For Rent: An Army on Elephants

The pitiless Indian sun had poured down upon the Hyderabad maidan until its sandy surface glowed like a stove at white heat. Drawn up in motionless ranks, which stretched from end to end of the great parade-ground, was a division of cavalry: squadron after squadron of scarlet-coated troopers on sleek and shining horses; row after row of brown and bearded faces peering stolidly from under the white turbans. The rays of the sun danced and sparkled upon ten thousand lance-points; the feeble breeze picked up ten thousand pennons and fluttered them into a white-and-scarlet cloud. Now and then the silence would be broken by a clash of steel as a horse tossed its head or a sowar stirred uneasily in his saddle. Sitting a white Arab, a score of paces in advance of the foremost rank, very stiff and soldierly in his gorgeous uniform, was a tall young man whose ruddy cheeks and pleasant eyes looked strangely out of place in so Oriental a setting.

From somewhere within the city walls a bugle spoke shrilly and was answered by another and then another, each nearer than the one preceding. The young man in the splendid uniform barked an order, and men and horses stiffened into rigidity as sharply as though an electric current had gone through them. Through the twin-towered gateway of the city advanced a procession, colorful as a circus, dazzling as a durbar. The two figures who rode at the head of the glittering cortege formed an almost startling contrast. One of them answered in every detail the popular conception of an Asiatic potentate: haughty of manner, portly of person, with a clear, dark skin and wonderfully piercing eyes and a great black beard, spreading fan-wise upon his breast. An aigret of diamonds flashed and scintillated in his flame-colored turban; rubies, large as robin’s eggs, gleamed in his ears, and hanging from his neck over his pale blue surtout was a rope of pearls which would have roused the envy of an empress. His companion, to whom he paid marked attention, was equally noticeable, though in quite a different fashion: a lean, smooth-shaven, lantern-jawed man, still in the middle thirties, very cold and reserved of manner, with a great beak of a nose and a jaw like a granite crag. It did not need the cocked hat and gold epaulets of a British general to mark him as a soldier.

As the cortege cantered onto the maidan the massed bands of the cavalry burst into a wild, barbaric march, brass and kettle-drums crashing together in stirring discord. The strains ceased as abruptly as they began, and the youthful commander, rising in his stirrups, shot his blade into the air and called in a voice like a trumpet:

“Cheers for his Highness!”

And back came a guttural roar from ten thousand throats:

“Long live the Nizam!”

Obviously gratified at the warmth of his greeting, the ruler of the Deccan wheeled his horse and came cantering up to the cavalryman, whose sword flashed in salute.

“Boyd Sahib,” he said, “you are a veritable magician. You turn ryots into soldiers as readily as a fakir turns a stone into bread. Your men are admirable. I congratulate you on their appearance.”

Then, turning to his taciturn companion:

“Sir Arthur Wellesley, permit me to present to you Boyd Sahib, commander of my cavalry and my trusted friend. General Boyd,” he added, glancing at the Englishman with a malicious smile, “is a very brilliant soldier—and an American.”

Thus met, when the nineteenth century was still in its swaddling-clothes, two extraordinary men: Sir Arthur Wellesley, who in later years, as the Duke of Wellington, was to gain undying fame by conquering Napoleon; and General John Parker Boyd, an American soldier of fortune, who rendered most gallant service to his own people, but whose very name has been forgotten by them.

Jack Boyd, as his boyhood companions in Newburyport used to call him, was born with the spirit of adventure strong within him. Almost before he had graduated from dresses to knee-trousers he would linger about the wharfs of the quaint old town, drinking in the stories of strange places and stranger doings told him by the seafarers who were wont to congregate along the water-front, or staring wistfully at the big, black merchantmen about to sail for foreign parts. He was wont to say that it was a perverse and unkind fate which caused him to be born in so inauspicious a year as 1764, for, though there was no more ardent youngster in all New England, his youth caused the recruiting sergeants of the Continental Army to whom he applied for enlistment to pat him on the shoulder and remark encouragingly: “Come again, son, when you’re a few years older.”

Thus it was that he saw unroll before him that marvellous moving-picture of the birth of a nation, which began on the greensward at Lexington and ended before the British lines at Yorktown, without being able to play any greater part in those stirring events than does a spectator in the thrilling scenes which he pays his five cents to see depicted on a screen. Indeed, a twelve-month passed after the last British soldier left our shores before young Boyd achieved the ambition of his life by obtaining an ensign’s commission in the 2d Regiment of Foot and donned the blue coat and buff breeches of an officer in the American army. Although within a year he had been promoted to lieutenant, his was not the temperament which could long endure the monotony of garrison life, with its unending round of guard-mounting and small-arms practice and company drill. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that before the gold braid on his lieutenant’s uniform had time to tarnish he had handed in his papers and had booked passage on an East Indiaman sailing out of Boston for Madras. The year 1788, then, saw this youngster of four-and-twenty landed on the coast of Coromandel, poor in acquaintances and pocket but rich in adventurousness and pluck.