lamentation reached a high pitch, slid quietly out of the beehive, closed the door, and looked about me, my heart racing.
Everywhere was choking confusion, with visibility a poor twenty yards, but round the command group was a cheering press of Sikhs, dancing and waving tulwars—so our first attack had failed, although the pounding of gun-fire was as deafening as ever. A horse artillery team came clattering from the bridge; a wounded officer, his blue coat sodden with blood, was being carried past by servants; the European, Hurbon,48 was mounting a pony and riding off into the smoke; the old astrologer was still muttering over his charts—but the one thing for which I'd been hoping had come to pass: Sardul Singh and his troop, having done their duty by delivering me, were gone. And with all attention directed towards the death-struggle just up the road, no one was paying the least heed to the big Kabuli badmash scratching himself furtively outside the Commander-in-Chief's funkhole.
It was my heaven-sent chance to act on the inspiration which had come to me while Tej blubbered at my feet. I braced myself, breathed a silent prayer, took a dozen flying strides, gathering speed as I went, and with one last almighty bound hurled myself from the bank and plunged into the boiling flood of the Sutlej.
According to the Morning Post, or the Keswick Reminder, I forget which (or it may even have been the Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury) I was pursued by "a horde of furious foes, whose discharges rent the waters about my head", but the truth is that no one saw my "spirited dash for freedom" except a couple of dhobiwallahs slapping laundry in the shallows (cool hands, those, to be doing the wash while the battle raged), which just shows that you should never trust what you read in the papers. Why, they even credited me with "breaking free from my bonds" and cutting down a couple of "swarthy foemen" in the course of my escape "from the jaws of the Seekh Khalsa"; well, I never said so. The facts are as I've stated, and while I may have embroidered 'em a little for Henry Lawrence's benefit, the lurid press accounts were pure gammon. But it's a journalistic law, you see, that heroes can never do anything ordinary; when Flashy, the Hector of Afghanistan, beats a reluctant retreat, there must be an army howling at his heels, or the public cancel their subscriptions.
You, knowing the truth of my inglorious evasion, may cry out in disgust at my desertion in the hour of need; well, good luck to you. I shan't even remark that 'twould have served no purpose to stay, or pretend that if there had been a bomb handy I'd have paused to heave it at the Khalsa's high command before lighting out—someone would have been sure to notice. I was intent only on flight, and the Sutlej called to me; as I ploughed frantically away from the bank I was prepared to drift all the way to Ferozepore if need be, rejoicing in the knowledge that the flood was carrying me beyond the reach of foe and friend alike. And so it might have done, if the river hadn't been swollen seven feet above its normal level, developing cur-rents that bore me almost diagonally to the northern bank; struggle as I might I couldn't stay in midstream, for there was a terrific undertow that kept sucking me down, and it was all I could do to stay afloat. I'm a good swimmer, but a river in spate is a fearsome thing, and I was half-drowned when I found myself in the northern shallows, and struggled, spewing and gasping, on to the muddy shore.
I lay for a couple of minutes, taking breath, and when I peeped out from among the reeds, there before me on the far side was the extreme flank of the Khalsa fortifications, with the bridge of boats a bare half-mile upstream. Which meant that on the bluff directly above me were the Sikh reserve batteries we'd passed through on the way in—and if an idle gunner chanced to look over the edge, there was I, like a fish on a slab.
I burrowed through the reeds, cursing my luck, and crawled into the lee of the bluff, which was about thirty feet high. Above me, just below the overhanging lip, was what looked like a sandy ledge. If I could clamber up to it I should be hidden both from above and below, so I began to climb the almost perpendicular bank, gouging holds in the wet clay. It was heavy going, but my one fear was that at any moment a dusky head would pop over and challenge me. Nearing the top, I could hear them chattering in the emplacements, which fortunately were about twenty yards back from the edge; I scrambled the last few feet with my heart in my mouth, gained the ledge, and was overjoyed to find that it extended back a good yard beneath the overhang; in two shakes I was prone beneath the lip, safe hidden but with a clear view for a mile upriver and across the Khalsa position on the southern shore. And there before my eyes was the great Battle of Sobraon.
Any soldier will tell you that, in the heat of a fight, sights and sounds imprint themselves on your memory and stay vivid for fifty years … but you lose all sense of time. Did can still see George Paget's cheroot clamped in his teeth as he leaned from the saddle to haul me to my feet in the Balaclava battery; I can hear Custer's odd little cough as he rocked back on his heels with the blood trickling over his lip—but how long those actions lasted, God alone knows. Balaclava was twenty minutes, they tell me, and Greasy Grass about fifteen—well, I was through both, start to finish, and I'd have put them at an hour at least. At Sobraon, where admittedly I was more spectator than actor, it was t'other way round. From the moment Sardul and I rode down to the bridge, to the time I reached my ledge, I'd have reckoned half an hour at most; in fact it was between two hours and three, and in that space, while Tej was bickering about the size of his hideyhole, and I was swallowing the Sutlej by the gallon, Sobraon was being lost and won. This is how it was.