Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1895 — THE ADJUTANT'S GRAVE. [ARTICLE]

THE ADJUTANT'S GRAVE.

It was at the taking of Rangoon. From the Irawaddi the crashing batteries of a dozen steam frigates had leveled the stockades on the river side. Black masses of naked, smokestained Burmese, exposed at their guns, or in shallow trenches, when the teak walls fell or were burned down, were mowed down like grass by a hailstorm of grape. Our artillery was landing. The 18th Royal Irish were already in the breaches and at the water gate. The Burmese dropped their cumbrous shields and lances anddhars and fled, yelling, back toward the great pagoda. Those wild Irish, possessed of the same devil that dashed and slashed and stabbed and hacked and hurrahed in the Enniskilleners at Waterloo, went off in hot chase. Only one regiment I —for they would not wait for the slow boats that were bringing the guns, and the 80th and the Sepoy Rifles, but broke away in pursuit, in spite of the almost frantic officers, who, weak and hoarse with ineffectual efforts to check their mad command, were forced to follow at last, all chasing the bubble reputation together—one regiment at the heels of 10,000 panic stricken savages! One of the glorious fellows of the crack 18th in this tempestuous hur-ly-burly was Fallon, the adjutant. He was the equipped model of a gentleman and a soldier, according to the standard of his proud regiment; a jovial boon companion, generous comrade, fast friend, frank and fearless enemy; in sport a child, in taste a scholar, impetuous in fight, pitiful in victory. As his disordered party charged, shouting, up the broad Dagan road, between the long lines of the inner blockade,over bamboo bridges thrown across trenches, and past grim gigantic idols and poonghee houses fantastically carved, the adjutant, who had lingered behind the rest, striving to the last, in his habitual devotion to discipline, to restrain the men, happened to be in the rear of all. “How now?” jestingly cried Clark, an English ensign of the adjutant’s mess, who was running just before him, ‘ ‘our plucky Fallon at the back of us all! This ih bad enough for me, old fellow, who have my medals to win; but it will never do for,you, with those red ribbons to answer for.” “I am doing my best, Clark, my boy,” Fallon replied, “and shall be up with that crazy sergeant presently- You know lam good for a short brush of foot race; fast running is one of my accomplishments—thanks to my by bog trotting education and the practice Lord Gough gave us.”

Hardly were the words done ringing in his comrade’s ears when the gallant Fallon, the pride of his corps, received in his generous breast a dozen musket balls as he sprang up the broad staircase ot the Golden Dagon Pagoda—first of them all, and quite alone. He fell on his face, stone dead, on the stairs, sword in hand, and smiling. When all was over, and his regiment held the post of honor on the very throne of the Boodh, they gave him a soldier’s most distinguished obsequies, burying him in a grove of talipot trees, behind a poonghee house of the most grotesque architecture, and just outside of what were afterward the Sepoy lines of c - the Eightieth. His faithful orderly planted a rude cross at his grave’s head and set an English white rose there. An American missionary gave it to him. In Calcutta, Norah Fallon—beautiful, accomplished, witty, altogether radiant with rare charms of mind and person—waited with her young child for news from her soldier husband, who bad her heart in his keeping within the stockades of Rangoon. .When they told her he was dead, she fell, uttering only a sharp cry, and lay as one dead for many days. But when she awoke to the consciousness of her profound bereavement, a fid her eternal widowhood, she shed not a tear nor spoke a word, but took her boy and went aboard a troop ship that sailed on the morrow for Rangoon. On the voyage still she spoke not, nor ever wept; the silence of her sorrow had something sacred, almost awful about it, that commended a > delicacy of consideration, which was a sort of worship, from the rudest about her. Arrived at Rangoon, no sooner had the ship dropped anchor off the King’s wharf than Norah sent her chaprassey, her Hindoo errandgoer, with a note to General Godwin, commanding the company's forces in Burmah. ‘The wife of Maurice

I Fallon, adjutant in the Eighteenth ’ of her Majesty’s Royal Irish, would be permitted to see her husband’s grave; she awaits the expression of the Generals wishes on board the Mahanuddy.” She waited long. At last the answer came; “It was with unfeigned sorrow ! that Lieut.-Gen. Godwin found himself constrained, by the exigencies of i his position, to refuse the widow of I one of his best officers, wnose loss was felt by the whole Anglo-Indian army, the sad privilege of visiting the spot where his comrades consigned him to a brave soldier’s grave, i But the General’s footing in RanI goon was precarious, hourly appreprehensions o' attack by a strong i body of the enemy were entertained. “It was known that a Burmah ■ chief was approaching with a numerous and well armed force, and had already arrived in the neighborhood ;of Kemmendine. Therefore, for the present, the Lieutenant-General I must forbid the landing of his countrywoman from the shipping On any pretext. He hoped to be forgiven by the dear lady, whose grief he humbly asked to be permitted to share ; but in this case he was not left in the exercise of the least discretion. Such were the regulations.” When Norah Fallon had read these lines she retired to her cabin in silence, and was not seen again that day. On the next she was observed in frequent and eager conference, in whispered Hindoostanee, with an old and faithful bearer, gray bearded, and of grave and dignified demeanor, who had long been in the confidence of her husband —indeed, a sort of humble, but fatherly guardian to the young, inexperienced, and perhaps imprudent pair, who with their darling between them were all in all to each other, and heedless of all beside.

