Athelstane Ford

“Colonel, here is a Moor from the Nabob’s capital, with a message from his general to you.”

Mr. Clive laid down his pen.

“Tell him to deliver it,” he said.

Before Mr. Scrafton could interpret this command, which he was about to do, I interposed, addressing Mr. Clive in English.

“The Meer Jaffier bade me salute you privately, sir. Is it your pleasure that Mr. Scrafton should be present?”

The Colonel and his secretary stared at each other, as they well might.

“Who are you, man?” demanded Mr. Clive. “And how do you know this gentleman’s name?”

“I know his name very well, sir,” said I, “and I think he knows mine, unless by this time he has forgot his former pupil, Athelstane Ford.”

“By the Lord, if it isn’t my little purser!” exclaimed Colonel Clive.

And this great man was pleased to rise from his chair and shake me very warmly by the hand, declaring himself pleased to see me safe and sound again. Mr. Scrafton did the same, after which they made me sit down and tell the history of my adventures. They questioned me very closely about the character of Surajah Dowlah and the strength of his government, and after I had expressed my opinions, Mr. Clive told me that he believed he understood the Nabob’s character, and had written him a letter such as would send his heart into his boots.

“And that the whole of Indostan may know what I think of the young monster, I mean to send the letter open to his lieutenant, Monichund,” he said. “These barbarous nations shall be made to learn the English are their masters, and that every outrage upon an Englishman shall cost them dear.”

So at last there had come a man able to deal with the bloodthirsty savage Moors and their prince as they deserved; and a new page was turned over in the history of Bengal. And but for the anxiety that continually harassed my mind as to the fate of those two whom I had left in Moorshedabad, I mean Marian and my cousin, who, in spite of many crimes, had at last done something to atone for his past misconduct; but for this, the time which followed would have been full of satisfaction. For I was now to witness the closing acts of that great historic drama of which I have already chronicled the commencement. I was to assist at the execution of justice on a great malefactor, and to see his victims repaid a hundredfold for the injuries they had suffered at his hands.

I had arrived in the English camp just in time to take part in the first of those celebrated operations by which the disgraceful surrender of Fort William was to be redeemed, and the English name was to be so signally advanced throughout the East Indies. Colonel Clive had despatched the letter he spoke of, to demand redress from the Nabob, but its language was so high and peremptory that Monichund, the Nabob’s governor in Fort William, returned it, saying that he dared not transmit it to his master. Thereupon Mr. Clive, not sorry to have an excuse for hostilities, ordered an immediate advance on Calcutta.

The total number of troops employed on this memorable expedition was a little more than two thousand, of whom the most part were Telingies, or Sepoys, the English troops being between six and seven hundred. Most of these were Company’s soldiers, though we had about one hundred men of Adlercron’s regiment from Madras. We had also two field-pieces; the rest had been lost through the unfortunate grounding of the Cumberland outside the river. To this force was afterwards added a body of three hundred seamen from the ships, as I shall presently relate. This little army under Colonel Clive marched slowly up the bank of the Hooghley, while Admiral Watson followed and escorted us with his fleet.

On the second afternoon we lay at a place called Mayapore, between which and Calcutta, on the river’s edge, stood the strong place of Budge-Budge, or Buz-Buzia as it is written by the learned. The Admiral had announced his intention of sailing up to attack this fort on the next day with the guns of the ships, and in order to prevent the garrison escaping Mr. Clive decided to march round during the night, and lay an ambush in the rear of the fort.

Accordingly we marched out of Mayapore about sunset, and were conducted by some Indian guides inland through a part of the country much broken up by swamps and watercourses, which made our progress so excessively tedious that it was not till the following sunrise that we arrived at the place appointed for the ambush. This was a hollow in the plain, where there was a deserted village, the hollow being surrounded by banks covered with thickets which, it was supposed, would conceal our presence from the enemy. The troops by this time being quite worn out, Colonel Clive gave them leave to lay down their arms and repose themselves, and so eagerly was the permission availed of that not a single sentinel was posted to give notice of the enemy’s approach.

I was with Mr. Clive himself, who had allowed me to accompany him as a sort of military secretary, Mr. Scrafton not being a soldier. We lay down side by side, and I for one had no sooner closed my eyes than I fell asleep. But the very next moment, as it seemed to me, I awoke with a start, to the sound of a battle going on around me.

