# The Chaplain of the Mullingars

Extracted from Pall Mall magazine, June 1912, pp. 863–873.
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE MULLINGARS.
The Story of the Great Fight on the Sangar.
BY TALBOT MUNDY
D COMPANY of the Mullingars fell in the darkening twilight and stood at ease, while Captain Boyne paced up and down in front of them talking in low tones to his lieutenant; three subalterns stood together at one end of the line and pretended to confer too; they were not in Boyne's confidence as yet, but there was no particular reason why the men should be aware of that; so they smoked cigarettes, and whispered to one another, and looked important. A British subaltern can do that as well as anybody. “” The men grumbled audibly; but Tommy Atkins always grumbles, so nobody took the slightest notice of it. The men had marched thirty miles that day over a country that is absolutely destitute of roads, seven thousand feet or so above sea-level, and had dined at the end of it on ammunition mule, washed down with boiled ditch-water masquerading in the guise of coffee; and now, with the cheery camp-fires beginning to glow all around them, they had been ordered to fall in for a night march to Heaven knows where. Even old soldiers would have grumbled.
But two-thirds of D Company were second-year men—red-polled Mullingar yearlings, as the Colonel called them; they had had enough of barrack life to appreciate its solid comfort as compared with the savage destitution of their Irish bog-country; they had come to look for three square meals a day and long afternoons of idleness, and they had had just enough campaigning to make them homesick. Dysentery, the scourge of armies in Northern India, had left them untouched as yet, and the company was still at its full strength and with every man of it fit and well; but so far there had been no fighting, so they lacked enthusiasm. If they had only known it, they were going through the unpleasant but important process of being broken in; but they failed to realise it, and were about as bad-tempered as they possibly could be.
“D Company!” growled one of them; “'Tis always D Company! Dog's work to do? Send D Company! Fatigues? What's D Company doing? Night Sentry-go? D Company and be damned to thim! Sure, 'tis us that's running this bloody war that's no war at all! The others are spectators!”
“And a fine spectacle they have to look at!“answered a front rank man. “'Tis my belief we've been sent to look for Hell, and by the same token we've found it! There's not an Afghan between here and Russia!”
“Companee—ee—Tshun!” barked the captain suddenly. “Shuller—Umms!”
They “shunted and “shouldered” like a regiment of veterans on parade; and that is a very different thing from veterans on campaign. The Colonel stepped from somewhere out of the darkness, answered Boyne's salute, and walked down the ranks front and rear, inspecting the men carefully.
“Order—Umms! Stand at—aise!” ordered Boyne, and the Colonel led him away out of hearing of the men to talk to him.
“Have they got three days' rations apiece, as well as their emergency rations?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. Now, I'm sending you, Boyne, to give you a chance of breaking in those yearlings of yours; also because I don't believe I've got a better man. The native scouts have reported the enemy in force about twenty miles away, due north of here; one native will go with you as a guide. They're supposed to be camped on the top of a long flat hill that runs nearly east and west across the line of march, and they've got a Mullah with them who's preaching fight.
“They don't seem to fancy a pitched battle, though, and the general's afraid that they'll bolt if he sends a whole regiment to get in touch with them. So you're to take your company and try to draw them into a fight; they'll tackle you fast enough when they find they've got no more than one company to deal with.
“You'll be supported, of course. The Camerons and two regiments of Ghoorkas have started already from the left wing; but they have to make a wide détour, and you can't expect them to connect with you before mid-day at the earliest. Look out for them though, from the south-west, and after they get there take your orders from Colonel Mackinnon of the Camerons.
“Now in front of the enemy's position, and within rifle-range, there's a cone-shaped hill that they've left undefended; your job is to get on top of that and make a sangar, if there isn't one already; tickle 'em up with a few volleys, and then hold your sangar until the Camerons and Ghoorkas get in touch. Between you you ought to be able to draw them into a central engagement then, and hold them until the brigade can come up to finish the business. We start in about two hours' time, in the same direction that you're taking, but we shall make a détour before we get there and endeavour to come up on the enemy's flank, so's to cut them off if they bolt, or at least pepper them properly while they run. Now, d'you understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“Very well, then, you'd better start. Oh, by the way, there'll be no water on that hill-top, remember; be sure and let your men fill their water-bottles again before they get there.”
“All right, sir.””
