Dick Staples of the 'Queen's own. '

Dick Staples of the 'Queen's own. '

"Dick Staples of the 'Queen's Own'" opens as a veteran narrator recounts his regiment's ordeal during the Indian Mutiny, beginning in July at the cantonments of Jubbulpore, where his unit—the Grenadier company of the Queen's Own—shares garrison duty with a regiment of Punjaubee sepoys of uncertain loyalty. Amid rumours of revolt spreading from Nagode, Captain Basil Heron, the beloved commanding officer, and Captain Dalton quietly begin fortifying the Residency as a refuge for European women and children. The Punjaubee Subadar-Major, Buktawur Sing, swears loyalty to Heron and pleads that the women not be evacuated, a plea Heron's wife Rose credits despite the narrator and his comrade Bill Brierly's suspicion that the sepoy's tears are false. Sent on picquet duty toward Nagode with Heron himself in company, the narrator, posted as an advanced sentinel, captures a rebel subadar galloping from Nagode who reveals that the sepoys there have mutinied and that no European will be spared. Moments later fugitive officers and families arrive from Nagode, and simultaneously the cantonment at Jubbulpore erupts in flame behind them: Buktawur Sing's Punjaubees have risen, massacred those they could catch, burned the bungalows, and fled toward Nagode taking hostages—Mrs. Heron, her infant, and Lieutenant Macgregor. Heron's anguish at the loss of his wife and child is the emotional core of the story from this point forward. The survivors retreat to the Residency, fortify it hastily with sandbags, loopholes, staked ground, and field-guns, and settle in with some fifty fighting men to protect the remaining women and children, awaiting an attack that does not come immediately, while Heron is tormented by uncertainty over his family's fate. Bill Brierly, a former strolling player fluent in native dress and manner, volunteers—out of loyalty rather than for Heron's promised reward—to infiltrate the rebel stronghold at Kuttingee disguised as a budmash (a rascally freelance soldier) to learn Mrs. Heron's fate. Disguised with blackened skin, native dress, and concealed pistols, he talks and bluffs his way past sentries and, after days of searching amid looted bazaars and grim trophies of murdered Europeans, encounters Buktawur Sing himself at the fort gate. Posing as a mercenary looking for a new master, Bill gains entry and learns that Mrs. Heron and Lieutenant Macgregor are the only prisoners held there; Buktawur Sing coldly reveals his intention to force Mrs. Heron into marriage. In the fort's garden Bill glimpses her, wasted and grieving, cradling her dead baby—killed by hardship—while Macgregor sits nearby for what comfort his presence can offer. Bill manages to whisper reassurance to her that her husband lives and means to rescue her, but he witnesses Buktawur Sing's calculated cruelty when the sepoy leader seizes the dead infant and hurls it into an alligator tank before her eyes, causing her to collapse. Unable to help without exposing himself, Bill withdraws and returns to Jubbulpore, mercifully concealing the child's fate from Heron even as he relays what news he safely can. News then arrives that a relief column under General Miller is marching from Dumoh to strike the rebel stronghold. Heron joins the assault force, and the regiment endures a brutal, waterless march across scorched, drought-stricken country to reach Kuttingee. The attack opens with an artillery duel, followed by an infantry assault: the Queen's Own storm the outworks with the bayonet, turn captured guns on the fort's gate, and fight their way through a traversed gateway under murderous fire, in which Bill Brierly is killed. Storming into the garden, the soldiers find Lieutenant Macgregor and Mrs. Heron near the alligator tank, both apparently cut down by Buktawur Sing's tulwar, Macgregor mutilated with dozens of wounds after twice shielding her with his body. Heron, driven wild with grief and vengeance, seeks out Buktawur Sing personally, and the two fight a fierce single combat in which Heron ultimately kills him, cleaving him from skull to chin. Believing his wife dead, Heron is led to where her body was carried inside the fort—only to discover that she survived: Macgregor's interposed hand had turned the blade in Buktawur Sing's grip, so that Rose was only stunned and cut, not killed. The narrative closes on this reversal of despair into joy, with husband and wife reunited amid the carnage, and the promise that they will survive to spend the following Christmas together in peace in their native Kentish village, the story's violence resolving into a note of providential deliverance and domestic restoration.

By James Grant · First published 1890 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Military Fiction, War Fiction · 5,502 words

First lines

When I came back, boys, after my fighting in India was over, you laughed at my old red coat (for I had no other) -- a trifle tattered, I dare say it was, as well it might be, after all I had gone through in it latterly; but you never forgot, boys, that it was the old Red Rag, that tells of England's glory!

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Dick Staples of the 'Queen's own. ' is listed on Textopian as a short story by James Grant, dated 1890 CE.

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historical fiction · military adventure · British Army · Victorian literature · nineteenth-century fiction · war story · soldiers · regimental life · battle scenes · military campaigns · heroism · duty

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