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Khem Singh would sit on his own cushion at the Subaltern's feet, drinking heavy, scented anise-seed brandy in great gulps, and telling strange stories of Fort Amara, which had been a palace in the old days, of Begums and Ranees tortured to death aye, in the very vaulted chamber that now served as a Mess-room; would tell stories of Sobraon that made the Subaltern's cheeks flush and tingle with pride of race, and of the Kuka rising from which so much was expected and the foreknowledge of which was shared by a hundred thousand souls.
The more awful combats of Ferozeshah and Sobraon must not eclipse the brightness of Moodkee, which revealed so vividly, even under that "dim starlight," the elastic vigour of the British spirit.
The victory was decisive and complete. The loss of the British was 151 killed, and 413 wounded; that of the enemy far greater. While Sir Hugh Gough was waiting for reinforcements from Delhi, as also for the arrival of Sir Charles Napier, who was moving up the left bank of the Sutlej, the Sikhs were strongly fortifying themselves at a bridge they had formed across that river at Sobraon.
Nothing grander in warfare could be conceived than the effect of the batteries when they opened, as the cannonade passed along from the Sutlej to Little Sobraon in one continued roar of guns and mortars; while ever and anon the rocket, like a spirit of fire, winged its rapid flight high above the batteries in its progress towards the Sikh intrenchment.
I have it before me as I write, and copy it verbatim. "DEAR BOB," it said, "I remember the man well. I was with him at Calcutta, and afterwards at Hyderabad. He was a curious, solitary sort of mortal; but a gallant soldier enough, for he distinguished himself at Sobraon, and was wounded, if I remember right.
Once only, when the anise-seed brandy had slightly affected his head, he said: "Sahib, speaking now of a matter which lay between Sobraon and the affair of the Kukas, it was ever a wonder to us that you stayed your hand at all, and that, having stayed it, you did not make the land one prison.
One does not refuse a warrior of Sobraon, or deny the only pastry-cook within bounds. So Keyte came, by invitation, leaning upon a stick, tremulous with old age, to sit in a corner and watch. "They shape well. They shape uncommon well," he whispered between evolutions. "Oh, this isn't what they're after. Wait till I dismiss 'em." At the "break-off" the ranks stood fast.
"Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Waterloo, Moodkee, Ferozshah, an' Sobraon that was fought close next door here, against the very beggars he wants us to join. Inkerman, The Alma, Sebastopol! 'What are those little businesses compared to the campaigns of General Mulcahy?
Young of a reddish face with blue eyes, and he lilted a little on his feet when he was pleased, and cracked his finger-joints. So did his father before him, who was Deputy-Commissioner of Jullundur in my father's time when I rode with the Gurgaon Rissala. My father? Jwala Singh. A Sikh of Sikhs he fought against the English at Sobraon and carried the mark to his death.
At Lahore Daly picked up some recruits to replace casualties, as well as to have a few in hand to meet future vacancies. Marching on, the banks of the Sutlej, close to the battlefield of Sobraon, forty-three miles from Lahore, were reached early on the 29th, and the passage of this, the fifth great river of the Punjab, was at once commenced.
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