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, sir. Companee. . . ee right in fours . . . . . Move to the right in fours . . . Form . . . fours! Right! By the left . . . Quick . . . march! . . . Left . . . wheel! . . . March at . . . aise! . . . March easy!”
And D Company marched off into the darkness with the steady, inspiring tramp of well-drilled men. They might be bad-tempered and weary, but they were still the Mullingars.
The Mullingars is the official title of the regiment that replaces their old-time number in accordance with the more modern Territorial scheme. They are the King's Royal Mullingars. But they are better known in clubs and barrack-rooms as the Royal and Reprehensible, and that is what they prefer to call themselves. Under that title they have torn the heart out of more than one Army Corps, and they have left their mark all up and down the Peninsula, and on most of the other battlefields of Europe, in the shape of long, low mounds with a cross at either end of them that mark the enemy's dead—and theirs.
It was the Mullingars who held Marshal Ney in check for half a morning at Quatre Bras until Picton and the Duke of Brunswick could bring up the main body to deal with him.
And later, at Waterloo, it was the Mullingars who formed squares in the valley below St. Jean, and stopped five successive charges of Napoleon's cuirassiers, sending them reeling back out of range again, and answering with howls of derision the cheers that had scared half Europe. The charge of French cavalry-even beaten French cavalry—is no Sunday-school picnic; it is likely to take the ginger out of anything it hits; but when the last charge was over, and the shattered remnants of the finest cavalry in the world were retreating sullenly up the hill again, the Mullingars were very nearly out of hand with excitement and exultation.
They were boys then, just as D Company in Afghanistan were boys; but they had caught sight of Napoleon, and their officers had to get in front of them and hold them back at sword and pistol point. They wanted to charge into the French lines and pull “Boney” off his horse.
It is a standing grievance among the Mullingars to this day that they were denied that honour. Even the six-months' soldiers, just out of their recruit course, regard it as a personal affront, to be wiped out when the time comes. So, although his men were green and tired, Captain Boyne had no uncomfortable doubts about their mettle; even the greenest company of a regiment that entertains a grouch like that is a thing that an enemy should handle cautiously, and at long range.
Nor had his men any doubt at all of him. The Mullingars are officered exclusively by Irishmen—the wild, unregenerate, younger sons of impoverished gentlemen; and if you can find better stuff from which to make officers than that—more reckless spendthrifts—better sportsmen—more gallant or more fearless gentlemen—or any one more volcanically unconquerable in the teeth of repeated disaster, go forth and conquer the world, for you have the key to it.
The Mullingars live by backing one another's bills and selling horses to the Sassenach, that being about the only thing a Sassenach is good for in their opinion; and they are afraid of absolutely nothing that is above the earth, or in the waters under the earth, except dishonour, Their honour is the honour of the regiment, so the men love them.
They marched off behind Captain Boyne, footsore and grumbling, but quite confident in his ability to lead them, and ready to go wherever he went and guard him with their lives. There is no loyalty in all the world so intense as that of an Irish soldier for his officer, provided an officer is all that he should be. And Captain Boyne was.
But although Boyne knew that the men who marched behind him were game to the last kick, he knew, too, that they were in an uncommonly nasty temper, and would need handling.
A night-march of twenty miles, overcoated, and burdened with three days' provisions, is no joke for men who have already negotiated thirty miles of execrable country that day. It is not impossible, especially for an Irish regiment, but it is likely to entail considerable suffering, and Boyne's eagerness for the coming engagement was considerably modified by the knowledge that he would have utterly leg-weary men to handle when he brought it off.
The men had not even an inkling of the fight in front of them, as yet, so he halted them when they had left the camp a mile or two behind, and told them. Their response was instant; and, though footsore from their previous hardships that day, they began to march in expectant silence, and the grumbling ceased.
II.
But the short halt had given time for something else to happen; and it was the one thing besides the prospect of a fight that was needed to make the men absolutely satisfied. Just as Boyne had barked out his order to resume the march, and had stopped for a second to light his pipe under the cover of his cape, a hand struck him on the back from behind with a thud that was meant for the seal of friendship. It had the more immediate effect, though, of making him swallow a mouthful of smoke, and, while he was coughing it up again, his assailant—a bulky, burly-looking figure of a man that seemed to have sprung suddenly from nowhere—had a chance to get in the first word.
