Moolraj followed on the other side of the canal, crossed by a bridge near Mooltan, and at one o'clock moved forward against Edwardes in order of battle. The Bhawulpoor men, commanded by Lieutenant Lake, were on the right; General Cortlandt's two regiments and ten guns were on the right centre; the Pathan levies were next to these, having on their left Sheikh Emamoodeen's troops. The battle began on the right, Lieutenant Lake seizing some mounds in front of him, and placing his guns there opened a heavy fire on the enemy's left. This was returned by the Sikh guns, and in a short time the battle became general along the whole line. The village of Suddoosam was in the centre of the enemy's position. His troops lay for the most part concealed in jungle, the guns occupying two or three small villages. The allies were superior in artillery, and the rebel guns were presently obliged to withdraw from their position.
The order was then given for an advance, and the whole line pressed forward. Village after village was captured at the point of the bayonet, the Sikhs, inflamed with religious ardour, offering most determined resistance, favoured by the nature of the ground, which was largely covered with jungle and date groves and intersected by irrigation canals. There was, however, no check in the advance. A brilliant charge was made by one of Cortlandt's regiments led by Mr. Quin, a young man who had a few days before come up as clerk or writer to Lieutenant Edwardes. The guns were captured, the whole line then went forward with a rush, and the enemy broke and fled in complete disorder.
The loss on the part of the allies in killed and wounded was under three hundred; that of the enemy was vastly greater, being the result to a large extent of the cowardice of Moolraj, who was the first to leave the field, and who, in order to check pursuit, planted guns at the bridge over the canal, with orders to allow no one to pass. The Sikh fugitives on their arrival were fired at by the artillery; the greater part of the crowd, pressed hard by their pursuers, forced a passage, but hundreds were drowned in trying to cross the canal. At the close of the day the allied force halted for the night within range of the guns of the fortress.
Percy saw but little of the fight, as early in the advance he was struck by a matchlock ball while riding forward with the Pathan cavalry. He for a moment lost sensibility and fell. When he recovered himself his two followers were beside him.
"Where am I hit?" he asked.
"In the left shoulder, sahib; it is a bad wound, and will be troublesome, but thanks be to Allah, it might have been much worse. Now that you have recovered I will fetch up a dhooly with its bearers and carry you on after the others. The white sahibs will know best what should be done with your wound."
A few minutes later Percy was placed in a dhooly, and was borne in the rear of the advancing troops, and as soon as these halted for the night he was brought forward to the house which had been chosen by Edwardes as his head-quarters.
"Not badly hurt, I hope, Groves?" that officer said, running out from the house as soon as he heard that Percy was outside. "I have been wondering what has become of you, but had no idea you had been hit."
"I do not think that it is serious," Percy said. "My left shoulder-bone is smashed, I think, by a ball, but my men were close behind me, and bandaged it up; then one of them fetched a dhooly for me, and we have been following pretty close behind you all the afternoon."
"Lake and I will bandage it up properly, and will soon have you comfortable. It is a nuisance that we haven't an English surgeon with us. These native doctors are quite useless. If it is nothing worse than a smashed shoulder I think we can manage well enough, and you may hope to be about again with your arm in a sling before long. The only thing we have to be afraid of in this hot place is fever. Still, I hope that we shall avoid that."