Cornwell, Bernard 01 Sharpe’s Tiger-Serigapatam-Apr-May 1799

the forecourt. There were thirteen prisoners, all in red coats, all of them men of the 33rd who had been captured during the night battle at the Sultanpetah tope.

The thirteen men stood uncertainly amidst the ring of their enemies. The sun beat down. One of the prisoners, a sergeant, twitched as he stared at the ranks of tiger-striped soldiers, and still his face twitched as he turned around and gazed with a curious intensity when the Tippoo stepped to the rail of the upper verandah and, in a clear high voice, spoke to his troops. The enemy, the Tippoo said, had been fortunate. They had gained some cheap victories to the west of the city, but that was no reason to fear them. The British sorcerers, knowing they could not defeat the tigers of Mysore by force alone, had made a powerful spell, but with the help of Allah that spell would now be confounded. The soldiers greeted the speech with a long and approving sigh while the prisoners, unable to understand any of the Tippoo’s words, looked anxiously about, but could make no sense of the occasion.

Guards surrounded the prisoners and pushed them back to the palace, leaving just one man alone on the forecourt. That man tried to go with his companions, but a guard thrust him back with a bayonet and the uneven contest between a confused prisoner and an armed guard sparked a gust of laughter. The prisoner, driven back to the centre of the forecourt, waited nervously.

Two jettis walked towards him. They were big men, formidably bearded, tall and with their long hair bound and tied about their heads. The prisoner licked his lips, the jettis smiled and suddenly the redcoat sensed his fate and took two or three hurried steps away from the strongmen. The watching soldiers laughed as the redcoat tried to escape, but he was penned in by three walls of tiger-striped infantry and there was nowhere to run. He tried to dodge past the twojettis, but one of them reached out and snatched a handful of his red coat. The prisoner beat at the jetti with his fists, but it was

like a rabbit cuffing at a wolf. The watching soldiers laughed again, though there was a nervousness in their amusement.

The jetti drew the soldier in to his body, then hugged him in a terrible last embrace. The second jetti took hold of the redcoat’s head, paused to take breath, then twisted.

The prisoner’s dying scream was choked off in an instant. For a second his head stared sightlessly backwards, then the jettis released him and, as the twisted neck grotesquely righted itself, the man collapsed. One of the jettis picked up the corpse in one huge hand and contemptuously tossed it high into the air like a terrier tossing a dead rat. The watching soldiers were silent for a second, then cheered. The Tippoo smiled.

A second redcoat was driven to the jettis, and this man was forced to kneel. He did not move as the nail was placed on his head. He uttered one curse, then died in seconds as his blood spurted out onto the gravel forecourt. A third man was killed with a single punch to his chest, a blow so massive that it drove him back a full twelve paces before, shuddering, his ruptured heart gave up. The watching soldiers shouted that they wanted to see another man’s neck wrung like a chicken, and the jettis obliged. And so, one by one, the prisoners were forced to their killers. Three of the men died abjectly, calling for mercy and weeping like babes. Two died saying prayers, but the rest died defiantly. Three put up a fight, and one tall grenadier raised an ironic cheer from the watching troops by breaking a. jetti’s finger, but then he too died like the rest. One after the other they died, and those who came last were forced to watch their comrades’ deaths and to wonder how they would be sent to meet their Maker; whether they would be spiked through the skull or have their necks twisted north to south or simply be beaten to bloody death. And all of the prisoners, once dead, were decapitated by a sword blow before the two parts of their bodies were wrapped in reed mats and laid aside.

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