“If that was not the worst path I ever followed,” he panted, “I'll eat my cassock! I felt sure over and over again I'd lost the way. I tell ye, Boyne, it was no joke! But listen to me, me boy, you're making the pace too fast! The boys 'll be all half dead long before they get there, and them with a fight in front of them. Steady now. Take it easy! Ye've the whole night in front, and only twenty miles to go . . . Go slow!”
“The Colonel gave you leave to follow?” asked Boyne, when he had finished coughing.
“He did not. But he forgot to issue any orders about my staying in camp either.”
“So you lay low, and slipped away after us when no one was looking—eh, Father?”
“I did. These boys of yours are green as geese, and dog-tired into the bargain; they'll need me to-night. So I'm here.”
“Um-m-m! Did it never occur to you, Father, that the firing line is no place for a priest? Hadn't you better go back? I could spare you a couple of men as an escort.”
“Hear him now! Would I have come at all, think you, if I'd meant to go back before the end? Tell me that! I'll not interfere, Boyne, have no fear of that. But I am an older man than you, Boyne, and I've seen more; I'm telling you these boys 'll need me before another day's finished. Go ahead and do your business, and leave me to do mine. If I can do mine as well as I know you can do yours, I'll be a proud man. They'll have need of us both, and 'tis good we're both here.”
“But can you march, Father?“
“As well as you!”
“I don't like it.”
“Then lump it, my son! I'm here, and I won't go back unless by force. Ye won't use that argument!”
“No, Father, I'll not use force; but I'll ask you to go back. Now be reasonable, and do as I ask, won't you?”
“Once and for all, No! I know my duty; it lies here.”
“All right, Father, your blood be on your own head! I'll say no more. I'll make use of you, though.”
“Anything I can do . . .”
“You can do it better than any other man in the world; you can have the very pleasant job of spurring on the rearguard. You'll be safer there than in front, too. But don't blame me if the job's harder than you bargained for.”
“I'll take you at your word, my son; you lead 'em, and I'll bring up the rear. I notice the men are not talking; have ye given orders for silence?”
“No. Make all the noise you like until I give the word.”
“Thanks. Good-bye, then, till we get there.”
“So long, Father.'
Father Callan halted to let the column overtake him, returning the greetings of the subalterns as they passed, and eyeing the men with almost the expression of a cattleman sizing up a mob of steers. It was part of his trade to know all about men, and he diagnosed the condition of the men of D Company as they filed past him in the darkness with absolute and unbiassed accuracy.
The officers were tired, but not so heavily loaded as the men, and were going stronger; the men were dog-tired, and though all of them were quite anxious to reach the scene of the promised fight, some of them were getting sleepy; and the men that stumbled swore unwholesomely.
They tossed his name from rank to rank as they recognised his burly figure standing motionless like the shadow of a rock in the black darkness; and several of them called out a greeting to him.
“Yes,“he answered; “'tis Father Callan sure enough. And he's looking at the gloomiest company of rookies that ever marched in their sleep! What's come over ye? Has someone cut your tongues out that ye don't sing?”
As he fell in behind them, his bass voice lifted in a marching song, and in less than two minutes he had them all singing. The result was exactly what he intended; now, when a man fell headlong, and that happened every other minute, for the track was all rocks and a yard wide in places—the vile oaths gave place to laughter. The men woke up and chaffed each other, shared their tobacco, and called their bosom friends by opprobrious epithets, which is always a good sign.
By and by they broke into wild Irish songs, any one of which would have frozen the marrow of the authorities at home; they sang of mutiny and of treason to the Crown, and of the glorious days of prophecy when Ireland should come into her own again; but that is the way of Irish regiments when they are about to strike a blow for England. The unchristian track slid past them for a while as though they were just starting on their first march that day.
But human muscles have their limitations; and soldiers' feet are not like ammunition-boots, that are good for so many thousand miles of marching, either with intervals or without them. The boots held, but the feet gave out. Will-power, stirred up by songs and an expert like Father Callan, will accomplish wonders; but by and by, as the track grew worse and worse and the night grew colder, their rifles and haversacks grew heavier than lead, and their ammunition-pouches seemed to weigh a ton apiece; then the willpower died down again, and men began falling to the rear, and Father Callan's labours began in real earnest.
His voice rang clear and cheery through the frosty night, but he wasted no sentiment on them; he ragged them and called them cowards; he threatened to expose them as malingerers before the whole regiment; and he carried two rifles for them, giving two men at a time a chance to rest themselves that much.