I sprang to my feet and took in the whole scene. A whole Indian army appeared to have surrounded the sleeping camp. The banks of the hollow were lined with swarthy troops, armed with matchlocks, from which they poured a steady fire upon our bewildered men, just roused from slumber, and groping in confusion after their arms. On an eminence a short way behind I espied an officer, whom I took to be Monichund himself, seated on an elephant, issuing orders to his troops. Our two field-pieces stood deserted in the way of the enemy, who advanced to take them, while the terrified artillerymen ran for shelter among the troops of the line. Our position looked desperate, and I turned anxiously to Colonel Clive to see what he would do.

Mr. Clive had sprung to his feet at the same moment with myself. For a moment he stood in an attitude of stern attention, his hands clenched, his lips compressed, and his eyes darting from point to point over the field. The next instant his voice rang out like the sound of a trumpet.

“Steady! Form in line! Face this way! Captain Campbell, form your men on the right. Captain Coote, take yours to the left. Where is Kilpatrick?”

He sprang forward among the disordered troops, rattling out commands and words of encouragement, and infusing a new spirit into them by his very presence and the air of cool resolution with which he moved and spoke. Like magic the little force disposed itself under his orders, and began to return the enemy’s fire. Astonished by this sudden transformation, the Moors halted in their attack, and seemed contented to hold the rest of the ridge. Colonel Clive instantly detected their hesitation, drew up two small detachments opposite the points where the enemy seemed to be in the greatest numbers and ordered them to charge. They dashed forward with a ringing cheer, gained the bank, and drove the enemy back into the village.

Taking advantage of this success, Mr. Clive turned his attention to the two field-pieces, which had been surrounded by a party of Monichund’s force.

“Go,” he said to me, “order up the volunteers, and rescue those guns.”

Elated by this commission I darted towards a little squad composed of some fifty of the Company’s civil servants who had volunteered before we left Fulta.

“Come on,” I shouted, “and take the guns!”

They responded with an answering shout, we charged on the Indians at the double and drove them off. The artillerymen came up, turned the guns on the village, and began to shell out the enemy. A minute afterwards a loud cheer announced a general advance of our whole force, and Monichund, turning his elephant, fled, followed by all his men.

While this was taking place the thunder of guns from the direction of the river told us that the fleet had come up, and was already at work silencing the artillery of the fort. Colonel Clive called back his men from the pursuit, and then, finding them utterly exhausted, he deferred the assault on the fort till the next day, and we again betook ourselves to repose.

The result of this affair was greatly to encourage us, while we afterwards learned that it had as much disheartened the Moors. That presumption which they had felt ever since the fall of Calcutta was now exchanged for a different feeling, so much so that it may not be too much to say that the fate of Bengal was decided by that morning’s work. The admiration which I felt for Mr. Clive’s conduct on this occasion emboldened me to offer him my congratulations on his victory, but he rebuked me for doing do.

“I will tell you what it is, young gentleman,” he said to me, “I deserved to have been defeated for my carelessness in letting the beggars surprise me. It is true we beat them off, but that is no defence. A general should not allow himself to be caught napping in that fashion, and you may depend on it I shall say as little as possible about this day’s work in my despatches to the Directors.”

In this confidential way he was pleased to talk with me, a freedom which it was his habit to indulge in with all those of his subordinates whom he really liked. For this hero, as I must have leave to call him, was not one of those little great men who find it necessary to keep up their authority by a show of reserve and pompousness, but feeling that confidence in himself which would enable him to rely upon his actions as the proofs of his greatness, he despised the arts of inferior minds.

And now there happened an event, not only singular in itself, but interesting to me as bringing me back the company of an old friend whom I had never looked to see again. In the evening of this same day, while the soldiers were at supper, a party of sailors were landed from the ships, being the force I have already mentioned, to be ready to take part in the assault the next day. Thinking it possible that some of my old comrades from the Talisman might be among them, about eight o’clock I strolled down to their quarters, where I found them all drinking together, without much appearance of discipline.

