“Yet another surprise! Suddenly the straw roofs of the native boats burst into flame, and from either shore of the river grape and musket shot were poured in relentlessly. The wounded lay still and were burnt to death. Ladies and children sought the protection of the water, and crouched in the shallows under the sterns of the barges. The men tried to push off, but the keels stuck fast. Out of two dozen boats only three drifted slowly down from the stage. Of these three two went across to the Oude bank, where stood two cannon, guarded by a battalion of infantry and some cavalry. The third boat, containing Vibart and Whiting and Ushe, Delafosse and Bolton, Burney and Glanville and Moore, the bravest of the brave, got clear away, and drifted down the main channel.”
Mrs. Bradshaw thus describes what she saw: “In the boat where I was to have gone were the school-mistress and twenty-two missies. General Wheeler came last in a palkee. They carried him into the water near a boat. I was standing close by. He said, ‘Carry me a little further near the boat.’ But a trooper said, ‘No; get out here.’ As the General got out of the palkee, head foremost, the trooper gave him a cut with his sword into the neck, and he fell into the water. My son was killed near him. I saw it—alas! alas! Some were stabbed with bayonets; others were cut down with swords and knives. Little infants were torn in pieces. We saw it, we did, and tell you only what we saw. Other children were stabbed and thrown into the river. The school-girls were burnt to death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the water, a few paces off, by the next boat, we saw the youngest daughter of Colonel Williams. A sepoy was going to kill her with his bayonet, when she said, ‘My father was always kind to sepoys.’ He turned away, and just then a villager struck her on the head with his club, and she fell into the water.”
After a time the women and children who had not been shot, stabbed, or burnt were collected and brought to shore, some of them being rudely handled by the sowars, who tore from ear or finger such jewels as caught their fancy.
About 120 sat or lay on the shore or on logs of timber, full of misery, fear, and despair. There they waited in the blinding sun on the Ganges shore all that morning. Then they were herded back along the narrow lane by which they had come with hope in their bosoms, while the sepoys who guarded them grinned with fiendish delight, and showed gleefully all their spoils. Past the bazaar and the chapel and the racquet-court and the entrenchments they limped along, until they were paraded before the pavilion of the Maharajah, who looked them well over, and ordered them to be confined in the Savada House. Two good-sized rooms, which had been used by native soldiers for a month, were given them to live in, and a guard was placed over them.
One witness says: “I saw that many of the ladies were wounded. Their clothes had blood on them. Some were wet, covered with mud and blood, and some had their dresses badly torn, but all had clothes. I saw one or two children without clothes. There were no men in the party, but only some boys of twelve or thirteen years of age. Some of the ladies were barefoot and lame. Two I saw were wounded in the leg.”
And what of the third boat which floated down-stream?
More than 100 persons had taken refuge in it. Some officers and men, seeing how hopeless was the fight on the bank, had swum out to Vibart and his crew. Now they stranded on a mud-bank, now they drifted towards the guns on the other shore, ever under a hot fire of canister and shell, and continually losing brave men who were shot at point-blank range. Down in the bottom of the great barge lay dying and dead, till at last the survivors were compelled to throw the bodies overboard.
At night a fire-ship was sent down to set them alight, and fire-tipped arrows were shot into the thatched roof, forcing our people to cut them away. Then they came under a fierce fire from the militia of Ram Bux. Pelting rains came down, and they drifted up a backwater, and soon after a host of rebels surrounded the poor, stricken fugitives and took them back to Cawnpore.
The doomed boat-load were seen to be drawing near the landing-place early on the morning of the 30th. This is what a native spy said of them:
“There were brought back sixty sahibs, twenty-five mem sahibs, and four children. The Nana ordered the sahibs to be separated from the mem sahibs, and shot by the 1st Bengal Native Infantry. But they said, ‘We will not kill the sahibs; put them in prison.’ Then said the Nadiree Regiment: ‘What word is this—put them in prison? We will kill the males ourselves.’