Grief for our perishing children, and never a moment for grief;
Toil and ineffable weariness, faltering hopes of relief;
Havelock baffled, or beaten, or butchered for all that we knew.
Then day and night, night and day, coming down on the still shattered walls,
Millions of musket bullets and thousands of cannon balls—
But ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew."
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The author has gone over the ground, noting its features on the spot; but for refreshing his memory and making all the positions clear, he has to acknowledge his obligation especially to the pictures and plans in General McLeod Innes' Lucknow and Oude in the Mutiny.
[6] This "great unwashed hairy creature" appears to have been "Jock" Aitken, in whom, as his kinsman, the author must own to a special interest. A monument to him now stands by the post he guarded so well.
LORD CLYDE'S CAMPAIGNS
Sir Colin Campbell, soon to earn the title of Lord Clyde, had arrived at Calcutta in the middle of August, as Commander-in-Chief of an army still on its way from England by the slow route of the Cape. He could do nothing for the moment but stir up the authorities in providing stores and transport for his men when they came to hand. All the troops available in Bengal were needed to guard the disarmed Sepoys here, and to keep clear the six hundred miles of road to Allahabad, infested as it was by flying bands of mutineers and robbers. But if he had no English soldiers to command, there was a brigade of sailors, five hundred strong, who under their daring leader, Captain William Peel, steamed up the Ganges, ahead of the army, to which more than once they were to show the way on an unfamiliar element.