“No bleeding experience. You remember that wood outside Seringapatam? Bloody chaos, that’s what it was, bloody chaos and who caused it? He did, that’s who.” He gestured at Wellesley who, mounted on a tall white horse, had come to the bluff above the river.
“He’s a general,” Hakeswill explained, ‘because his father’s an earl and because his elder brother’s the Governor General, that’s why. If my father had been a bleeding earl, then I’d be a bleeding general, says so in the scriptures. Lord Obadiah Hakeswill, I’d be, and you wouldn’t see me buggering about like a dog chasing fleas up its arse. I’d bleeding well get the job done. On your feet, lads, look smart now!”
The General, with nothing to do except wait while his army crossed the river, had turned his horse up the bank and his path brought him close to where Hakeswill had been seated. Wellesley looked across, recognized the Sergeant and seemed about to turn away, but then an innate courtesy overcame his distaste for speaking with the lower ranks.
“Still here, Sergeant?” he asked awkwardly.
“Still here, sir,” Hakeswill said. He was quivering at attention, his clay pipe thrust into a pocket and his firelock by his side.
“Doing my duty, sir, like a soldier.”
“Your duty?” Wellesley asked.
“You came to arrest Sergeant Sharpe, isn’t that right?”
“Sir!” Hakeswill affirmed.
The General grimaced.
“Let me know if you see him. He’s with Colonel McCandless, and they both seem to be missing. Dead, probably.” And on that cheerful note the General tugged on his reins and spurred away.
Hakeswill watched him go, then retrieved his clay pipe and sucked the tobacco back to glowing life. Then he spat onto the bank.
“Sharpie ain’t dead,” he said malevolently.
“I’m the one who’s going to kill Sharpie. Says so in the scriptures.”
Then Captain Mackay arrived and insisted that Hakeswill and his six men help organize the transfer of the bullocks across the river. The animals carried packs loaded with spare round shot for the artillery, and the Captain had been provided with two rafts for that precious ammunition.
“They’re to transfer the shot to the rafts, understand?
Then swim the beasts over. I don’t want chaos, Sergeant. Make them |, line up decently. And make sure they don’t roll the shot into the river w to save themselves the bother of reloading it.” y “It isn’t a soldier’s job,” Hakeswill complained when the Captain was || gone.
“Chivvying bullocks? I ain’t a bleeding Scotchman. That’s all ?l they’re good for, chivvying bullocks. Do it all the time, they do, down “‘ the green roads to London, but it ain’t a job for an Englishman.” But [ he nevertheless did an effective job, using his bayonet to prod men and animals into the queue which slowly snaked its way down to the water. By nightfall the whole army was over, and next morning, long | before dawn, they marched north again. They camped before midday, thus avoiding the worst of the heat, and by mid-afternoon me first 164. enemy cavalry patrols showed in the distance and the army’s own cavalry rode out to drive the horsemen away.
They did not move at all for the next two days. Cavalry scouts tried to discover the enemy’s intentions, while Company spies spread gold throughout the north country in search of news, but the gold was wasted for every scrap of intelligence was contradicted by another. One said Holkar had joined Scindia, another said Holkar was declaring war on Scindia, then the Mahrattas were said to be marching west, or east, or perhaps north, until Wellesley felt he was playing a slow version of blind man’s buff.
Then, at last, some reliable news arrived. Six Mahratta horsemen in the service of Syud Sevajee came to Wellesley’s camp with a hastily written despatch from Colonel McCandless. The Colonel regretted his absence and explained that he had taken a wound that had been slow to heal, but he could assure Sir Arthur that he had not abandoned his duty and could thus report, with a fair degree of certainty, that the forces of Dowlut Rao Scindia and the Rajah of Berar had finally ceased their wanderings at Borkardan. They planned to stay there, McCandless wrote, to hold a durbar and to let their animals recover their strength, and he estimated those intentions implied a stay in Borkardan of five or six days. The enemy numbered, he reported, at least eighty thousand men and possessed around a hundred pieces of field artillery, many of inferior calibre, but an appreciable number throwing much heavier shot.