They turned off when they came to this.
"Here we are, all right, Pertab!" Lisle said, as they came to the tree.
"Allah be praised!" the man said, faintly. "I seem to have been hearing noises in the wood, for a long time; and when I heard you coming, I was by no means sure that it was not an illusion, like the others."
"Here are twenty of your comrades with me, Pertab, and we shall soon get you into camp."
"I didn"t expect you till morning," the wounded man said. "I thought that you would be far too tired to come out and, without you, they could not have found me."
"They would have carried me, had it been necessary; but I managed to hold on pretty well.
"Now, my men, get him upon the stretcher, and let us be off. Pour the contents of that bottle down his throat; that will keep him up, till we get back."
For another four or five miles, Lisle kept along but, to his mortification, he was obliged at last to take to the stretcher. The four Sikhs who carried it made light of his weight. Once or twice, on the way, some dropping shots were fired at the party; but these were speedily silenced by a volley or two from the rifles.
It was four o"clock in the morning when they re-entered camp. The fires were already lighted and, as the party entered, the troops received them with loud cheering; which called all the white officers out from their shelters.
"You have done well, my fine fellows," the colonel said to the Sikhs. "Now, get some food at once, and then lie down for three or four hours" sleep. I shall leave two companies with you; I don"t think that, after the thrashing we gave them yesterday, the enemy are likely to trouble us--at any rate, not before the afternoon, and by that time you will have rejoined us."
"We can march on now, sahib."
"No, no," the colonel said; "a thirty-six-mile march, through this bush, is a great deal more than a fair day"s march for anyone; and I am not going to see such good men knocked up, by asking too much of them. So just go, and do as I order you. You may be sure that I shall put the deed you have accomplished in my orders of today.
"Well, Mr. Bullen," he said, as he came to the spot where Lisle was sitting, with his shoes and stockings off, rubbing his aching feet, "so you could not outmarch the Sikhs?"
"No, sir, and I did not expect to do so. I went at their head all the way there, and four or five miles back; but should have had to give up, even if I had been told that a big fortune awaited me, if I got in on foot. I should have had to say:
""Well, then, somebody else may have it; I can go no farther.""
"Well, you have done uncommonly well, anyhow; uncommonly well. I don"t suppose there are five white men in camp who could have done so much. After this you may be sure that, if you have need of an expedition, the Sikhs would follow you through fire and water, if they were allowed to volunteer for the service.
"I should have been glad to recommend you for the Victoria Cross, for your conduct right through the affair; but you have got it. But I fear that, although you would get every credit for your doings, the authorities would consider that it did not come under the head of deeds for which the Victoria Cross is given."
"I am sure I have no desire for another V.C., even if two could be given."
No attack was made on the following day, and it was evident that the Ashantis had taken to heart the lesson that had been given them. Two days later the column marched into the fort, and Colonel Willc.o.c.ks went out to meet it.
The colonel"s reports had been sent in by a runner. As the Sikhs came along, the colonel ordered them to halt and, as Lisle marched up at the head of his company, he made a sign to him to come up.
"Captain Bullen," he said, "I have much pleasure in congratulating you on the manner in which you saved the life of the Sikh soldier, who volunteered to swim that river in flood in order to carry a wire across; and still more for the manner in which you made what I should say was a record march, in this country, to bring in a man who had been wounded, in a fight with a small party of the enemy."
Then he turned to the Sikhs.
"Soldiers," he said, "I cannot praise you too heartily for having volunteered, at the end of a long and exhausting march, to undertake another still longer and more fatiguing, in order to bring in a wounded comrade. It is an act of which you may be proud; but not altogether a surprising one, for we know well that we can depend upon the Sikhs, on all and every occasion."
Lisle had been carried into the fort. His feet were so tender and swollen that he could not possibly walk farther, and he was consequently taken down by the carriers, during the last two days"
march. Hallett sauntered up, as soon as he was put into a hospital hut.
"Hillo, Bullen, so you have broken down! A nice example to set to your Hausas, isn"t it?"
"I suppose it is," Lisle laughed; "but the Hausas did not march as far as I did."
"No? What were you doing? Scouting half a mile ahead of them, on your own account?"
"Not exactly; I only went the width of a river, and yet, the result of that was that I had to do an extra march of some twenty miles."
