A Call To Arms (32 page)

The more he wrote, the fewer were his misgivings about leaving Calcutta. The country about Chittagong sounded ideal for his purpose, and Somervile’s mission would be instructive to observe. He penned a few more paragraphs – soldier’s gossip, of which Daniel Coates never tired – and closed by promising to write from his new station.

The cavalry lines, Chittagong, October

Serjeant Collins stood properly at ease facing the dozen dragoons of the first class. He wore forage cap, coat fully buttoned, overalls and swordbelt. The dragoons were in watering order – overalls, shirt but no coat, and no hat – but they too wore swords. It was more than a year since they had taken the shilling, and yet today was their first sword exercise. Hervey had tried to arrange for it aboard ship from England, but it had been a perilous business soon abandoned in favour of carbine and small-arms drill.

‘Class, atten …
shun
!’ bawled Local Lance-Corporal McCarthy.

A dozen pairs of boots closed together.

Corporal McCarthy marched up to Serjeant Collins, halted, and with only slightly diminished volume announced, ‘There are twelve men on parade awaiting instruction, Serjeant.’

‘Officer on parade, Corporal,’ rasped Collins, now himself at attention.

Corporal McCarthy glanced left to the corner of the square, where he saw his troop-leader and serjeant-major watching, and a lady too.

‘Sor! There are twelve men on parade awaiting instruction, sor!’

Collins nodded. ‘Fall in, Corporal.’

McCarthy turned to his right, paused to a silent count of three instead of a salute (the hatless salute had ceased to be the regimental practice), then took his place as flugelman on the right of the dragoons.

Serjeant Collins surveyed the class. ‘Right,’ he began, as he walked the length of the line. ‘You have been chosen as the first class because Captain Hervey has observed that you have made the most progress at riding school.’

Corporal McCarthy would not have recognized the accolade in his own case; Shepherd Stent would not have thought himself worthy of any
but
the first class; Private Rudd would write home proudly to inform his mother; Jobie Wainwright was relieved only that Spreadbury, Parkin and Needham – the Warminster pals – were in the class, too; French, his dark curls as thick as a sheepskin, was the best of riding school, as everyone acknowledged; Harkness, his broad shoulders occupying the space of one and a half of the smaller dragoons, had found sitting to the trot a great trial to begin with but had mastered it in the end, and had lately become a true proficient, especially at the gallop. The remaining four had shown steady application.

‘Right,’ said Collins again as he retook his place in front of the class. ‘Stand at ease; stand easy. Listen attentively. There are only six ways of directing the edge of the sabre. The action of the wrist and shoulder alone directs the blade; and they admit but six movements, from which every cut is derived, wherever may be its particular application to the body.’

Hervey found his thoughts returning to the first time he had heard the words as a young cornet at the Canterbury depot.

‘Of the six cuts, four are made in diagonal directions, and two horizontally. The whole are equally applicable against cavalry, and may be directed on either side of the horse, but their application must depend on the openings given by the adversary and be regulated by judgement and experience in the use of the weapon. Any questions?’

There were none.

‘Right then, how many ways are there of directing the edge of the blade?’ Collins paused for a few seconds. ‘Stent?’

‘Six, sir,’ said the shepherd, coming to attention.

‘Correct. Of the six cuts, how many may be directed on either side of the horse?’ Another pause. ‘Wainwright?’

‘The whole, sir,’ Jobie replied, feet together.

‘Correct. I shall proceed, then. Now, to make a cut with effect, and at the same time without exposing the person, there are two points which principally demand attention. The first is to acquire a facility in giving motion to the arm by means of the wrist and shoulder without bending the elbow. For in bending the elbow the sword arm is exposed, a circumstance of which the opponent will ever be ready to take his advantage.’ Collins drew his sword, demonstrated the points which demanded attention, then glanced up and down the line. ‘Is that understood?’

‘Yes, sir,’ came the reply.

‘You don’t sound so sure.
Is that understood?
’

‘Yes, sir!’ bellowed the class.

‘Very well,’ he growled, returning the sword to the position of rest on his shoulder. ‘The next object is to attain correctness in applying the edge in the direction of the blade, otherwise it will turn in the hand, and as in that case the flat part must receive the whole force of the blow, it will in all likelihood be shivered to pieces.’

Hervey turned to Armstrong. ‘A long time coming, but I think we may soon have it accomplished. We can begin the second class in a week, and the third a week after.’

‘Ay, sir. There’s nobody better than Collins for this.’

Emma Somervile was still watching intently. ‘You say it is straight from the manual of sword exercises, Captain Hervey, but your serjeant makes it sound as if it very much comes from the heart.’

‘That too, madam. Collins once engaged a French colonel in a most ferocious duel, in sight of hundreds on both sides, and overcame him by superior swordsmanship, though the colonel, a count as I recall, must have been very practised in the art from an early age.’ He thought it unnecessary to declare that the deciding blow had been a cut to the Frenchman’s head which had cleft his skull in two.

‘With your leave then, sir?’ said Armstrong, stepping back.

‘Yes; thank you, Sar’nt-Major. I shall attend at stables.’

Armstrong saluted and strode away.

‘Do we watch any more?’ asked Emma, sounding eager.

‘If you wish,’ said Hervey, willing to oblige her. ‘But I had rather not watch for too long. It will only distract them.’

‘In that case,’ said Emma, ‘let us take a turn about the civil lines.

