Of the horrors of that night Surgeon Jee has told us in his own words. The firing was deafening, gongs were sounding the hours, while there was a hubbub of shouting through which the groans of the wounded could nevertheless be heard. An alarming rumour came that all the 78th had been killed, and, what added to the terrors of the situation, no one knew how far off the Residency was. But Jee stuck to his post, and many a poor fellow lived through that inferno to bless the brave, tender-hearted doctor to whom he owed his life.
At daylight some tea was made (they had had neither food nor drink since leaving the Alumbagh the morning before), and then preparations were made to defend the place. Loopholes had to be pierced in the walls, and the best marksmen stationed there to pick off the sepoys who raked the square from house and gateway. Jee himself had many a narrow escape as he dodged about dressing the wounds both of the artillery and his own men, and he recounts how Brigadier Cooper was shot through a loophole close to where he was standing.
In this extremity Jee boldly volunteered to attempt to get his wounded into the Residency by taking them along the river bank, leaving Captain Halliburton to hold the Moti-Mahal. Nothing could dissuade him from this course once his mind was made up, so with his dhoolies he set out to run the gauntlet.
What the little company of dhoolies passed through ere it reached its destination we do not know, but we can picture to ourselves that terrible journey through the winding tangled streets in which nearly every house contained sepoy riflemen. There was, too, a stream to be crossed, and at this spot they were exposed to the fire of the rebel guns at the Kaiserbagh Palace.
They reached the Residency at length, after much going astray, and reached it sadly depleted in numbers. As elsewhere in Lucknow that same night, the cowardly sepoys made a special mark of the dhoolies, shooting the defenceless wounded in cold blood. On their arrival General Havelock warmly congratulated the plucky surgeon on his success in getting through, for he had heard that Jee had been killed.
Honour was slower in coming to the brave Army doctors than to many others who distinguished themselves in the Mutiny, for it was not until three years later that Jee was gazetted V.C. But such services as his could not be overlooked, and there was universal satisfaction when his name was added to the Roll of Valour. He died some years ago, a Deputy Inspector-General and a C.B.
On the night of the same day that Jee was conveying his wounded to the Residency, a somewhat similar scene was being enacted in another quarter of Lucknow. By the Moti Munzil Palace lay a number of wounded officers and men of the 90th and other regiments in the charge of Doctors Home and Bradshaw of the 90th. Left behind by the relieving force as it held straight on to its goal, the dhoolies had to rely for protection on a small escort of a hundred and fifty men. By great good fortune they escaped the notice of the mutineers during the first part of the night, but ere dawn had broken a fierce attack was made upon them. Off they started, then, on a slow, laborious journey, which was to cost many valuable lives before its end.
“To the Residency!” was the cry, a young civilian named Thornhill having undertaken to guide them thither. But between them and Havelock’s house was a network of streets and lanes that had to be threaded, and these were still overrun with sepoys. It was a true via dolorosa that lay before them.
The order having been given, the dhoolies were picked up by very reluctant native bearers, the surgeons closed in round their charges, and they started off, while the escort covered their progress as best they could. After a terrible hour’s journeying, with sepoys hanging on flank and rear, the little company eventually reached the Martinière (a building erected by a French soldier of fortune in the eighteenth century). Their stay here was short, however, for a well-directed cannonade drove them once more afield. A flooded nullah was next crossed, and beyond this seemed to lie safety, but a fatal blunder on the part of their guide led them into a veritable death-trap.