And so he stood now at the mouth of the gallery in the knowledge that all he could do he had done, yet still uncertain that it was enough. The lives of so many men depended on that powder. He had emptied the Company's arsenals in Hindoostan of the coarsest, and he had put bellows into the middle of the pile of kegs - and he had doubled the quantity first calculated in order to make up for any slowness in the burn, whether through damp or poor air. But he remained as fearful in his way as the ensign in command of the storming party.
He looked at his watch. It was time to seek cover. He had lit the quick match fifteen minutes ago and it was timed for twenty. Its accuracy he was in no doubt of, for he had made it himself, sending to Calcutta for isinglass, and he had tested two others in the tunnel before they had brought in the powder.
In the sap, Hervey looked at his watch too - the luminescent hunter that Daniel Coates had given him. It said the time was past eight-thirty, but no watch or clock agreed with any other to within five minutes, except when the noon guns fired, and so he could not know if the mine was live or not. The sky was rapidly lightening. Now would be best, while they could still cross the hundred yards to the walls without the defenders seeing all. He made to draw his sword, but the sap was too tight-packed. He pulled the pistol from his belt instead.
'Sar'nt-Major, do you think—'
The mine went off like the crack of doom. The earth shook as if the trench sides would fall in, splinters of stone whistled overhead like bullets, rocks showered into the sap. A dragoon standing only two feet behind Johnson was felled dead instantly. Ahead there was shouting and moans. Hervey began to push forward, but he could not get past the men in front waiting to debouch from the end of the sap. The artillery had opened fire, on the signal, making it difficult to communicate any sense of what was happening. But it was clear the mine had somehow gone off ill.
'Help me up!' he barked, raising his hands to the side of the trench.
Armstrong and Johnson hoisted him high, then scrambled out themselves, followed by Rose and the covermen. He ran only a dozen yards before coming on Sir Ivo. The sap was all but blown in and covered with debris from the bastion. 'Christ!' he groaned, seeing his lieutenant-colonel a mass of blood. 'Johnson!'
One of the surgeons got to him first. The assault was nothing if not well provided for. 'I have him. On you go!' rasped the Glasgow voice.
'Stay with him, Johnson,' said Hervey, firmly.
He got up, only to see Cornet Green a few yards away, and in a worse state. 'Christ almighty!' he spat, kneeling by his head. But it did not take a practised surgeon to know there was no life whatever there.
He now saw General McCombe lying almost as bad, and Brigadier Paton. And Irvine, the faithful lieutenant of engineers. A few yards further on was Ensign Daly sitting upright, as if in a stupor. His right leg was unrecognizable as a limb, attached only by the thinnest thread of flesh and bone. 'Jesus!'
Up came Colonel Nation, commanding the 23rd Native Infantry. He took in all with one glance, drew his sword and shouted 'Forward!'
Then came General Reynell, shouting, 'Go to it, Fourteenth!' and running on with them.
Hervey cursed worse than he might remember, drew his sabre and followed.
There should have been cheering; that was the old way. But there wasn't. Or perhaps he just couldn't hear it, for his ears rang like the bells on Easter Day. He glanced behind - just a mass of men running at the crouch, mainly red-jacketed. Wainwright was with him, and Rose, and he could just make out Corporal McCarthy.
Now they were clambering over fallen masonry, the bastion no more - a great hole in the side of the Pride of Hindoostan. He looked up and saw Colonel Nation in the breach, and then he saw him fall - to what, he couldn't tell, for the artillery fire of both sides was drowning all.
The storming party was now thoroughly mixed up with the Fourteenth's assault columns. He saw their two majors urging them on. Everard knew how, thought Hervey: he'd led the forlorn hope at Monte Video. And Bisshop - he'd been at Badajoz.
He saw the first bodies of the defenders - bits of them, rather, the primitive butchery of the mine. An arm stuck out from the debris; a private of the Fourteenth, huffing and puffing as he struggled up the broken ramparts with a scaling ladder on his shoulder, took the hand and shook it before plodding on.
At the top an ensign was triumphantly planting the Fourteenth's colours. But the regiment was not intent on consolidation. Without seeming to check, a company set off at once along the wall to the left, and two more under Major Bisshop to the right. And Bisshop's were almost at once hurling themselves at a bastion whose guns the Jhauts were desperately trying to re-lay for enfilade instead of sweeping the ramparts.
Hervey glanced left and right as if trying to choose, but Major Everard was even now mustering the rest of the regiment to press into the fortress. Hervey looked about him to rally any of the Sixth who had made it to the top: Rose looked game, Armstrong was with him, and Wainwright; McCarthy, his instincts still a foot soldier's, had picked up a musket.
They set off after Everard's men, half-tumbling down the shattered ramparts. Bodies and pieces of bodies lay thicker than before, scattered like winnowed chaff, the harvest of Armstrong's method. Even as they slid and stumbled over rock and flesh, brick and bone, Hervey hoped the army would indeed remember its debt.
Now there was the rattle of musketry, and to the smell of powder which had hung in their nostrils since the springing of the mine came that other stench of battle, of ordure and evisceration. Always it nauseated some men and excited others.
Soon they were doubling. There seemed no resistance despite the musketry. They were soon into the streets of the town, mean though it was. Hervey had his bearings now: the citadel lay straight ahead. An easy affair this was, his pistol and sabre as clean as a whistle.
They debouched suddenly into the maidan before the citadel. Hervey at last got a clear view ahead as the Fourteenth's companies spread left and right. He saw the great gates swinging closed, and he groaned. What an opportunity was gone!
Then he saw what the gates had also shut out - hundreds, four or five perhaps, of Durjan Sal's legionaries, who now turned back in desperation.
Everard had his men ready in the space of two words of command: 'Extend! Present!'
One hundred muskets levelled at the host not fifty yards in front.
‘Fire!’
The citadel and all before it was at once masked by a wall of black smoke.
‘On guard! Charge!’
It was not his fight, this, but Hervey would not hold back - not when the citadel itself stood within their grasp. He raced forward, barging ahead of the bayonets even, sabre thrust out like a lance.
He saw only a mass of limbs and faces in the seconds before they clashed - no 'pick your man, recover sabre, ride through, rally'. The infantry had their science too, but it didn't amount to much when it came to steel on steel. Only brute strength and will atop a certain skill. He felt the sabre jump in his hand as the point found a mark. But his grip was tight, and in deep went the blade. Then up came the pistol, the flash and the smoke, and the ball striking the same chest as the sabre, point-blank, throwing the man from off it, freeing the sabre to begin its proper work - the cutting and slicing and blooding of its razor edge. In seconds, red ran the length of the blade.
He was gasping for breath. There were only bodies now within reach of him. Wainwright closed to his side, Armstrong was already reloading a pistol next to him, McCarthy stood on-guard with the bayonet. Only Rose was still fighting, determined to force his way past friend and foe alike to get to the citadel gates. 'Hold hard,’ said Hervey to the three of them. It made no sense to press forward when there were formed ranks of redcoats doing their work so efficiently.