Their less fortunate comrades in the boat, captured after such resistance as could be offered by its famished and fainting crew, had been taken back to Cawnpore. The men were ordered to be shot. One of the officers said a few prayers; they shook hands all round like Englishmen; the Sepoys fired, and finished the work with their swords. The women had to be dragged away from their husbands before this execution could be done. To the number of about thirty, including children, they were added to that band of captives in the Nana's hands, which presently became increased by another party of hapless fugitives from Futtehgurh, hoping here at last to find safety after an ordeal of their own, as we have already seen.
The fate of these prisoners is too well known. Some two hundred in all, they were confined for more than a fortnight within sight of the house where the Nana celebrated his doubtful triumph, under the coveted title of Peshwa, which he had now conferred upon himself. In want and woe, ill-fed, attended by "sweepers," that degraded caste whose touch is taken for pollution, they had to listen to the revelry of their tyrant's minions, and some were called on to grind corn for him, as if to bring home to them their slavish plight. Still, the worst was delayed. Probably the Nana had once meant to hold them as hostages. But as his affairs grew more disquieting, through the hate of rival pretenders, and the defeat of his troops before Havelock, perhaps enraged to fury perhaps rightly calculating that the British were urged on to such irresistible efforts by the hope of rescuing his captives, he resolved on a crime, for which the chief ladies of his own household, the widows of the adopted father to whom he owed everything, heathen as they were, are said to have called shame upon him, and threatened to commit suicide if he murdered any more of their sex.
The avenging army was now at hand, not to be frightened away by the roar of the idle salutes by which the Nana would fain have persuaded himself and others that he was indeed a mighty conqueror. Before going out to meet it on July 15th, he gave the order which has for ever loaded his name with infamy.[3] A few men, still suffered to live among the prisoners, were summoned forth. With them came the biggest of the boys, a lad of fourteen, fatally ambitious not to be counted among women and children. These were soon disposed of. Soon afterwards, a band of Sepoys were sent to fire into the house packed with its mob of helpless inmates; but the mutineers, who had done many a bloody deed, seem to have shrank from this. Half-a-dozen of them fired a few harmless shots, taking care to aim at the ceiling. Then were brought up five ruthless ruffians, fit for such work, two of them butchers by trade. By the quickly gathering gloom of Indian twilight, they entered the shambles, sword in hand; and soon shrieks and entreaties, dying down to groans through the darkness, told how these poor Christians came to an end of their sorrows. Proud, delicate English ladies, dusky Eurasians, sickly children, the night fell upon them all, never to see another sun.
One day more, and these unfortunates might have heard the guns of their advancing deliverer. After a succession of arduous combats, toiling through deep slush and sweltering air, Havelock had come within a few miles of Cawnpore, to find Nana Sahib waiting to dispute the passage with more than thrice his own numbers drawn up across the road. Very early in the morning, the British soldiers had been roused from their hungry bivouac in the open air. What their chief had to tell them was how he had heard of women and children still alive in Cawnpore; his clear voice broke into a sob as he cried, "With God's help, men, we shall save them, or every man of us die in the attempt!" The men answered with three cheers, and needed no word of command to set out under the moonlight.
The sun rose upon the hottest day they had yet had to struggle through. A march of sixteen miles, that in itself was a trying day's work for India, brought them in sight of the enemy. Taken in flank by a careful manœuvre, the Sepoys were rolled up before the onrush of the Rossshire Buffs, and not now for the first or last time, had terror struck to their hearts by the fierce strains of the Highland bagpipe. Twice they rallied, but twice again our men drove them from their guns, to which English and Scots raced forward in eager rivalry. The blowing up of the Cawnpore magazine proclaimed a complete defeat. When night fell, the cowardly tyrant was flying amid his routed troops, and the weary Britons dropped to sleep on the ground they had won, cheered by hopes that the prize of the victory would be the lives of their country-folk.
It is said that on the night of this battle of Cawnpore, Havelock himself learned how he had come too late; but, in any case, his thousand men or less were not fit to be led a step further. Next day, when they entered the deserted city, their ranks began to be saddened by vague rumours of the tragedy they had toiled and bled to avert. But they could not realize the horror of it, till some Highlanders, prowling in search of drink or booty, came upon the house where their shoes plashed in blood and the floor was strewn with gory relics, strips of clothing, long locks of hair, babies' shoes and pinafores, torn leaves of paper, all soaked or stained with the same red tokens of what had been done within those walls. The trail of blood led them to a well in the court-yard, filled to the brim with mangled corpses—a sight from which brave men burst away in passionate tears and curses.
Over that gruesome spot now stands a richly-sculptured monument, where emblems of Christian faith and hope seem to speak peace to the souls of the victims buried beneath its silent marble. But who can wonder if, by such an open grave, our maddened soldiers then forgot all teachings of their creed, swearing wild oaths—oaths too well kept—to take vengeance on the heathen that thus made war with helpless women and children! Yet more worthy of our true greatness are the words of one who has eloquently chronicled the atrocities of Cawnpore, to draw from them the lesson, that upon their most deep-dyed scenes each Englishman should rather "breathe a silent petition for grace to do in his generation some small thing towards the conciliation of races estranged by a terrible memory"—alas! by more than one such memory.
Having reached Cawnpore too late, in spite of their utmost exertions, our small army had now before it the greater task of relieving Lucknow, believed to be in the utmost straits. But inevitable delays bridled their impatience. The Nana's troops were still in force not far off.
Even far in Havelock's rear, within a day's railway journey from Calcutta, there was an outbreak which had to be put down by the reinforcements hurrying up to his aid. Before we return to the siege of Delhi, a minor episode here should be related as one of the most gallant actions of the Mutiny, and yet no more than a characteristic sample of what Englishmen did in those days.
On July the 25th the Sepoys at Dinapore mutinied, and though stopped from doing much mischief there by the presence of European troops, managed to get safe away, as at Meerut, through the incapacity of a General unfit for command. Marching some twenty-five hundred strong to Arrah, a small station in the neighbourhood, they released the prisoners, plundered the treasury, and were joined by a mob of country-people, at the head of whom placed himself an influential and discontented nobleman named Koer Singh.