I like to see the gardens at this time of a day, when there is no one about.’

This was the time when shutters were closed, affording the occupants their privacy before callers for tea, and then the long evening of dinner and cards. It was by no means too hot to be abroad, as the sword class, hatless, demonstrated, but the customs were observed nevertheless.

Chittagong was nothing compared with Calcutta in the extent and magnificence of her buildings. Wood as well as, or in some cases instead of, stone was more in evidence, and her civil as well as military garrison was but a fraction of that of the capital of the Bengal Presidency. But it had a healthier climate, all agreed, and was a pleasant enough place to serve on temporary duty.

‘There is a big black-necked stork which sits on my roof sometimes of an afternoon,’ said Hervey as they came to his bungalow. ‘But evidently not today.’

Emma was intent on the little garden at the front. ‘I envy you the tamarisks. The pink is so
naturally
pretty. My pots are full of things, but they look as though they’re the work of a paintbrush.’

Hervey stopped, held up a hand to bid Emma to do likewise, and pointed to the fence post a dozen feet away.

Emma just saw the orange spots before the object of their attention scurried off along the rail and down the further post into the scrub grass. ‘Yes, I think it the same as we have in our bathroom. The colours here are so much more vivid than the Madras geckos. I wonder why it might be?’

‘Must there be a reason?’

‘God surely has a purpose in Creation, Matthew?’

‘Yes, I suppose …’ He had not before imagined it extended to such details.

‘There is a most interesting theory about it all. Eyre was speaking of it only last week. There is a naturalist called Lamarck, a Frenchman. Eyre has collected all his work. He suggests that living
things adapt to their surroundings and then pass on the changes to successive generations.’

‘How do they do that?’

Emma smiled broadly. ‘In the usual way, I suppose!’

Hervey looked somewhat abashed. ‘In what way does he suggest an animal’s surroundings exert an influence?’

‘His exemplar is the giraffe, which lengthened its neck over successive generations through its habit of grazing the tops of trees.’

Hervey frowned. ‘I had imagined that it grazed the tops of trees because it had a long neck,’ he replied, not altogether facetiously.

‘We pass on characteristics of our own family do we not?’

Hervey’s home thoughts in that instant told him it was so, and painfully. He almost checked in his stride.

Emma did not appear to notice. ‘Ask Eyre to show you his books when you come to dine with us tonight. You are able still to come?’

‘Yes; yes, indeed,’ he replied, a shade absently. ‘But I beg you would forgive me if I leave earlier than usual. I have letters which I must finish if they’re to go to Calcutta tomorrow. There’s a packet for England at the end of the week.’

‘Of course,’ said Emma, brushing away a persistent dragonfly. ‘Now, I must show you the aviary the collector here has built. You will not have seen it, I think?’

When Hervey wrote home that night, there was an unusual degree of contentment in his letters. Chittagong may have been restricted in its society, but that which there was was entirely agreeable to him. He liked the country, with its wooded hills within an easy day’s ride, and the climate was very equable. Its people, both country and city, seemed contented, and there was not the clamour of Calcutta – and certainly not the stench. Above all, his troop was making progress. The horses were in better condition than before, and the dragoons’ seats were becoming altogether securer. In sum, Hervey was confident that by the beginning of December they would be ready to rejoin the regiment – as the manual had it – ‘fully trained’.

In the weeks that followed, Serjeant Collins worked tirelessly to have each class in turn master the six cuts and eight guards against
cavalry, and, too, the point, and the cut and guard against infantry. He drove them hard, and they cursed him when they got to their beds. But Collins had many a time had to parry a sword and wield his own with deathly intent, and he had seen what happened when a man lost his nerve or misjudged his distance and bent his elbow. It would be over in an instant, the cut disabling the sword arm like the serpent’s strike, and the mortifying edge following. When a man had seen his fellows, or even his antagonists, fall because of their unproficiency, he was not inclined to stint his charges in their instruction.

And when the dragoons were not at stables or skill at arms, they were at troop drill. Every day but Sunday – when they paraded for church – they rode out onto the wide flood plain of the Karnaphuli and manoeuvred to the bugle. So it was that, one morning in early November, Hervey recognized that before him was a handy troop, not a recruit ride.

‘Very well, Sar’nt-Major. We’ll have one last turn. Trumpeter, sound “front form line”.’

Private Storrs breathed a sigh of relief. It was perhaps the easiest of all the calls: nine notes, all the same – Gs. Only the triplets at the end to worry about. He had blown so much in the last two hours, and his lips were cracking. He blew the call perfectly.

Into line the forty and more dragoons trotted, then halted on the marker. Hervey nodded contentedly. He could not have asked better of them. Private Storrs turned his head towards him, expecting to hear that his troop-leader would ride to the front to dismiss the parade.

‘Trumpeter, sound “retire”.’

A moment’s surprise delayed the call a fraction of a second. ‘Retire’ was tricky. Storrs cracked the last E semi-quaver. Hervey hardly noticed, and certainly didn’t show it. The troop turned about as one, and struck off at the walk in a very fair line. But Storrs knew what to expect next. Although the heat of the summer had long gone, and the dust with it, his mouth was still dry. He began slaking it with all the spittle he could summon.

‘Trumpeter, sound “front”.’

Demi
-semi-quavers this time, but no repeats. Storrs just managed it. The troop fronted with only the merest hesitation here and there, and dressed quickly.