Yet but little headway had been made in securing a firmer hold within the city itself.
"You can't, till the Burn Bastion is taken and the Lahore gate secured," said Nicholson from his dying bed, whence, growing perceptibly weaker day by day, yet with mind clear and unclouded, he watched and warned. The single eye was not closed yet, was not even made dim by death. It saw still, what it had seen on the day of the assault; what it had coveted then and failed to reach.
But it was not for five days after this failure that even Baird Smith recognized the absolute accuracy of this judgment, and, against the Chief's will, obtained permission to sap through the shelter of the intervening houses till they could tackle the bastion at close and commanding quarters without asking the troops to face another lane. So on the morning of the 19th, after a night of storm and rain cooling the air incredibly, the pick-ax began what rifles and swords had failed to do. By nightfall a tall house was reached, whence the bastion could be raked fore and aft. Its occupants, recognizing this, took advantage of the growing darkness to evacuate it. Half an hour afterward the master-key of the position was in English hands.
Rather unsteady ones, for here again the troops--once more the 8th, the 75th, the Sikh Infantry, and that balance of the Fusiliers--had found more brandy.
"Poisoned, sir?" said one thirsty trooper, flourishing a bottle of Exshaw's Number One before the eyes of his Captain, who, as a last inducement to sobriety, was suggesting danger. "Not a bit of it. Capsules all right."
But this time England could afford a few drunk men. The bastion was gone, and by the Turkoman and Delhi gates half the town was going. And not only the town. Down in the Palace men and women, with fumbling hands and dazed eyes, like those new roused from dreams, were snatching at something to carry with them in their flight. Bukht Khân stood facing the Queen in her favorite summer-house, alone, save for Hâfzan, the scribe, who lingered, watching them with a certain malice in her eyes. She had been right. Vengeance had been coming. Now it had come.
"All is not lost, my Queen," said Bukht Khân, with hand on sword. "The open country lies before us, Lucknow is ours--come!"
"And the King, and my son," she faltered. The dull glitter of her tarnished jewelry seemed in keeping with the look on her face. There was something sordid in it. Sordid, indeed, for behind that mask of wifely solicitude and maternal care lay the thought of her hidden treasure.
"Let them come too. Naught hinders it."
True. But the gold, the gold!