III.
THE DUST OF WAR.
THERE was a lull in the campaign. An armistice had been declared to enable the two Armies to concentrate in fresh country, before commencing the second phase of their operations. The Southern Army had passed through the suburbs of Delhi on the previous day, and were now reported to be camped some miles south of the city. One does not often get a chance of seeing twenty thousand of the flower of the Army of India bivouacking under service conditions in the open country, so I determined to go in search of them. It was said that they were to halt for a day's rest just south of the great Mausoleum of Nawab Safdar Jang, one of the numerous tombs that you find scattered about in the midst of seeming desolation for many miles around Delhi. They were therefore on the precise spot where Timur the Tartar and his horde from Samarkand routed the great army of Sultan Mahmud in 1398. Timur gained his victory on December 12th; an army of the first Emperor of all India slept on the battle-ground on the 504th anniversary of that sanguinary encounter; one wonders if anybody noticed the coincidence.
It was bitterly cold when I started off in the pallid dawn, before the sun had hoisted itself above the shoulder of the Ridge. My driver was a man of owlishly vacuous mind, who did not even know the road to the Kutab Minar; but one could scarcely miss a whole Army, one thought. The dismal streets just inside the western wall of Delhi were already astir when we clattered through them. Native quarters in India never present such a scene of unredeemed squalor as at daybreak, before the sunlight has lit up their rich colouring. It was a relief to pass under one of the massive gates of the city, and leave the great walls behind. Needless to say, we had not got a mile beyond the city before the driver expressed blank ignorance of his whereabouts. We pressed onwards by the first road we came to; it might not be the right one, but anyway it led south. A thick haze shut in the view on either side; it was hard to see a couple of hundred yards in any direction; evidently that Army was going to take some finding. Gaunt ruins loomed up at intervals through the mist, for modern Delhi is simply a city set in the midst of the sites of half a dozen other cities abandoned to the lizard and the squirrel. The road was cumbered with creaking carts laden with forage and a medley of furniture. Surely there was no more Durbar Camp here? The Amphitheatre was unknown miles away, to the north of the city.
Yet so it proved; and all along this road were planted, if you please, the camps of the Bombay Chiefs. They seemed to extend for about a couple of miles. The Chiefs have some long journeys before them if they mean to attend every function of the first few days of January; but they will have the satisfaction of knowing that the camps are in an open and healthy situation. At the very last camp I met a friendly Englishman, who said that the Southern Army had bivouacked the previous night two or three miles to the eastward. A cross-cut put me on the right route at last. Here were waggons loaded with barrels of beer. Clearly the Army could not be very far away. Then came a plain where wreaths of smoke from the embers of countless fires were mingling with the fog. A few natives could be faintly descried beating out the ashes with sticks; but the entire Army, horse, foot, artillery, and baggage train, had vanished into the unknown. Nothing but the smouldering fragments told that they had ever been there. Twenty thousand men marching light, leave astonishingly few traces behind them.
As I turned disappointedly towards Delhi, I was overtaken by a squadron of the Central India Horse; and then I began to realise what marching through dust was like. Instantly the scene became almost invisible. We moved through dense choking clouds. A thick flour settled on clothes and carriage. One heard the clatter of hoofs, the jingling of arms, the hoarse cries of the sowars; but all that could be seen were stray glimpses of a fluttering lance-pennon, of a phantom bearded face, of the white eyeballs of straining horses. Phew ! The dust turned the hair a dingy white, and caked in nostrils and throat. Will it be like this on Durbar Day? And what will become of the ladies' dresses? Anyway, let us get out of it. I turned into the fields. More ruins. Some one seemed to have been reproducing the Coliseum in miniature across the plain. On drawing near, it was realized that these two round buildings with tiers of arches must be the remains of the famous Observatory of Raja Jai Singh of Jeypore. Hard by was a huge sundial in brick, perhaps fifty feet high, with steps leading to the apex. I climbed to the top, and gazed towards Delhi. It was clearer now, but there seemed to be an uncommon amount of dust rising along the road as far as one could see. Presently, through the trees that lined the road, the head of a great cavalry column was discernible. I had struck another Army.