But they kept on dropping to the rear, and the rest of the company kept on drawing farther and farther away in the distance; after three hours of constant effort Father Callan found himself with a sergeant and one-and-twenty men fully two miles behind the main body, and there seemed to be no hope of catching up! Boyne had counted too implicitly on Father Callan's magnetism, and had made the pace too hot.
There was an almost trackless mountain now between the company and Father Callan's little contingent, and the men with him were getting into that hopeless sullen state that is the most difficult of all to deal with; moreover, they were in very real danger of losing their way, for the native guide was in front with Boyne, and not even a sound reached them now to guide them.
By and by, after about another hour of it, they overtook a subaltern who had waited for them by Boyne's orders. He lent his vocabulary to Father Callan's, and that helped a little, but very little. Terence Darcy was a very young officer, and the men took little heed of him; they were too dead-beat to mind even his derision.
“Is that red-headed, hot-brained lunatic Boyne likely to call a halt presently, d'ye think?“asked Father Callan, as he burdened himself with a soldier's haversack.
“No. He says he won't halt again until he reaches the sangar. We're to be as quiet as we can now, because we can't be so very far away from the enemy's lines, and they may possibly have some scouts out. We're to catch him up if possible; but if we can't do that, we're to follow as fast as we can, and join him on the hill-top.”
“Catch him, is it?” said Father Callan. “I'm thinking the devil couldn't catch him the way he's going! The Government's to blame: it comes of making officers of Irish. men; they think there's glory waitin' over the brow of every hill they come to, an' they're for ever tryin' to get there first.”
Darcy took two men's rifles as well, so that four men were now marching lighter, and for a while they made better progress. But instead of getting better the track grew rapidly worse, and before very long they lost themselves.
“I believe we're leaping round and round in rings,” said Darcy, “like goats on a hillside!”
“Hush, ye young scatterbrain! I know it. But don't let the men hear ye! They're sorry-enough looking goats as it is. They'll lie down and die if they think they're lost! Let's halt a minute and try to find the trail. Set those rifles down, and have a look for the hoof-marks of the ammunition mules; and sometimes the men'll drop a cartridge or two; ye might find one.”
“What, on this hill-side in the dark? We'd better fire a volley to let Boyne know we're in trouble and can't find him.”
“Aye! and let the Afghans know it too! Bless the boy! That's the best idea you've thought of yet! Why, they'd be down on us in a minute! Look ahead now—can ye make out a long-backed hill, flanked by two other hills, or is it a cloud-bank? There's no telling in the darkness at this altitude. Ah! there's the moon again! Now, look, d'ye see that cone-shaped hill? That might be Boyne's sangar he was making for, though it looks a little small. Let's camp on top of that till daylight, at all events. We're safe up there. What say you?”
“I say Yes!' answered Darcy, who was very glad indeed to have some one to make suggestions for him.
A boy of twenty-one on his first campaign, lost with two-and-twenty men in the “hills” of Northern India, may wear the boldest front in the world; but he is not likely to be a very resourceful person. Like every other subaltern of the British Army, Darcy was ready to assume absolute responsibility for anything at a moment's notice; he only lacked ideas.
“We'll march on that hill and camp there,” he ordered, as though the notion had been entirely his; and the frozen, weary men heard him and pricked up like tired horses in sight of home. They crawled to it, clambered up it, lay down on top of it, and fell asleep. Darcy let them lie there, and he and Father Callan explored the hill-top carefully
There had been a sangar once on the top of it—a mere enclosure of unhewn stones, shoulder high; the stones were many of them fallen and disarranged, but most of them were lying near their old position, and nearly all of the big ones were still in place except for a ten-foot gap that faced due northward. Darcy and Father Callan tore and blistered their hands for more than an hour filling up the gap, and when the reflection of the coming morning showed rosy-pink in the western sky to the left of them, the gap was filled already by a three-foot wall that would give plenty of cover for a man kneeling.
“There's the morning!” said Darcy. “Thank heaven for that!”
“Yes, thank heaven for that!” said the priest; “we'll be able to see at last!”
“Look!” said Darcy, “that must be the enemy's position right in front of us.”
There was a golden glimmer in the east now, and the west grew dark again. The ice-cold morning wind, that searches the nooks and corners of the Himalayas, struck them full in the face, and bit like vitriol until their eyes ran.
“What'll those protuberances be?” asked Father Callan.
“Skin-tents. I can make 'em out plainly.”
“Are ye sure?”
