Chronicles of Dustypore: A Tale of Modern Anglo-Indian SocietyCunningham, H. S. (Henry Stewart), Sir
History
Chronicles of Dustypore: A Tale of Modern Anglo-Indian Society
Cunningham, H. S. (Henry Stewart), Sir
British -- India -- Fiction; India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction
'Oh no,' said Sutton, laughing; 'I got nothing then but a bullet through
my shoulder and a knock on the head from a musket-stock which very
nearly ended my soldiering then and there. Look now how quickly the
scene changes as the sun gets up--half its beauty is gone already! Let
us have a good canter over this soft ground and get home before it grows
too hot.'
Maud, who had never thought of a battle except as one of the afflicting
details that had to be remembered at an historical class, and if
possible to be hooked on to its proper site and date, felt a delicious
thrill in actually realising with her own eyes the place where one of
the troublesome events took place, and in talking to a person who had
actually taken part in it. 'And what became of the bullet in your
shoulder?' she asked.
'It was a very troublesome bullet,' said Sutton, 'and a great deal
harder to dislodge than the people from the Tomb. But I was unlucky when
I was a lad and never came out of action without a _souvenir_ of some
sort or other.'
When Maud got home she asked Felicia about this storming of the Tomb,
and learnt that Sutton's account was not as truthful as it might have
been. He and half-a-dozen others had, Felicia told her, volunteered for
the storming-party, had made a rush for the walls through a shower of
bullets; and Sutton and two companions, getting separated from the
others, had been left for some seconds to hold their own as best they
could against the angry, frightened mob within. No one, perhaps scarcely
Sutton himself, knew exactly what had happened. The rest of the party,
however, when they made their way in, found him standing at bay over a
dead comrade's body, and his antagonists too completely taken aback at
his audacity to venture, at any odds, within reach of his sword. In the
scuffle which ensued Sutton received the wounds of which Maud had been
informed; but his exploits on that day were for ever after quoted by his
followers as a proof that there is nothing which a man may not do, if
only he have pluck and will enough to do it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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