If a start was to be made before the advancing day had dispelled the freshness of dawn, there was no time to be lost. A crowd of carriages and beasts of burden had gradually assembled outside the north-western corner of the intrenchment. Some of the women and children disposed themselves in the bullock-carts, while others climbed up to an insecure seat on the padded back of an elephant. A fine animal, equipped with a state howdah, and steered by the Peishwa's own driver, had been sent for the accommodation of Sir Hugh Wheeler. The General was touched by the attention; but (unwilling, it may be, to form a conspicuous object in a cortège so far from triumphal) after seeing his wife and daughters safely mounted in the place of honour, he ensconced himself in a palanquin, which he never left alive. Our soldiers bestowed their disabled comrades in the litters, without receiving the slightest assistance from the native bystanders. It was cruel work, the loading of this mournful train. The inexperienced good-will of that amateur ambulance corps occasioned grievous agony to some who ought not to have left their beds for months, and to some who should never have been moved again.
A number of sepoys mingled with the throng of English people, and entered into conversation with the gentlemen under whom they had formerly served. One and all, they expressed lively admiration for the unaccountable obstinacy of our defence. Many spoke with commiseration of the distressing condition to which those had been reduced for whom they entertained so deep a respect; inquired eagerly after their missing officers; and learned their fate with tears: conduct which none who have studied the Hindoo character can attribute to sheer dissimulation. Less equivocal were the demonstrations displayed towards their employers by certain among the better class of domestics. The head bearer of Colonel Williams, who commanded the Fifty-sixth before the mutiny, deserves to tell his own simple story. He says, "Even after the cessation of hostilities, we were not allowed to go and see our masters. On the morning of the twenty-sixth of June, three officers of the Fifty-sixth, Goad, Fagan, and Warde, mounted on elephants, and two Europeans, whose names and regiments I don't know, mounted on another elephant, came out of the intrenchments and went to the river, to inspect the boats. The gardener and I, taking some grapes, went up to the officers, and told them that we were in a starving condition, and wanted to come to our masters in the intrenchment. They said, 'No, you can't come with us, but we shall come out to-morrow, and you shall accompany us to Allahabad in boats.' Goad Sahib and Warde Sahib gave me each two rupees. They told me that my master had died a natural death; that my mistress was well, but slightly wounded; and that Miss Mary was dead. Her death was caused by fright at the cannonade, and that she was not wounded. On the twenty-seventh of June, a little before six A.M. as many as could walk came out; some of the wounded in doolies, others of whom were left behind. The party from the intrenchment was surrounded by sepoys. I had great difficulty in reaching my mistress. I applied to Annundeedeen, the Havildar-Major of the Fifty-sixth, who said the thing was impossible. I appealed to him, and begged him to remember the kindness he had received from the Colonel. After persuasion, he said that he could not show his face before the Colonel's lady, but directed four sepoys to take me to my mistress, and prevent my being disturbed. I was then taken to my mistress, with whom were her two daughters, Miss Georgiana, and Miss Fanny. They were in wretched plight; scorched and blistered by the sun. My mistress had a slight bullet-wound on the upper lip. She said that my master had died on the eighth of June. My mistress then asked about the property left in the house, and inquired about all the servants, and especially after the cook. She then told me to go and fetch him, as she wanted him to go down to Allahabad with her; and told me to go to her son in the Hills, and inform him of all that had occurred. She told me to make every endeavour to join her son as soon as the roads should be open, and to show him the spot where the Colonel was buried. I told her I did not know the spot. She said the groom who had remained with them in the intrenchment would show it to me." To judge from the attachment of her servants, Mrs. Williams must have ruled her household like a true lady of the kindly old Anglo-Indian school.
No prayer was said, no blessing invoked, no passover eaten before that inauspicious exodus. Moore went about from group to group, and impressed upon his colleagues that it would be idle to attempt to preserve order in the embarkation. His instructions were to push off as soon as all had been got on board, and make for the opposite shore, where further arrangements might be completed at leisure and in comparative safety. And then a drink of water was handed in at the door of each palanquin, and the expedition set forth. A mob of peasants at once rushed upon the deserted premises, and spread themselves about in quest of plunder. They might have spared their pains. A camel-rider, who entered among the first, saw nothing except "three useless brass guns that had been split, two leathern bottles of liquid butter, a sack of fine flour, and the bodies of eleven Europeans. They were on quilts on the floor, some of them still breathing, though dying from severe gunshot wounds."
