‘Follow him, lads!’ Sergeant Green shouted and about half the Light Company jumped into the green-scummed water. The others crouched, waiting for Morris’s orders, but Morris
was still confused and Sergeant Hakeswill was crouching at the foot of the embankment out of the enemy’s sight.
‘Go on!’ Wellesley shouted, angered at their hesitation. ‘Go on! Don’t let them stand there! Captain West! On! On! Captain Morris, move!’
‘Oh Jesus, Mother!’ Hakeswill called as he scrambled up the embankment. ‘Mother, Mother!’ he shouted as he dropped into the warm water. Fitzgerald and the first half of the company was already across the farther embankment and inside the tope now and Hakeswill could hear shouts and shots and a chilling clash as steel scraped on steel.
Wellesley saw his two flank companies at last advance across the aqueduct and he sent an aide back to summon Major Shee and the rest of the battalion. The musket fire in the tope was dense, an unending crackle of shots, each flash momentarily illuminating the fog of powder smoke that spread between the leaves. It looked like something from hell: flash after flash of fire blooming in the dark, rocket trails blazing among the trees, and always the moans of dying men and shrieks of pain. A sergeant yelled at his men to close up, another man shouted desperately, wanting to know where his comrades were. Fitzgerald was cheering his men forward, but too many of the redcoats were being penned back against the embankment where they were in danger of being overwhelmed. Wellesley sensed he had done this all wrong. He should have used the whole battalion instead of just the two flank companies, and the realization of his mistake annoyed him. He took pride in his profession, but if a professional soldier could not hurl a few enemy infantry and rocketmen out of a small wood, then what good was he? He thought about spurring Diomed, his horse, across the aqueduct and into the flaring smoke patches among the tope, but he resisted the impulse for then he would be among the trees and out of touch with the rest of the 33rd and he knew he needed Shee’s remaining eight companies to reinforce the attackers.
If necessary he could summon the two sepoy battalions as reinforcements, but he was sure the remainder of the 33rd would be sufficient to retrieve victory from confusion and so he turned and galloped back to hurry the battalion forward.
Hakeswill slithered down the farther embankment into the black shadows among the trees. He held the musket in his left hand and the halberd in his right. He crouched beside a tree trunk and tried to make sense of the chaos around him. He could see muskets flashing, their garish flames momentarily suffusing the smoke with light and glinting off the leaves, he could hear a man crying and he could hear shouts, but he had no idea what was happening. A handful of his men had stayed close to him, but Hakeswill did not know what to tell them; then a terrible war cry sounded close to his left and he whirled round to see a group of tiger-striped infantry charging towards him. He screamed in pure panic, fired the musket one-handed and dropped the weapon immediately as he fled into the trees to avoid the assault. Some of the redcoats scattered blindly, but others were too slow and were overrun by the Indians. Their shouts were cut short as bayonets did their work, and Hakeswill, knowing that the Tippoo’s men were slaughtering the small group of redcoats, blundered desperately through the tangling trees to get clear. Captain Morris was calling Hakeswill’s name, a note of panic in his voice. Tm here, sir!’ Hakeswill called back. Tm here, sir!’
‘Where?’
‘Here, sir!’ A volley of musketry crashed in the trees and the balls slashed through leaves and thumped into trunks. Rockets screamed up to clatter among the high branches. Their fiery exhausts blinded the men and the explosions of their powder-filled cones rained down shards of hot metal and fluttering scraps of leaves. ‘Mother!’ Hakeswill shouted and shrank down beside a tree.
‘Form line!’ Morris shouted. ‘Form line!’ He had a dozen men with him and they formed a nervous line and crouched