There was not much chance of getting back to Delhi after that. This was the First Division of the Northern Army, so a stray officer of the Guides Cavalry said. The rear of the column was miles behind. When a Division marches, it wants the whole road. No one would seek to dispute possession with it in any case, for it is no joke to travel amid the dust of an army. First came a cavalry brigade, mostly native cavalry. To see the native cavalryman at his best you want to look at him off the parade ground. These men were riding with the alert, careless ease of the born trooper. Light, keen-eyed, spare, sitting their horses as though they were part of themselves, begrimed with dust, the beard and moustache whitened, the dark eyes curiously roving, they looked the very type of "the horsemen of the future." What might they not have done in South Africa, had it been deemed possible to pit them against our whilom foes? Then came a couple of companies of the Bikanir Camel Corps, their huge mounts looking quaintly unwarlike, but carrying large quantities of stores. The dust grew thicker every moment, as round a corner trotted a couple of field batteries. There may have been an armistice, but this Division was pressing onward as though eager for instant battle. One noticed how smart the officers looked, in spite of the dust; khaki serge is a fine colour for service conditions. Many wore thick covert-coats of the same colour, for the air was still raw. Then a mountain battery or two, and a miscellaneous assortment of details. And then there was a gap and what seemed like a chance of a dash for Delhi.
I had just driven half a mile, when I came upon an inextricable jam of bullock carts, camels, donkeys laden with earth, palanquins, tongas, and a whole mob of shrieking, excited natives, at a bridge over the Jumna Canal. Emerging from a gap between two low houses, there tramped into view the solid ranks of the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders. They were the head of the 1st Infantry Division, and all dreams of tiffin — breakfast had already become an impossibility — vanished. One could not help admiring the fine free swing with which the Gordons went past. It is all very well to talk about the petted Highland regiments, but you would have to search a long while through the British Army to find a finer battalion than the 2nd Gordons. There did not appear to be a weedy man among them, and the hard work of the present operation has filled them with health and vigour. Somehow the dark tartan kilts did not show the dust as one would have expected. I noticed that all the company officers carried Lee- Metford carbines, but no swords. More Highlanders—the Argyll and Sutherlands — followed, and then a battalion of Rajputs, and another of Baluchis. The block of traffic on either side of the line of route grew denser every minute. Cross-roads met at that point, and it was amusing to see people trying to break through the column. A man on a big camel checked the whole advance by entangling himself amid the ranks of the 15th Sikhs. The little donkey boys tried to drive their charges through an occasional gap, but the donkeys never failed to stand stock still in the very midst of the adventure. Once a haggard wreck of humanity, carried in a dhoolie, cursed his bearers into making the perilous attempt. In their nervousness they selected the moment when -a mule battery was passing, and instantly found themselves bumped and shouldered in all directions. The wasted man in the dhoolie — he looked like a drug-taker — shaking with terror, shrieked imprecations on the entire Army and all its ancestors; but he did not get through. Another party, bearing on high two stark and shrouded forms, were more successful; the troops were halted; way was made for the dead.
There seemed no end to the khaki-clad host as it swept along, bronzed, dusty, sweating, — the sun was high now, — most of the men with the fixed, intent, rather vacant look straight ahead, that tells of long marching. And all the time the dust arose, and eyes and nostrils and throat grew gritty with particles. I clambered on a high bank to look for the tail of the column. The troops were marching by the stagnant waters of the canal. As far as the eye could reach, the ranks stretched out until they were lost to view in the dust-clouds. The Welsh Regiment approached, then a ponderous thirty-pounder battery lumbered along, then the 1st South Wales Borderers from Peshawar, then field hospital sections, then more native infantry. The end came at last. We hastily started along the canal bank to get ahead of the traffic that had been so long held up. We did three hundred yards in a canter, and then — right before us came another column, a medley of vehicles of all kinds, of camels and mules and horses, of mounted officers and men on foot, and a whole rabble of camp followers. It was the transport, and an officer at its head volunteered the information that it might be two miles long, but was probably nearer three. I had had enough of it. I shouldered my overcoat, and started to trudge slowly into Delhi. The last I saw of my unlucky conveyance, it was inextricably wedged in the angle of a wall behind a jam of bullock-carts. For aught I know, it may be there now. And the taste of the dust is still in my throat.