The show was not such as would dazzle a vulgar eye: but in the soul of those with whom glory is not skin-deep, the retinue of an imperial coronation would fail to inspire the reverence excited by that ragged and spiritless cavalcade. First came the men of the Thirty-second regiment, their dauntless captain at the head;—thinking little, as ever, of the past, but much of the future;—and so marching unconscious towards the death which he had often courted. Then moved on the throng of naked bearers, groaning in monotonous cadence beneath the weight of palanquins, through whose sliding panels might be discerned the pallid forms of the wounded;—their limbs rudely bandaged with shirtsleeves, and old stockings, and strips of gown and petticoat. Mayhap, as they jolted along, they fed their sickly fancies with a listless anticipation that the hour was not remote when they might forget the miserable present amidst the joys of ice, and lemonade, and clean sheets, and nourishment more appetising than parched grain and bad pease-porridge. Behind these creaked a caravan of carts, dragged by bullocks, on which were huddled ladies used to a very different equipage; while here and there paced a stately elephant, his tusks adorned with rings of brass, and his forehead painted in grotesque patterns, who, perchance, a century back, was tugging a gun across the field of Plassey, and who now bore a cluster of English women and children clinging nervously to the ropes which encircled his huge girth. And next, musket on shoulder and revolver in belt, followed they who could still walk and fight. Step was not kept in those ranks. Little was there of martial array, or soldier-like gait and attitude. Lace might not be seen, nor embroidery, nor facings, nor uniforms which could be recognised at the Horseguards or smiled on in county ballrooms. In discoloured flannel and tattered nankeen, mute and in pensive mood, tramped by the remnant of the immortal garrison. These men had finished their toil and had fought their battle: and now, if hope was all but dead within them, there survived, at least, no residue of fear.
The last to quit the intrenchment was Major Vibart, of the Second Cavalry. He brought up the rear of our column alone, amidst a numerous escort of mutineers belonging to his late regiment, who insisted on conveying his luggage down to the landing place;—a marked instance of complaisance on the part of these gentlemen troopers. There were many, however, among the rebels, who no longer thought it worth while to dissemble. Lady Wheeler's ayah, a few minutes before, had been presented by her mistress with a bag of rupees as an acknowledgment of her fidelity. She now was forced to exchange her treasure for a slash with a sabre. Some sepoys, who had stood by us to the last, were seized and carried off in spite of the urgent expostulations of their adjutant: and the hour approached when a brave woman was to meet that face to face, the bitterness of which, to repeat her own language, had already been tasted many, many times. Colonel and Mrs. Ewart had started late; she on foot; he on a bed, carried by four native porters. From one cause and another they made slow progress. The bearers were lazy; and paid no attention to a Mem Sahib, whose husband, prostrate with wounds, was unable to enforce her orders with his cane. Gradually the main body drew farther and farther ahead of the helpless pair; who, at length, like a sick child dreaming that he is kidnapped by gipsies, saw the backs of the English rear-guard disappear round a distant corner. As the litter came abreast of St. John's Church, seven or eight rascals belonging to the Colonel's own battalion stepped up; bade the porters set down their load and stand back; and began to mock their victim, saying: "Is not this a fine parade, and is it not well dressed up?" They then hewed him in pieces with their swords, and afterwards turned to Mrs. Ewart, and desired her to throw down whatever she had about her, and go her ways, for that she was a woman, and they would not kill her. She took out of her dress a piece of stuff, with something tied up in it, and delivered it to one of the gang, who thereupon cut her down dead. Those who loved her, and they were many, could not have wished it otherwise.
Presently the van reached the white rails of the wooden bridge, and, leaving them on the left hand, turned aside into the fatal ravine. A vast multitude, speechless and motionless as spectres, watched their descent into that valley of the shadow of death. Only some sepoys, gazing on the trappings of the elephants, said one to another: "They are taken out of their fortress grandly. They go gladly. They know not what is before them. Now let them repent of their misdeeds, and ask pardon of God." Soon Tantia Topee, who for some while past had been anxiously glancing towards the west, saw the white faces and gleaming bayonets; saw the dark tops of the palanquins dancing up and down; saw the howdahs swaying from right to left above the sea of heads. Then he called to a bandsman who was in attendance, and directed him to proceed up the lane, and sound his bugle when once the Europeans were well within the trap. Slowly, very slowly, with many a halt and many an entanglement, the unwieldy mass of men and brutes wound along the bed of the torrent.