“I'm dead sure. Look!” he added, pointing to the right, “there's Boyne's hill over there!”
“How far d'ye make that?” asked Father Callan, peering through the mist that was beginning to draw out of the lower ground. “Ye've got good eyes.”
“About a mile; perhaps a shade more. I can see the men's helmets; they're building up the wall at the top; did you see that big rock move? There—see that? Boyne's getting ready to hold that hill till the cows come home. Good old Boyne! Let's fire a volley to let him know we're here!”
“Yes, and wake the Afghans! 'Tis a dispensation of Providence that these infidels sleep so late; don't you disturb them, my son; they'll wake soon enough!”
“We've got to communicate with Boyne somehow. I'd send one of the men, but they're all too dead-beat. Look at them! Did you ever see a crowd of rookies sleep like them? They look like dead men, don't they! Tell you what, I'll go myself! You stay here and take charge, Father, until I get back; I won't be long. Boyne'll think up some way out of the difficulty when he knows how we're fixed.”
“Come back, ye young hot-head! said Father Callan, reaching out to seize his arm; but Darcy was too quick for him, and a little avalanche of stones went clattering down the hill-side to mark his progress.
“Cra-ack!” went a long jezail on the hill-side opposite, and '“Whee-ee-ee!” moaned a flat-nosed bullet overhead. “Good shooting!” muttered Father Callan; “they must know the range!”
He looked down the hill for Darcy, but failed to see him; and because he felt lonely up there by himself and was filled with a persistent foreboding of evil, he turned to the sleeping men and began rousing them. “Wake up there, boys!” he ordered. “Wake up! That's right, sergeant! Now, wake up the rest, and line 'em around the wall. The Afghans are awake; they'll be on us at any minute now. Put some life into those men; make 'em hurry!”
“Crack-ak-ak!” went three jezails opposite, and “Whee-ee-ee!” whined two bullets away into the distance; the third bullet found something in its course, and stopped.
“Father!” called a voice from somewhere below the hill, “Father Callan! Can ye hear? I'm hit. Fire a volley and warn Boyne!”
“I'm coming!” Father Callan's answer was as prompt as an echo. “Sergeant! Take charge here! Stay here with the men until I call you!”
Then he climbed a little clumsily over the low wall, for he was nearly as weary as the men had been, and dropped noisily down the hill-side, loosening about a hundred stones as he sprang from rock to rock. A fusillade of flame and screaming lead greeted him from the hill opposite, and the Afghans did some amazing shooting with their prehistoric rifles, chipping the rocks all around him. But Boyne interfered a mile or more away to the eastward, and sent in a withering volley from his sangar that set the enemy's camp to writhing like a snake on an ant-hill.
The Afghans turned their fire on the new danger, yelling like a pack of wolves, and their yells were answered by another volley, and a cheer that is bred nowhere in the world but south of Sligo. A hot interchange of volleys took place for the next five minutes, and Father Callan reached the bottom of the hill unhit.
“Are ye hurt badly?” he asked when he had found his way to Darcy.
“Sure, Father; I'm killed. Look at this! But what are you doing here? Get back out of range!”
Father Callan set his very stubborn jaw, and bent down over him.
“Son,” he said; “I'll maybe hurt you, but it can't be helped; this is no decent place to die. Clench your teeth and bear it!”
Then he picked him up, as a nurse might pick a child up, and Darcy groaned. The bullets came again now like a hail-storm, for the Afghans are no subscribers to Geneva theories, or any civilised conventions, for that matter. From their point of view a good Christian is a dead Christian, and a wounded man is all the easier to hit.
They made wonderful shooting; the bullets rattled off the rocks on every side of him, but Father Callan stooped over his burden, and turned his back to the Afghans, and walked steadily toward the hill that he had left, circling to the southward so as to approach it from the rear and out of sight of the enemy; he did not want to climb the side of it under fire. The fusillade never ceased for a second until he was behind the hill. One bullet drilled its way through his helmet and another clipped the sole of his boot, but he was still unhit when he reached shelter and laid Darcy gently on the ground again.
“Sergeant!” he shouted then; “Sergeant! D'ye hear me? Come down and help me!”
The sergeant came stumbling down the hill, and between them they bore Darcy to the top and laid him down in the centre of the sangar, where the men clustered round like a flock of timid sheep to look at him.
