I looked wildly round for the faces dear to me, but it was some time before I could make them out in the little crowd of haggard ragged ladies who had been obliged to crowd together in a mere cellar, so as to avoid the shot poured into the enclosure night and day.
But there was no time for sorrow or joy. I had hardly embraced those dear to me when there was a cry raised that the enemy were coming on again, and as I was literally obliged to drag myself away from my sister, she, in her faintness from want of food, staggered, and would have fallen, had not an officer suddenly caught her in his arms.
“Thank you, Brace,” I said, as he helped her to the door of the house from whence she had come. “My sister must have suffered horribly.”
“Your sister, Gil!” he said; “that lady? Ah!”
He twisted himself violently round as he uttered a sharp cry, and it was my turn to catch him in my arms as he was falling.
“Not hit?” cried a familiar voice, and Danby hurried up as two of our men helped me to bear our leader to the door through which my sister had just passed; and there, sheltered from the bullets which had now begun to fly fast from a tall building a short distance away, the doctor made a rapid examination.
“Well?” I said excitedly, “is he wounded?”
“Badly,” whispered the doctor, “through the lungs, I’m afraid.”
I could stay to hear no more, as I had to hurry off to the guns, for threatening shouts told me that the enemy were coming on again, and were heralding their approach by a terrific fire prior to the next assault.
Fortunately there was ample shelter for the horses among the buildings, which had been fortified and enclosed by a strong earthwork and barricade under my father’s orders; and here, with the women and children for the most part in the partially underground cellarage of the Residency, the gallant little garrison had still held out after Brooke’s departure, in spite of their thirst, and the constant harassing attacks kept up by the enemy. They had again and again felt that all was over, but still kept up the struggle till a sudden commotion in the city, and the sight of fresh troops pouring in, seemed completely to crush out their last hopes. For they had clung to the belief that Mr Brooke would succeed in making their position known, and bring reinforcements, but these had come to the other side. There had seemed to be nothing left but to fight to the last, and, when the enemy mastered the barricades, to retreat to the building beside that where the women and children were, and apply a match to the magazine—finding death, but avenging it upon their cowardly foes, who must have perished by hundreds in the explosion, so large was the store of powder in the place.