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The Collector had gone up to join Ford on the roof because he wanted to be in a position from which he could give the order to retreat at the right moment; in his own mind there was no doubt but that he would have to give it sooner or later. But the ca
The Collector had expected that the attack would begin with the howling warcry he had come to dread, but for once it did not; out of the thin ground mist that lingered in a slight dip in between the churchyard wall and the ruins of the Cutcherry the shapes of men began to appear. Then he heard, faintly but distinctly, the jingle of a bridle. He stood up shakily, then shouted: “Stand to! Prepare to fire!” From the roof his voice echoed over the sleeping plain like that of the muezzin. When they heard it the sepoys threw back their heads and uttered a howl so piercing, so harrowing that every window in the Residency must have dissolved if they had not been already broken. With that, bayonets glistening, they began to charge, converging from every angle of the hemisphere; before they had advanced a dozen yards squadrons of lancers had overtaken them racing for the ramparts.
The Collector waited until he estimated their distance at two hundred yards and shouted: “Fire!” This was at the limit of the effective range of canister but he could afford to wait no longer; his men were so weak, their movements so sluggish that they would need every extra second if they were to re-load and fire another charge before the enemy reached the ramparts. As half a dozen ca
“Spike the guns!” he shouted, but no one could possibly have heard him. Half the men were already straggling back into the Residency building or into the hospital in order to form a new position while the remainder did their best to hold off the sepoys who were already swarming over the ramparts. Some of the sepoys were shot or cut down as they struggled to get over “the possessions” which stuck out jaggedly here and there; a sowar pitched headless from his horse on to a silted-up velvet chaise longue; a warrior from Oudh dived head first in a glittering shower through a case of tropical birds while a comrade at his elbow died spreadeagled on the mud-frozen wheels of the gorse bruiser. But this did not delay the charge for more than an instant. More sepoys poured forward over the bodies of their fellows and a number of the defenders who had lingered too long hammering nails into the vents of the ca
“Get under cover!” yelled the Collector from the roof, not that anyone could possibly hear him. He and Ford had a ca
By this time the last of the garrison had fought their way back into the buildings and were trying to defend doors and windows against a swarm of sepoys. The Collector nodded to Ford who was standing by with the portfire. Ford touched it to the vent. There was a flash and a deep roar, followed by utter silence … a silence so profound that the Collector was convinced that he could hear two parakeets quarrelling in a tamarind fifty yards away. He peered over the parapet. Below nothing was moving, but there appeared to be a carpet of dead bodies. But then he realized that many of these bodies were indeed moving, but not very much. A sepoy here was trying to remove a silver fork from one of his lungs, another had received a piece of lightning-conductor in his kidneys. A sepoy with a green turban had had his spine shattered by “The Spirit of Science”; others had been struck down by teaspoons, by fish-knives, by marbles; an unfortunate subadar had been plucked from this world by the silver sugar-tongs embedded in his brain. A heart-breaking wail now rose from those who had not been killed outright.
“How terrible!” said the Collector to Ford. “I mean, I had no idea that anything like that would happen.”
But Ford’s only reply was to clutch his ribs and stagger towards the parapet. He had toppled over before the Collector had time to catch his heels.
But already a fresh wave of sepoys was pouring over the ramparts and bounding forward to the attack over that rubbery carpet of bodies. The Collector knew it was time he hurried downstairs … he had expected that something like this would happen, but not so quickly. He had not reckoned with the fact that the second charge of canister could not be fired. Just as he was leaving the roof there was a crack which stung his eardrums and the flagpole, struck near the base by a round shot, came down on top of him dealing him a painful blow on the shoulder. He found himself struggling on his back with the stifling presence of the flag wrapped round him like a shroud; the strange thing was that as he weakly continued to struggle (for the staff lay across his legs, pi