“What's this?” demanded Father Callan. “What are ye? A bevy of school-girls lookin' at a frog. I thought ye were men of the Mullingars! Did ye never see a wounded man before? Have ye no shame that ye stand there crowding him? Is there no enemy to look at? They'll be friends over there on the hill maybe, and no need to watch them?”
He looked very little like a priest as he stood there and glared at them, with two days' growth of beard on his face—his torn cassock, sopping wet with Darcy's blood, tucked up into a belt around his waist—and the upper half of him hidden in a sheepskin overcoat; he wore a helmet, too, that was all awry on his head, and a stranger might have mistaken him for the bloodthirstiest scoundrel in the regiment. He was no stranger though to the men of the Mullingars, and the old light was in his eye; they quailed before it, slinking back ashamed to their stations by the walls.
They were alone then, he and Darcy, as alone as though the four walls of a room enclosed them; and what happened in the last few minutes while Darcy set his teeth and groaned his life out has no place in this or any other story. It is enough that Father Callan was there to do his duty.
III.
The priest's eyes were dry when he had finished, and his face was firm; but there was a tightening of the lips that showed that not Darcy alone had felt the wrench of parting. He removed his sheepskin coat and laid it over the thing that was no longer a comrade in their midst; then he glanced at the shivering boys who lined the sangar wall, and from them to the Afghan position eight hundred yards away in front of him.
“How many rounds of ammunition have you, sergeant?” he demanded.
“Sixty rounds a man, sir.”
The priest looked over to the hill where Boyne was; the sound of volley after volley came from that direction, and the answering crack and rattle of hundreds of jezails. The Afghans had not surrounded him; they were sniping at him from under cover, and his rear and both flanks were still open. From that direction he turned and gazed towards the south-west; there was the only stretch of level country—a long valley between two escarpments that would be called a canyon in any other country.
Down that stretch of level going the Camerons and Ghoorkas ought to come, but there was no sign of them as yet, nor any sound to herald them. He was not posted on that point; he had no idea what time they were expected, and he wasted several minutes in useless conjecture, trying to figure out the distance they would have to march and how quickly they could do it.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” interrupted the sergeant, “but are you commanding here, or am I?”
“You are. I'm a non-combatant.”
“'Tis likely we'll be all non-combatants directly, Father dear! I'm thinking . . .”
“Think this! Ye've your chance laid out in front of ye to show yourself a man! Now, take hold of your men, or I'll report ye to Captain Boyne for rank incompetence! Have ye inspected arms once since ye reached here? How'll your men fight with dirty rifles?”
“Squad . . . Fall in!” ordered the sergeant. “Right dress! Eyes . . . Front! For inspection . . . Port. . . Umms!” Then he walked down the trembling line and squinted into the breech of each man's rifle. They were clean enough. “Order . . . Umms!” he ordered. “All correct, sir!”
“Very well. Now, sergeant, how far d'you make it to that hill where Captain Boyne is? About a mile?”
“About that, sir.”
“You address me as Father.”
“About a mile, Father dear.”
“They could hear us, then, if we fired a volley?”
“Sure, Father.”
“Then why not fire two or three at intervals?”
“Volley firing . . . . Ready!” ordered the sergeant. “At the enemy in front . . . at eight hundred . . . present . . . . Fire!”
The volley barked out with precision, for all their cold fingers, but the shots went wild. To attract Boyne's attention, though, was the main thing, and it had that effect, for, a minute afterward, the company signaller began flag-wagging from the hill.
“Can any of you read that?” asked Father Callan.
Not a man answered.
“Can you, sergeant?”
“No, Father.“
“Then we'll waste no time trying. Watch the enemy, and wait. Captain Boyne knows where we are now; he'll let no harm come to us.”
Now, if you let the men of an Irish regiment get drunk, they will fight anything except the devil; they will make friends with him. Keep them sober, by the grace of God and infinite precaution, and you may include the devil among the list of combatants; they will fight him too, and beat him at his own game. But you should keep them warm, in any case, and, drunk or sober, you should keep them busy.
Father Callan knew that; and he realised that unless something happened very quickly to put new life into the men there would be worse than trouble when the Afghan rush came, as it surely would come: there would be disgrace. The two-and-twenty Mullingars leaned against the cold stone wall and peered between the gaps at the thousands of Afghans in front of them; the cold wind searched their marrow; an occasional bullet whined overhead, and now and then a better shot than usual sent the chips flying off a rock close to one of them; and the courage slowly oozed out of them till they were little better than whimpering children.
