I lay for a good half-hour, too shaken to drag myself from the bosom of Mother Earth, and then I inched my way forward on the ledge and looked down. Below me, as far as I could see on either hand, the shore was thick with corpses, some on the bank itself, others washing to and fro in the crimson shallows, more drifting by on the current.
Out in the stream, the low mud-banks were covered with them. Here and there a few were stirring, but I don't recall hearing a single cry; that was the uncanny part of it, for on every other battle-field I've seen there's been a ceaseless chorus of screams and wails above the groaning hum of the wounded and dying. Here, there was nothing but the swish of the stream through the reeds. I lay, staring down in the noon sunlight, too used up to move, and by and by there were no more bodies drifting down from the upper ford and the shattered bridgeheads and the smoking lines of Sobraon. Then the vultures came, but you won't care to hear of that, and I didn't care to watch; I closed my stinging eyes and rested my head on my arms, listening to the distant thump of explosions from the other shore as the fires burning in the Sikh lines reached the abandoned magazines. The hutments at the bridgehead were burning, too, and the smoke was hanging low over the river.
If you wonder why I continued to lie there, it was part exhaustion, but mostly caution. I knew there must be some survivors on my side of the water, doubtless full of spleen and resentment, and I'd no wish to meet them. There was no sound from the reserve positions behind me, and I imagined the Sikh gunners had taken their leave, but I wasn't stirring until I was sure of a clear coast and friends at hand. I doubted if our lot would cross the river today; John Company would be dog-tired, binding his wounds, taking off his boots, and thanking God that was the end of it.
For it was over now, no question. In most wars, you see, killing is only the means to a political end, but in the Sutlej campaign it was an end in itself. The war had been fought to destroy the Khalsa, root and branch, and the result was lying in uncounted thousands on the banks below Sobraon. The Sikh rulers and leaders had engineered it, John Company had executed it … and the Khalsa had gone to the sacrifice. Well, salaam Khalsa ji. Sat-sree-akal. High time, mind you.
"For that little boy. And for their salt." Gardner's words came back to me as I lay on that sandy ledge, letting the pictures of memory have their way, as they will on the edge of sleep … the bearded faces of those splendid battalions, in review at Maian Mir, and swinging down to the war through the Moochee Gate … Imam Shah staring down at the petticoat draped across his boot … Maka Khan grim and straight while the panches roared behind him … "To Delhi! To London!" … that raging Akali, arm outflung in denunciation … Sardul Singh shouting with excitement as we rode to the river … the old rissaldar-major, tears streaming down his face …
… and a red and gold houri wantoning it in her durbar, teasing them in her cups, cajoling them, winning them, so that she could betray them to this butchery … standing half-naked above the bleeding rags of her brother's body, sword in hand … "I will throw the snake in your bosom!" Well, she'd done all of that. Jawaheer was paid for.
And if you ask me what she'd have thought if she could have gazed into some magic crystal that day, and seen the result of her handiwork along the banks of the Sutlej . well, I reckon she'd have smiled, drunk another slow draught, stretched, and called in Rai and the Python.
They say ten thousand Khalsa died in the Sutlej. Well, I didn't mind, and I still don't. They started it, and hell mend them, as old Colin Campbell used to say. And if you tell me that every man's death diminishes me, I'll retort that it diminishes him a hell of a sight more, and if he's a Khalsa Sikh, serve him right.
Knowing me, you won't marvel at my callousness, but you may wonder why Paddy Gough, as kindly an old stick as ever patted a toddler's head, hammered 'em so mercilessly when they were beat and running. Well, he had good reasons, one being that you don't let up on a courageous adversary until he hollers "Uncle!", which the Sikhs ain't inclined to do—and I wouldn't trust 'em if they did. Nor do you feel much charity towards an enemy who never takes prisoners, and absolutely enjoys chop-ping up wounded, as happened at Sobraon and Ferozeshah both. Even if Gough had wanted to stop the slaughter, I doubt if anyone would have heeded him.50
But the best reason for murdering the Khalsa was that if enough of the brutes had escaped, the whole beastly business would have been to do again, with consequent loss of British and Sepoy lives. That's something the moralists overlook (or more likely don't give a dam about) when they cry: "Pity the beaten foe!" What they're saying, in effect, is: "Kill our fellows tomorrow rather than the enemy today." But they don't care to have it put to them like that; they want their wars won clean and comfortable, with a clear conscience. (Their consciences being much more precious than their own soldiers' lives, you understand.) Well, that's fine, if you're sitting in the Liberal Club with a bellyful of port on top of your dinner, but if you rang the bell and it was answered not by a steward with a napkin but an Akali with a tulwar, you might change your mind. Distance always lends enlightenment to the view, I've noticed.
Being uncomfortable close, myself, my one concern when I'd slept the night away was to slide out in safety and rejoin the army. The difficulty was that when I crawled out of my refuge and stood up, I tumbled straight down again and almost rolled over the ledge. I had another go, with the same result, and realised that my head ached, I felt shockingly ill and dizzy, I was sweating like an Aden collier, and some infernal Sutlej bug was performing a polka in my lower bowels. Dysentery, in fact, which can be anything from fatal to a damned nuisance, but even at best leaves you weak as a rat, which is inconvenient when the nearest certain help is twenty miles away. For while I could hear our bugles playing Charlie, Charlie across the river, I wasn't fit to holler above a whimper, let alone swim.
By moving mostly on hands and knees I made a cautious scout of the emplacements on the bank behind me; luckily they were empty, the Sikh reserve having decamped, taking their guns with them. But that was small consolation, and I was considering the wild notion of crawling down to the corpse-littered bank, finding a piece of timber, and floating down to Ferozepore ghat, when out of the dawn mist came the prettiest sight I'd seen that year—the blue tunics and red puggarees of a troop of Native Cavalry, with a pink little cornet at their head. I waved and yelped feebly, and when I'd convinced him that I wasn't a fugitive gorrachar' and received the inevitable, heart-warming response ("Not Flashman—Flash-man of Afghanistan, surely? Well, bless me!") we got along famously.
They were 8th Lights from Grey's division which had been watching the river at Attaree, and had been ordered across the previous night as soon as Gough knew he had the battle won. More of our troops were invading over the Ferozepore ghat and Nuggur Ford, for Paddy was in a sweat to secure the northern bank and tidy up the remnants of the Khalsa before they could get up to mischief. Ten thousand had got away from Sobraon, with all their reserve guns, and there were rumoured to be another twenty thousand up Amritsar way, as well as the hill garrisons—far more than we had in the field ourselves.