AN INDIAN OFFICER OF THE CAMEL CORPS.
Read the inscription that circles round the wall of the well now in front of us:—
"Sacred to the perpetual memory of a great company of Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel, Nana Dhundu Pant of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the fifteenth day of July 1857."
Yes, we have not come to the end yet!
When the bloodthirsty tyrant, better known as Nana Sahib, found he could not crack this nut, when he realised that his whole army was held at bay by a few hundreds of determined spirits—there were only three hundred fighting men to begin with, and they were daily killed—he made terms with them, promising to send the survivors safely in boats down the river if they would give in. Desperate as they were, without food or water, without shade from the killing glare of the Indian summer sun, the brave men held their heads high and only accepted on condition they marched out under arms with so many rounds of ammunition to each man.
This was granted.
Now leave the well and follow that heroic band who went down to the river on that blazing day some sixty years ago. It is about a mile away. The little garrison now numbered some four hundred and fifty all told, the half of what they had been three weeks before. Blackened with the sun and smoke and gunpowder, so as to rival the Sepoys in complexion, tattered and worn and wounded, but yet with courage undaunted, they went down to the river.