The men of a Highland regiment would have fallen back on their religion in such a fix as that; they would have needed no chaplain to help them either. They would have sung some Covenanters' hymns, and prayed long-windedly, and afterwards they would have put up a fight that would have gone down into history as a thing to marvel at. But the Irish temperament is different. Irish soldiers seem more inclined to fight their battles on their own merits and thank God for the result afterwards; it was so with the Mullingars, and Father Callan knew it.
“Rosy O'Grady” seemed to him the most likely theme to interest the men at that moment, and his deep bass voice trolled out her charms until the Himalayas echoed it. And the Mullingars joined in. The song was strained at first, and ragged; but they went from that to “Ballyhooley,” and from that again to “Killaloo”; their fourth song was an old-time Irish one that breathed death and damnation to the Sassenach, and in less then twenty minutes the two-and-twenty were their volcanic Irish selves again. Then Father Callan found time to wonder why the enemy were not attacking them.
He knew why the moment he looked over towards Boyne's sangar. Boyne had determined on one of those swift, sudden Celtic swoops that have made the reputations of Irish generals the world over. Father Callan's sangar was less than half the size of his, but he could cram his whole command into it at a pinch; there was only a mile or so to cross, and there was plenty of cover in the shape of rocks and boulders in between. He knew nothing, of course, of Darcy's death, but he did know that if Darcy could have reached him he would have done it. So he took Mohammed's tip about the mountain, and determined to go over to Darcey. As Father Callan looked across towards him, Boyne was just debouching into the valley between, and at the same minute the Afghans apparently made up their minds to attack in real earnest.
Afghans are not fools by any means. They are cruel, and superstitious, and very often cowardly, but they can see through a move of the enemy as readily as any one, and they divined at once the object of Boyne's manœuvre. Evidently Boyne was moving to protect his weakest point. So they impeded Boyne in every way they could, disputed every inch of the ground, rushed and retired, got in between him and his objective, and, in fact, did everything but come to close quarters. And about two-thirds of them surrounded the smaller sangar and proceeded to demolish the weakest point before Boyne could get to it. They could not possibly see as yet how many men, or how few, were in the smaller sangar, but their reasoning was excellent.
Father Callan found himself in the midst of a raging hell of bullets almost before he had time to look round again. The first man hit was the sergeant; he died all standing, with a bullet through his forehead, and the rest of the men ducked lower beneath the shelter of the wall.
Father Callan was in command now; there was no doubt of it. Theoretically the senior private was the man, but who knew which was the senior private, or had time to ask? They looked to him for orders, and he rose to the occasion. First, though, he stooped, and raised his sheepskin coat. When he rose again he held Darcy's sword in his right hand—point downward and outward—and there was something in the quiver and the angle of the blade that hinted of swordsmanship.
It was he who gave the orders for the volleys, and rated the men for firing raggedly; he kept hold of them as though he had been born to the fighting game, and nursed his ammunition like an old soldier. The Afghans were swarming up the hillside within five minutes from the commencement of the attack, but up above there was a real man in command, and they found the summit none too easy of attainment.
Time and again the defenders drove them down again with well-aimed volleys, and later, as the rushes grew fiercer and more determined, with independent firing. But Father Callan had to check the independent firing presently, for it cost too much in cartridges. Only one more man was hit, and he not badly; but there were seven rounds of ammunition left per man, and only seven. A glance to the eastward showed him the company fighting its way toward him, but it was obviously in difficulties; the ammunition mules were dead, and the men were having to lug the cartridge boxes with them, which delayed matters still further.
Then came another rush of hairy, half-naked Afghans, armed with tulwars, and covered by a hot fire from the valley below. They swarmed up closer this time before the volleys withered them; that was partly due to their determination, and partly to Father Callan's husbanding of ammunition; one man died on a Mullingar's bayonet as he reached the wall, and the volley that sent the remainder tumbling down the hill again was the last from that hill-top. There was not one cartridge left!
The Afghans did not know that; but they did know how few the defenders were; the last rush had settled that point, and they gathered down below for one more rush that should finish matters. Boyne was nearer—a lot nearer—but there was time to take the sangar yet before he reached it.
“'Tis all up, Father!” said the wounded man, wiping the blood from his temple with the sleeve of his overcoat. “They've got us now!”
“They've not! Hear that! Listen!”
