RETRIBUTION.
After that great battle of Cawnpore, the baffled Nana fled. He understood that his dream had come true, and his very hair stood erect with fear. But he was a coward—a treacherous, sneaking cur, who feared to die; and he dare not seek the common native mode of avoiding disgrace, and kill himself. He fled towards Bhitoor, attended by half a dozen of his guards.
As he galloped through the streets of Cawnpore, his horse flecked with foam, and he himself stained with perspiration and dust, he was met by a band of criers, who were clashing cymbals, and proclaiming, by order of Azimoolah, that the Feringhees had been exterminated.
As Dundoo heard this, it sounded like a horrid mockery, for he knew how false it was. He knew now that if all the hosts of swarming India had been gathered in one mighty army, they would still have been powerless to exterminate the Feringhees.
He felt that his power was destroyed. Failure, defeat, ruin, had followed with rapid strides on the glittering pageant which had marked his restoration to the Peishwahship. Deserted by his followers, his wealth gone, he was but a flying outcast. His one thought was to get away from the pursuing Englishmen. His terror-stricken mind pictured a vast band of avengers on his track.
He reached his Palace. Its splendour had gone, his very menials reproached him for his failure. As he entered the magnificent “Room of Light,” he was met by Azimoolah.
The Sybaritic knave had been luxuriating amidst all the wealth and splendour of this gorgeous apartment, while the Nana’s army was being hacked to pieces by the avenging Feringhees.
As the fear-stricken fugitive entered, the mechanical birds were warbling their cheerful notes, and a large Swiss musical-box was playing, with the accompaniment of drums and bells, “See the Conquering Hero comes.” It was the very irony of fate. It seemed as if it had been done purposely to mock him.
He strode over to the magnificently carved table upon which the box stood, and, drawing his tulwar, dealt the instrument a terrific blow, that almost severed it in halves; then he sank on to a couch, and burying his face in his hands, rocked himself, and moaned.
“Your Highness is troubled,” Azimoolah remarked softly, his composure not in the least disturbed by the Nana’s display of fury. “Why should you give way like this?” he continued, as he received no reply to his first remark. “Despair is unworthy of a prince. All is not yet lost. Rouse yourself, show a dauntless mien, and we will yet beat these English back.”
The Nana started from the couch, his face livid with passion, so that Azimoolah shrank back in alarm, for cruel natures are always cowardly, and it was coward matched to coward.
“Curse you for mocking me!” the Nana cried, raising both his hands above his head. “Curse you for luring me to destruction! May you rot living! May you wander a nameless outcast—without shelter, without home, fearing every bush, trembling at every rustle of a leaf, and with every man’s hand against your life. If I had not listened to you I should not have fallen. Curse you again! May every hope of Paradise be shut out for you.”
He fell into his seat again, overpowered by the exertion this outburst had caused him.
Azimoolah was a little disconcerted, but he tried not to show it. With one hand on the handle of a jewelled dagger, that was hidden in the folds of his dress, and his other hand playing with a lace handkerchief, he crossed quietly to where the Nana was seated, and said with withering sarcasm—
“Your Highness is a little out of sorts, and my presence is not required; but I may be permitted to remind your Highness that ‘curses, like chickens, return to roost.’”
With a smile of scorn upon his lips he passed out of the room, and the fallen Mahratta was alone.
In a little time, instincts of self-preservation caused the Nana to start up, and resolve upon some plan of escape. He knew what would be expected from him by his people. Having been defeated, he must retrieve his honour by dying; but, as before stated, he was too great a coward for that. He was wily enough, however, to see that it offered him means of escape. There were two or three of his followers that he could yet depend upon, and these he summoned to his presence, and made known a plan that suggested itself to him.
This plan was, that it was to be given out that he was preparing himself for self-immolation. He was to consign himself to the sacred waters of the Ganges. There was to be a signal displayed in the darkness of the night, at the precise moment when he took his suicidal immersion. This signal was to be a red light hoisted at a given spot.
Soon the news was spread far and wide, taken up by thousands of tongues, and carried through the bazaars and the city, for miles around, that Nana Sahib was going to kill himself; and some of the Brahmin priests, who were still true to his cause, went through religious ceremonies, in which they prayed for the immortal welfare of the erstwhile Prince.
But he had no thought of dying. As darkness closed in he gathered the women of his household together, and hurried to the Ganges. There a small boat was waiting him. In this he embarked, and ascended towards Futtehgurh, and at a favourable spot emerged on the Oude side of the river and fled; perhaps with the voice of the Furies—who are said to avenge foul crimes—ringing in his ears.
At the moment that he disembarked, the red light was hoisted. Thousands of eyes had been watching for it; but no prayer floated upward for the man who was supposed to have drowned himself. Those eyes had been watching for another purpose, and when the red light appeared, a howling crew rushed towards the Bhitoor Palace. In a little time its magnificent halls and rooms were swarming with the rabble, who fought and killed each other for possession of the valuables. Everything was plundered. Not a yard of carpet, not a single curtain was left; even the marble pavement was torn up. And when the morning came, the Bhitoor Palace was a wreck inside.
As the sun rose, a large number of English soldiers were sent down from the cantonment to Bhitoor to search for the Nana. But they were too late—the bird had fled. They found nothing but the bare building. Some guns were brought up, and the muzzles turned towards the walls. The building was battered down. The Palace was entirely destroyed, and ere the sun set again, the last home of the Peishwah was a ruin.[6]