'Ay,' sighed the colonel. 'And it won't be easy. But first Campbell had better strike upstream, for if the Burmans mount any sort of attack along the river we'll be at sixes and sevens. And fire boats'll be giving yonder commodore a deal to think about, too, I'll warrant.'
'Sir,' was all Hervey thought it necessary to say, for they were but Commodore Peto's own strictures of the night before.
'Well, this place has the makings of a decent billet, at least,' said the colonel, beckoning over his adjutant. 'Come, Merrick. Let us have a look inside that pagoda before Alltoft's men do it any great injury.'
Hervey smiled again. Here was the dry humour of one who sat permanently atop a powder keg, an officer whose easy victory might yet turn to ruin at the hands of the same men who had delivered him the prize. And Shwedagon was a place where riot even on a small scale would not do - a religious site of prominence, of some grandeur indeed. The general would certainly want to see it in one piece.
No doubt the colonel was half disbelieving in his good fortune in not having had the battalion ashore when the brandy was flowing. Hervey wondered how the Eighty-ninth's discipline would hold now they were no longer in close order. How active were the subalterns? How true were the corporals? Once, in Spain, he had seen an entire company fire its muskets at the windows of an empty palace rather than draw the charges; the smashing of every pane seemed to give satisfaction to men denied a shot at the French. And gilded carvings and finials were an awfully tempting target.
Now there was more shouting. ‘Pres-e-e-ent arms!’
Hervey looked about to see what the sudden fuss was, and saw General Campbell coming up with Colonel Macbean, commander of the Madras brigade.
The general looked pleased. And well he might, thought Hervey. Yesterday had been one of mixed honours, at best, and this morning's work was a model of method and celerity by comparison.
General Campbell raised his hat to the saluting muskets. The guns will be up with you within the hour, Ireson,' he said, eyes twinkling, his red whiskers as bright as his coat. This without doubt is the key to Rangoon. Hold on to the pagoda, Ireson, and any attack on the town must falter.'
'Very good, General,' said Colonel Ireson, sounding matter-of-fact.
The colonel's luck was indeed great, thought
Hervey. What any man would do to be in a position of the first importance, though he wondered why the Burmans must attack from the north through Shwedagon. But he had not seen a good map and he supposed the general had.
The general had certainly not seen him until that moment. 'Ah, Hervey! What brings you here?’
'Major Seagrass had no need of me. General.’
'And you had a mind to see how infantry work! Well you might, sir; well you might. I imagine this campaign shall go down as the first to be made without benefit of cavalry!’
Hervey checked himself. 'Indeed, sir?’ The general's novelty knew no bounds. It was already a most singular campaign having no transport or supply.
'Yes indeed. Audacity and the bayonet, Hervey. That is what this campaign is about.’
The general slapped his neck, but the mosquito evaded his hand. It would be the first of many to do so.
An hour later it was raining. The rain fell not in drops, or even in torrents, but as a single sheet of water, so that it was impossible to see more than a dozen yards, and only then with a great distortion. Hervey did not think he had seen anything like it. Neither was it how the monsoon was supposed to begin. But for once the poor redcoats, the infantrymen of the Line and the sepoys, on whom alternately rain fell and fierce sun beat, were dry, for the shrines that surrounded the pagoda of Schwedagon afforded cover for all. Cooking fires blazed inside - teak burned very satisfactorily - and there was skilly and tea in every belly before the hands of Hervey's watch showed nine. Sharing a canteen with the men in whose billet he had taken cover might have seemed an unlikely pleasure for him, but it was almost like being in the Peninsula again. He stood a little apart, with Corporal Wainwright, trying to make out the language of their gestures and method - as strange to him at times as the accents in which they spoke. As flesh and blood they could not, in truth, be so very different from the Sixth, but they were men who drilled as a body, whose military utility was solely as part of that body. They marched as a body, took aim as a body and they fired in volleys. They did exactly as they were told, when they were told. He could certainly admire them for it. He had seen enough red-breasted lines stand rock-like in the face of Bonaparte's columns, and he had seen those lines go forward with the same unshakeable resolve. His dragoons were different. At his best, each was his own man, who used sabre and carbine as he himself judged fit, yet who knew how to combine with others to multiply the effect. Was a man better suited to the one method drawn to the bringers of a particular regiment by some unknown process perhaps? Or was it only drill that made them different? Hervey wondered.
It could not be other than drill, surely, for the recruiting process was haphazard to say the least. He had only to look at Corporal Wainwright to be reminded of quite how haphazard. Wainwright would not have been in uniform at all had not he, Hervey, and Serjeant Collins gone that day to Warminster Common to search for the odd lad who had sunk to where he could sink no further - who was more likely than a husbandman or mechanical to be tempted by the King's shilling. It could only be the process of drill that made a soldier what he was; the drill and how it was imparted. And on this latter the difference was plain enough to him, for he had already noted how awkward these men seemed at being spoken to directly, addressing their remarks in return to Corporal Wainwright. No doubt it was necessary in drilling men to volley and manoeuvre as one body, but it must be deuced awkward never being able to speak directly to a man.
By the time the downpour had eased, a full hour later, Hervey had concluded that of the seven private men, five of whom were from Dublin and thereabouts, four might take to being dragoons with very little effort - supposing, of course, they showed a modicum of aptitude for the saddle -and that of the other three, two were inveterate 'machine men', happy only when their every action was preceded by a word of command from the corporal, while the other was quite probably unsuited even to his present position, so sullen was he that Hervey imagined the Serjeant's pike a regular prompter. However, much as he admired the Eighty-ninth's drill that morning, and the relish with which they had gone to the expected fight, he would admit to missing E Troop with its cheery, sometimes outspoken, dragoons. Whatever General Campbell might say now about the utility of cavalry, Hervey was certain he would feel the want of them before the month was out.
As the rain had become little more than a drizzle, he stood up and went to the door of their shelter. He could now see the river again. Pulling upstream were a dozen boats filled with marines and men from the Calcutta brigade, not yet 'blooded' in this curious inaction. He had helped write their orders the night before: they were off to do what he and his dragoons could have done in a fraction of the time and with far less effort. If only those who had conceived this adventure had allowed the possibility of action over land rather than solely from water! He had heard it said in Calcutta that horses could not pass over such terrain. How could anyone doubt that, where a man could go in this country, there for the most part could a horse? Nor, indeed, that when the monsoon turned the country to nothing but swamp there would be no passage for beast or man.