The old Hindoo had formerly lived several years at Brome, whither he had gone in the capacity of bearer to an English commissioner; he therefore knew the Burmese character well, and could speak the language with tolerable fluency. There were many “frier dly” Burmese at Rangoon at this time, deserters from Dallah, shrewd fellows who had foreseen safety in British ascendancy, and, being mostly fishermen, had offered themselves for “Inglee” muskets for the nonce, with a sharp eye to profitable nets thereafter. Indeed, not a few of these calculating traitors had taken to their old trade already, and were busily plying the moles and hooks from crazy canoes at the mouth of Kemmendine Creek. It was not long before some of them, hailed by old Buxsoo, the bearer, came alongside with, as he said, fish for the Mem Sahib, his mistress. On these occasions he conversed with them in Burmese, and whoever watched narrowly the astonished and anxious faces of the fishermen must have observed that neither the freshness nor the price of their finny prizes formed any part of the discussion. It was a dark night, no moon and a cloudy sky; all hands had gone below and “turned in” some hours since. The officer of the deck, night glass in hand, paced the “bridge,” or leaned over the rail and watched the lights ashore, w’hile the quartermaster patrolled the gangways. But these were not alone on deck; on the bull ring of the aftar gun the pale and tearless widow sat, still as a shadow, and peered through the darkness shoreward to where the Eighteenth’s lights gleamed from the Golden Dragon. Such was her nightly wont, and officers and men had become so accustomed to it that she sometimes sat there till after midnight, unheeded and forgotten.

The young officer still chased with his eyes the restiess lights, and dreamed dreams the while of home and of a sweetheart; the gruff old quartermaster paced up and down, and thought of prize money and the “old woman.” Neither had eye nor thought for the poor lady, they were so used to her lonesome ways, d’ye see, else they might have found something unusual in the anxiety with which she watched a singular object in the water astern—only an empty canoe drifting toward the ship! Not drifting either; for now that I point them out to you, you can see two black heads, with long hair twisted in a barbaric knot behind, peering warily above the water in front of the boat which seems to follow them.

The love-lorn youngster, or the gruff old quartermaster on prize money intent, did look toward the bull ring a little later, and saw nothing; the lady was gone. Whither? To her cabin? No; she could not have passed them unobserved. But that was easy to decide; her light still burned; her state room was open and unoccupied. Where, then, was she? Good heavens! It could not be ; and yet it must—poor lady! Poor baby! They gave the alarm; they roused the ship; a gun was fired; a search was made, in vain. Alas! it must be so. “She has gone to join her husband.” True ! but not that way, gruff old quartermaster’s mate. Stop thinkingabout her; have ears and brains for your duty. What was that shot on shore? And, hark now! another, and another, and another! the alarm is given in the British lines; the sentries have discharged their pieces and run in! See! the place,is all ablaze with lights; every ponghee house is illuminated; you can discern the great porch of the Golden Dagon, with its griffin warders, from here. They are beating to arms'; the trumpet sounds the “assembly.” What could that first and solitary jhot have been? Ah! my nautical friends, while your sapient pates were busy guessing, that*, pair of 4 barbaric black heads have drifted under the stern again, and the same canoe has drifted with them—nor empty this time; for, look again, and you will see that her light is no longer burning, and her stat-e----room door is closed, though the window is open; and—yes, you do hear her Wait! spare yeO.r heads the guessing; it will all be cleared up one day. Wait till you dare to ask Norah Fallon why she dares to make so much of that withered white rose. General Godwin’s next dispatch to the Governor General contained a curious passage: "On the night of the 15th the cantonments were

thrown into disorder by a false alarm, caused by the mysterious discharge of a pistol in the talipot grove,which inclosed the grave of the late Adjutant Fallon, who fell gloriously in the attack on the Dagon Pagoda; the spot is close to the sepoy lines of H. M. Eightieth. My men maintained good order, answering the assembly call with remarkable celerity and in complete equipment. At daybreak a sepoy of Major Ainslie's picket found a dead boa of great size, and evidently just killed, lying across young Fallon’s grave; also, suspended to the cross by a ribbon, a gold locket containing two locks of hair —a lady’s and a child's; and fastened to the cross by a short Burmese poiniard through the paper the inclosure, marked “X.” Inclosure X contained the follow-, ing: “There are no ‘Regulations’ for the heart of an Irish soldier’s wife.”