But the fire of every musket on the bastion and the tall houses was centered on that second gun. Grape, canister, raked the narrow lane--made narrower by fallen Fusiliers--and forced those who remained to fall back upon the first gun--beyond that even. Yet only for a moment. Reformed afresh, they carried it a second time, spiked it and pressed on. Officers still to the front!
Just beyond the gun the commandant fell wounded to death. "Go on, men, go on!" he shouted to those who would have paused to help him. "Forward, Fusiliers!"
And they went forward; though at dawn two hundred and fifty men had dashed for the breach, and now there were not a hundred and fifty left to obey orders. Less! For fifty men and seven officers lay in that lane itself. Surely it was time now for others to step in--and there were others!
Nicholson saw the waver, knew what it meant, and sprang forward sword in hand, calling on those others to follow. But he asked too much. Where the 1st Fusiliers had failed, none cared to try. That is the simple truth. The limit had been reached.
So for a minute or two he stood, a figure instinct with passion, energy, vitality, before men who, God knows with reason, had lost all three for the moment. A colossal figure beyond them, ahead of them, asking more than mere ordinary men could do. So a pitiful figure--a failure at the last!
"Come on, men! Come on, you fools--come on, you--you----"
What the word was, which that bullet full in the chest arrested between heart and lips, those who knew John Nicholson's wild temper, his indomitable will, his fierce resentment at everything which fell short of his ideals, can easily guess.
"Lay me under that tree," he gasped, as they raised him. "I will not leave till the lane is carried. My God! Don't mind me! Forward, men, forward! It can be done."
An hour or two afterward a subaltern coming out of the Cashmere gate saw a dhooli, deserted by its bearers. In it lay John Nicholson in dire agony; but he asked nothing of his fellows then save to be taken to hospital. He had learned his lesson. He had done what others had set him to do. He had entered Delhi. He had pricked the bubble, and the gas was leaking out. But he had failed in the task he had set himself. The Burn Bastion was still unwon, and the English force in Delhi, instead of holding its northern half up to the very walls of the Palace, secure from flanking foes, had to retire on the strip of open ground behind the assaulted wall--if, indeed, it had not to retire further still. Had one man had his way it would have retired to the Ridge. Late in the afternoon, when fighting was over for the day, General Wilson rode round the new-won position, and, map in hand, looked despairingly toward the network of narrow lanes and alleys beyond. And he looked at something close at hand with even greater forebodings; for he stood in the European quarter of the town among shops still holding vast stores of wine and spirits which had been left untouched by that other army of occupation.
But what of this one? This product of civilization, and culture, and Christianity; these men who could give points to those others in so many ways, but might barter their very birthright for a bottle of rum. Yet even so, the position must be held. So said Baird Smith at the chief's elbow, so wrote Neville Chamberlain, unable to leave his post on the Ridge. And another man in hospital, thinking of the Burn Bastion, thinking with a strange wonder of men who could refuse to follow, muttered under his breath, "Thank God! I have still strength left to shoot a coward."