"Now you are speaking in riddles, Lisle; and if there is one thing I hate, it is riddles. When a fellow begins to talk in that way, I always change the subject. Why a man should try to puzzle his brain, with such rigmarole things, is more than I can imagine."
"Well, Hallett, I really feel too tired to tell you about the matter. I can a.s.sure you that it is no joke, being carried down fifteen miles on a stretcher; so please go and ask somebody else, that"s a good fellow."
In a quarter of an hour Hallett returned again, put his eyegla.s.s in his eye, and stood for a couple of minutes without speaking, regarding Lisle furtively.
"Oh, don"t be a duffer," the latter said, "and drop that eyegla.s.s.
You know perfectly well that you see better, without it, than with it."
"Well, you are a rum chap, Bullen. You are always doing something unexpected. I have been hearing how you and a Sikh started to swim the Ordah, when it was in flood, with a wire; how you were washed away; how you were given up for lost; how, two days later, you returned to camp and went straight out again, with a party of twenty Sikhs, took a little stroll for ten miles into the bush--and of course, as much back--to carry in the Sikh soldier you had had with you, but who had been wounded, and was unable to come with you. I don"t know why such luck as this is always falling to your lot, while not a bit of it comes to me."
"It is pure accident, Hallett. You will get a chance, some day. I don"t know that you would be good for a thirty-mile tramp, but it must be a consolation to you that, for the last five miles, I had to be carried."
"It is a mercy it is so," Hallett said, in an expression of deep thankfulness, "for there would have been no holding you, if you had come in on your feet."
Chapter 16: The Relief Of Cooma.s.sie.
"I Certainly should not have volunteered for this work, Bullen, if I had known what it was like. I was mad at not being able to go out to the Cape, and as my regiment was, like yours, stationed in India, there was no chance of getting away from there, if I had once returned. Of course, I knew all about the expeditions of Wolseley and Scott; but I forgot that these were carried on in the dry season, and that we should have to campaign in the wet season, which makes all the difference in the world. We are wet through, from morning till night--and all night, too--and at our camping places there is no shelter. The low-lying land is turned into deep swamps, the little streams become great unfordable torrents, and the ground under our feet turns into liquid mud. It is really horrible work, especially as we get very little food and less drink. It is not work for dogs."
"It is all very well for you to grumble, Hallett, but you know just as well as I do that, if the offer were made to you to go home, at once, you would treat it with scorn."
"Oh, of course I should! Still, one may be allowed to have one"s grumble and, after all, I think we are pretty sure of some stiff fighting, which makes up for everything. I am not afraid of the enemy a bit, but I do funk fever."
"I don"t think we are likely to get fever, so long as we are on the move; though I dare say a good many of us will go down with it, after the work is done. We have only to think of the starving soldiers and people, in Cooma.s.sie, to make us feel that, whatever the difficulties and dangers may be, we must get there in time. The great nuisance is, that we can get no news of what is doing there.
We constantly hear that the governor, with a portion if not all of the force, has broken out, some days since; and we begin to look out for them; and then, after a time, comes the news that there has been no sortie whatever. It is really most annoying, and I am often kept awake at night, even after a day"s fight, thinking of the position of the garrison."
"I don"t think, if there were a hundred garrisons in danger,"
Hallett laughed, "it would affect my sleep in the slightest. I lie down as soon as I have eaten what there is to eat, which certainly is not likely to affect my digestion; and however rough the ground, I am dead asleep as soon as my head touches it, and I do not open an eye until the bugle sounds in the morning. Even then I have not had enough sleep, and I always indulge in bad language as I put on my belts, at the unearthly hour at which we are always called. I don"t begin to feel half awake till we have gone some miles."
"You would wake up sharp enough, Hallett, at the sound of the first gun."
"Yes, that is all right enough; but unless that comes, there is nothing to wake one. The close air of the forest takes out what little starch you have in you, and I verily believe that I am very often asleep, as we march."
"It is monotonous, Hallett, but there is always something to see to; to keep the men from straggling, to give a little help, sometimes, to the wretched carriers."
"You are such a desperate enthusiast, Bullen. I cannot make out how you keep it up so well. I really envy you your good spirits."
"They are indeed a great blessing; I had plenty of occasion to make the most of them, when I was marching in the ranks of the 32nd Pioneers, on the way up to Chitral. Still, they came naturally enough, there; and I am bound to acknowledge that it is hard work, sometimes, to keep them up here."