There was the bang of volleys down below, and the howling of Afghans—and that is a frightful noise—the rattle of independent firing, hoarse orders to advance by échelon a bugle blowing intermittently, and a hundred other sounds. but the skirl of bagpipes carries through or over everything. The wind had changed by this time, and was blowing from the west; and from the west there came the sound of skirling music that told that either Camerons or Ghoorkas were on the way. Both regiments use bagpipes, and the tune could not be recognised as yet. Then suddenly the wind blew stronger, and everybody heard it, and caught the tune:—
“Cock-a-doodle! Cock-a-doodle!
Way for the Cock o' the North!”
The Camerons were coming. They had outmarched the Ghoorkas, and that means marching! They had heard the firing in the distance, and were coming best foot foremost, pipes in front of them, sporrans swinging like clockwork, and sweeping along over the ground like the advance wave of a flood. The Afghans heard the tune, too, and knew what was in store for them.
There was a hesitation in the Afghan ranks then—a distinct pause in the attack, and an interval of noisy argument. Boyne took full advantage of it, and flung his leg-weary command at the hill in front of him in a final, brilliant, gallant effort to reach the top of it in time to save its occupants. The Afghans came on again with a savage rush to finish their business before he could interfere. There were no volleys to stop them this time—nothing but the natural configuration of the hill, that made it difficult on that side for more than ten men to climb it at a time. Ten of them reached the top of it in less than a minute, and they were followed by at least a hundred, who crowded and scrambled up behind them. They were tulwar men, without a rifle or even an old jezail.
The first men checked when they reached the summit; it was the gap that faced them—the ten feet of low wall that Darcy and Father Callan had raised up overnight. And in the middle of the gap stood Father Callan!
They were not in the least afraid of the boys who lined the wall on either side of him; but the strange man in the middle, whose eyes seemed to look straight into every man's eyes at once, and whose sword pointed straight at their throats—not one man's throat, but every man's throat—that faced them. A giant burst his way through laughing and boasting what he would do. And he, too, checked when he met the swordsman; he swung his tulwar till the wind whistled, but he came no nearer, and the sword-point straight in front of him stayed steady as the finger of fate—steady as the two grey eyes that glittered behind it. Then they laughed at the giant, and for shame he had to fight; he swung on to his left foot and sprang in with the ten-pound tulwar flashing like the sheen of summer lightning—and died, gurgling and spluttering his life out through a slit wind-pipe!
Not for nothing had Callan senior spent long afternoons teaching a future priest swordsmanship, and not for nothing had the chaplain of a regiment kept himself fit and kept his weight down with constant practice. Father Callan put his left foot on the body of the dead Afghan, and his sword-point was ready for the next.
They leapt the wall, and rushed in then, hacking at the tired-out soldiers, and avoiding the swordsman as though he were the devil. But he rallied the men into a sort of square, and stood them at bay in the middle of the sangar; and each time that an Afghan came within reach of that sword of his, there was one Afghan less to go away and brag.
A hedge of fixed bayonets is an uncommonly awkward thing to tackle, especially in a hurry. There is no doubt of it, the soldiers did their share of the killing on that hill-top. They had laid hold of Father Callan and forced him into the midst of them, where they could protect him with their lives, for their fighting blood was up now. This job of exterminating a cluster of no more than twenty men, which had looked so ridiculously easy, began to look like a long business.
And the Camerons were coming! They were coming like hell, too! They halted long enough to fire three volleys, and their bullets raked the Afghan ranks below the hill. Half of the crowd that was swarming and pressing up the hill dropped down again; but those on the top could see their quarry, and it is easier to drag a tiger from his hunted buck than an Afghan from his prey. They heard the volleys and the shouting and the cheering of the Camerons, and the tramp of trained men coming at the double. But they saw the little squad at bay in front of them, and the blood-thirst was irresistible. About a hundred of them crowded and blocked each other, and leapt at the hedge of bayonets.
They all died up there, for the Mullingars and Camerons rushed the hill from either side. Boyne was almost the first to reach the hill-top; he looked round him once, and then stooped over Father Callan.
“What's up, Father? Not hurt?” he asked him.
“Boyne?” said the priest, feebly.
“Yes, Father . . . Boyne.”
“Darcy died game. How many of the boys are left?”
“Five,” said Boyne, looking up and counting them.
“They're good boys, God bless them! They never funked it once! Good-bye, Boyne!”
Then Father Callan went to render his last account of how he had laboured for the Mullingars.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1940, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 83 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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