I walked past several groups without recognising any face that I knew, and was about to give up the quest, when I noticed a group of half a dozen who were straying in the direction of the silent fort. This seemed to me a very dangerous proceeding, and as I could see none of their officers near, I determined to follow and remonstrate with them. Accordingly I hastened after them as fast as I could go. By the way in which they walked, or rather staggered along, I saw they had been drinking pretty freely. Presently they set off at a run, paying no heed to my shouts, and I was obliged to follow till they stopped on the very edge of the ditch which went round the fort. Here I caught up with them, greatly surprised that the garrison had shown no signs of life. But before I could speak, or even distinctly see their faces, the tallest of the party, a man of great frame, began rolling down into the ditch, which was nearly dry.

I dared not call out for fear of drawing the attention of those in the fort, and watched him breathlessly as he plunged through the mud at the bottom of the ditch and scrambled up the opposite side.

“What is he doing?” I demanded in a whisper of the man who appeared to be the most sober of the group.

“It’s a bet,” he answered; “we bet him a quart of rum he wouldn’t get to the top of the wall.”

I stared at the fellow, hardly able to believe in such recklessness. Then I turned my eyes to the huge seaman on the opposite side of the ditch. He had just made good his footing on the top of the bank, and now he began climbing up the masonry like a cat, till at last his herculean figure stood out clear on the summit.

The next moment we saw him draw his cutlass and brandish it over his head, and a loud shout came across to us in a voice I knew full well.

“Come on, you beggars, I’ve taken the – fort!”

It was old Muzzy, the boatswain of the Fair Maid.

Not for long did we hesitate, but rushing down into the ditch after him we were speedily in the fort. There our shouts roused first a company of Sepoys, and finally the whole force, who came trooping in, to find the place deserted, and the garrison fled secretly under cover of the darkness to Calcutta.

While this was going on I had approached my old friend, for so I cannot but call him. Indeed, in spite of his evil character and manifold breaches of the laws of God and man, the old fellow had shown me much kindness, for which I was not ungrateful, and this perhaps inclined me to look with an unduly lenient eye on his misdeeds. Going up to him, I clapped him on the back, and cried out —

“How goes it, old Muzzy? and what of the Fair Maid and the rest of her crew?”

The boatswain gave a great start, and turned round to me with a look of astonishment which quickly passed into one of delight.

“Why, drown me, if it ain’t that young cockerel again!” he exclaimed.

And before I knew what he would be at, he cast his arms around me, and gave me a most evil-smelling kiss, fragrant of rum and tobacco. Then, still holding me firmly with his great hairy hands, as though he feared I should vanish into air, he put me back far enough for him to gaze at my face.

“Stab my vitals if I didn’t think as you was suffocated in that there Black Hole!” He garnished his speech with many other expressions which I am ashamed to remember, far less to write here. “So we all heard aboard the ship. But you’re alive, ain’t ye now?” he added. “It’s not the rum as makes me think I sees you?”

“I am Athelstane Ford,” I answered, trying to shake myself free from his grasp, “and not a little glad to meet you again. But how did you come to be on a King’s ship? Is the Fair Maid– ”

“Hist!” He interrupted me with a warning frown, and cast an apprehensive glance behind him. “Not a word about her! It might be a hanging matter if it was known I had been in the boat that escaped from Gheriah. I’ll tell you all about it by our two selves.”

I took advantage of this offer to lead the way out of the fort. We walked back to the British lines together, old Muzzy still clutching me with one hand, and as soon as we had reached a quiet spot out of earshot we sat down and he commenced his tale.

“You see, it’s this way. Arter what happened when we was coming out of the river, where we lost you overboard, I come to the conclusion that that cousin o’ yours warn’t what I calls a honest man. Nobody can’t say as how I’m one of your squeamish sort, ’cause I ain’t. As fur as a bit o’ smuggling goes, or a bit of privateering, or even a bit o’ piracy, in a general way, I don’t say nothin’, but when it comes to taking and firing a culverin at your own ship, with your own mates aboard of her, why, d’ye see, I don’t call that honest. And when I find out as a man ain’t what I calls honest, I don’t sail in his company. Mind you, I’m not the man to deny that Captain Gurney has his good points; he ain’t no lawyer, that I’ll admit, and he’s as free with his rum-cask as any man I ever wish to sail under. But arter that business what I’ve mentioned, me and my mates swore we wouldn’t have nothing more to do with him.