Almost broken-hearted by this proof that his trusted regiment had mutined, Colonel Woodburn lifted up his voice in a last appeal to their loyalty. Before he had spoken a dozen words, Pir Baksh—dreading lest the colonel’s influence should wreck his plans, even when success seemed assured—stepped behind a crowd of gesticulating sepoys and took deliberate aim.
Colonel Woodburn fell from his horse grievously wounded, and Ted and one of the subalterns dashed forward to convey him to a place of safety. Captain Markham placed himself at the head of his own hundred men and appealed to them, for the sake of all they had gone through together, to remain loyal and true. His company, composed of Hindustanis—mostly Rajputs—stood silent and puzzled, undecided how to act, when shots from some Mohammedans of the flank company answered his appeal, and the well-loved captain fell.
There was no longer any indecision among Markham’s Rajputs. Pity for the murdered officer who had done so much for them, anger that he should be shot by the Moslems whom they did not love, these feelings turned the scale. Hastily closing round their captain they guarded his body and menaced the mutineers. The remaining officers, seeing one faithful company, placed themselves at its head, and called on the other Hindus to remain loyal and fight the Mussulmans. But the madness had worked by now: all the rest cast in their lot with the murderers, and, firing a few shots at Englishmen and faithful sepoys, whom they dared not charge, so great was still the influence of the officers, they rushed off to loot the town and shops.
Including Markham, three officers were killed and two badly wounded, two of the slain being brother ensigns of Ted—poor little “griffins”, who had been out but a few months.
Then swift as lightning came the thought, “What of the women and children and civilians?” The appearance of the revolted sepoys would be the signal for all the budmashes of the bazar to join in the rioting and murder.
A noise of firing and a babel of fiendish yells from the English quarter of the town, in close proximity to the fort, told their own tale. The white residents were being attacked!
“Lieutenant Lowthian,” commanded the major, “remain here with Ensigns Tynan and Russell and about twenty men! We’ll take our wounded with us, the women will attend to them; and when we’ve cleared the streets we’ll bring the civilians into the fort.”
Exhorting the faithful Rajputs to remain true to their salt and so win eternal fame, the major ordered bayonets to be fixed, and headed the charge down the street, the wounded with their guard bringing up the rear.
A disorderly crowd of sepoys and riff-raff of the town had assembled in front of the large house of Sir Arthur Fletcher, the Commissioner of the district. The windows were being fired into and the doors battered down, in spite of a determined resistance from the inmates. Into the crowd charged the loyal sepoys. Firing a single volley at close quarters they at once let the rioters taste cold steel, and beneath the gallant major’s sword fell more than one of the ringleaders.
Major Munro was known as one of the strongest officers and best swordsmen in the army, and the mob gave back before his flashing steel and the glistening bayonets of his followers. But as the sepoys recoiled, a number of Wahabis, showering curses upon the faint-hearted, poured with knives and swords down upon the little band. The leader was all but lost. Separating him from his men, half a dozen fanatics set on him at once, yelling triumphantly. But the two who first came within reach of that mighty arm quickly lay in the dust; the third received the point in his heart, and a fourth was cloven almost in twain.