By Eastern windows Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lachlan asked cynically.
    ‘Probably,’ Grant agreed, ‘but all the signs now are that the big battle will not be fought this night or even this year. Still, the fat old darling is obviously as good a strategist as Cornwallis – knows not only when to fight, but when not to fight.’
    Throughout the night and the following day the troops remained in their positions while inside the sultan's palace Lord Cornwallis and his staff negotiated the terms of the treaty, which was that Tipu would relinquish control of at least half of his dominions, as well as contributing three million rupees towards the expense of the war that he had started.
    Tipu Sultan readily signed the Peace Treaty and then sent down to his vast treasury and paid over the three million rupees demanded.
    ‘We will meet again,’ he said coldly to Lord Cornwallis.
    Cornwallis nodded. ‘I have no doubt that we will.’
    ‘You red-coated Angrezi will not always win the battles here in India.’
    ‘Perhaps not,’ Cornwallis replied curtly, removing the hat from under his arm and placing it on his head. ‘But I think we can agree that the Angrezi have very easily won this one.’
     
    *
     
    The soldiers of the 77 th left the plains of Mysore under a torrent of hard monsoon rain, every fibre of their tunics soaked, and many wondering why they had gone to Mysore in the first place? All they had defeated was the treacherous passes of the Ghauts, and now they must wade through the mud and tramp up and down them again.
    The return journey was horrific. Bullocks hauling the cannons dropped dead in the mud from exhaustion and men were forced to take their places under the harness. Baggage and supplies had to be dropped and left behind in the slough. The men's rice rations diminished, leaving them only a handful of biscuits to sustain them at the end of each tortuous day.
    Boats were hired to sail them down the swollen Belliapatam River. Lachlan sat in his boat as if in a nightmare, trying to swiftly identify the corpses that swirled past, the corpses of soldiers who had drowned from capsized boats.
    Lachlan began to feel sick, very sick. He was soaked to the skin and had not eaten for three days. He had lost his tent and most of his baggage on the Ghauts. He had also lost his horse that had slipped and foundered, breaking two of her legs; he had almost wept when her big eyes had pleaded with him to take out his pistol and shoot away her pain.
    Back on land, Lachlan trudged with his men through miles of mud and rain until finally they came within five miles of Tellicherry on the Malabar Coast. Tellicherry was civilisation, a coastal town with well-built houses and a small British community.
    Three miles from Tellicherry, Lachlan received the news that General Abercromby and all the officers of the High Command had already reached the town, and even junior officers were being offered accommodation in the houses of the British community.
    His head thumping with pain, Lachlan felt too wet and dirty to resume the gilded role of an officer in the civilisation of Tellicherry, choosing instead to roll up in his camp cloak and sleep on the floor of a deserted old hut near to the main camp. Outside the hut, the jungle steamed under the heat of a new sun.
    Some hours later he awoke inside his mother's comfortable home on Mull, Donald was bending over him, a hand on his brow.
    ‘Donald?'  
    Delirious at seeing his brother again he attempted to raise himself, but the pain banged inside his head, his bloodshot eyes blinking in puzzlement, unable to understand why Donald's face was shrouded in fog.
    ‘Fever,’ McKenzie said, turning to the soldier standing beside him. ‘Make speed an' tell Surgeon Anderson that Lieutenant Macquarie is lying in a filthy hut shiverin' and shakin' wi' fever.’  
    Lieutenant Dr Colin Anderson was in his twenty-seventh year, the same age as his closest friend, Lachlan Macquarie. He arrived at the double, his face white with apprehension as he