And now the last Englishman walked down into the lane; and immediately the troops who had been appointed to that duty formed a double line across the mouth of the gorge, and told all who were not concerned to retire and keep aloof, for that within that passage there was no admittance save on one baleful business. Meantime the embarkation was progressing under serious difficulties. No temporary pier had been provided, nor even a plank to serve as gangway. None of the Hindoo boatmen or bearers spoke a word or lent a hand, while, standing knee-deep in the stream, our officers hoisted in the wounded and the women. Already they were themselves preparing to scramble on board;—already the children were rejoicing over the sight of some boiled rice which they had discovered in the corner of a barge;—when, amidst the sinister silence which prevailed, the blast of a bugle came pealing down the defile. Thereupon the native rowers leaped into the water, and splashed towards dry ground; while those very troopers who had conducted Major Vibart from the barrack with such professions of esteem discharged their carbines at the nearest vessel. The Englishmen, whose rifles were handy, at once opened fire, some on the traitorous crews, others on the hypocritical scoundrels who had commenced the attack. But of a sudden several of the straw roofs burst into a flame, and almost the entire fleet was blazing in the twinkling of an eye. The red-hot charcoal had done its work. At the same moment from either shore broke forth a storm of grape and musketry. To the imagination of our countrymen, oppressed and bewildered by the infernal tumult, it seemed that the land was alive with a hundred cannon and a myriad of sharpshooters. The wounded perished under the burning thatch, while all who could shift for themselves dropped into the river. Of the ladies, some crouching beneath the overhanging prows, some wading up to their chins along the shelving bottom, sought shelter from the bullets, which sprinkled the surface like falling rain. The men set their shoulders against the planking, and tried to launch off into the mid-current. But he who had chosen those moorings never intended that the keels should leave the sandbank on which they lay. All the boats stuck fast, save a poor three, of which two drifted across to the Oude bank into the jaws of the perdition which in that quarter also awaited their inmates. The third got clear away from the shallows, and floated steadily down the main channel. Whether fortuitously, or by the attraction of like to like, it so befell that the flower of the defence was congregated between those bulwarks. There were Vibart; and Whiting, good at need; and Ashe, bereaved of his beloved nine-pounder; and Delafosse of the burning gun; and Bolton, snatched once more from present destruction. There was Moore, with his arm slung in a handkerchief; and Blenman, the bold spy; and Glanville of Barrack Number Two; and Burney of the south-east battery. Fate seemed willing to defer the hour which should extinguish those noble lives.
When, after the lapse of some twenty minutes, the dead began to outnumber the living;—when the fire slackened, as the marks grew few and far between:—then the troopers who had been drawn up to the right of the temple plunged into the river, sabre between teeth, and pistol in hand. Thereupon two half-caste Christian women, the wives of musicians in the band of the Fifty-sixth, witnessed a scene which should not be related at second-hand. "In the boat where I was to have gone," says Mrs. Bradshaw, confirmed throughout by Mrs. Setts, "was the schoolmistress and twenty-two missies. General Wheeler came last, in a palkee. They carried him into the water near the boat. I stood close by. He said 'Carry me a little further towards the boat.' But a trooper said: 'No; get out here.' As the general got out of the palkee, head foremost, the trooper gave him a cut with his sword into the neck, and he fell into the water. My son was killed near him. I saw it: alas! alas! Some were stabbed with bayonets; others cut down. Little infants were torn in pieces. We saw it; we did; and tell you only what we saw. Other children were stabbed and thrown into the river. The school girls were burnt to death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the water, a few paces off, by the next boat, we saw the youngest daughter of Colonel Williams. A sepoy was going to kill her with his bayonet. She said, 'My father was always kind to sepoys.' He turned away, and just then a villager struck her on the head with his club, and she fell into the water." These people likewise saw good Mr. Moncrieff, the clergyman, take a book from his pocket that he never had leisure to open, and heard him commence a prayer for mercy which he was not permitted to conclude. Another deponent observed a European making for a drain like a scared water-rat, when some boatmen, armed with cudgels, cut off his retreat, and beat him down dead into the mud.
At this point those Englishmen who had learned to use their limbs in the water, perceiving that all was lost, with a hurried last look and a parting shudder, stripped, and made for Vibart's boat, which just then was aground not far from the opposite shore. Thomson swam, and Private Murphy, neither for the last time. Three cavalry soldiers chased Lieutenant Harrison on to a small island two hundred yards from the land. One only waded back again, quicker than he came; while Harrison made the best of his way to the stranded vessel, and clambered over the side, satisfied at having taught his pursuers that it was never safe to trifle with a Sahib, as long as he had breath in his body and a charge in a single chamber. Few were vigorous or fortunate as he. Their strength failed some; while more than one stout swimmer, shot dead in the middle of his stroke, rolled over and sank amidst the reddening tide. Of the two Hendersons, the younger went down in his brother's sight, while the elder hardly struggled in with a shattered hand through the pattering mitraillade. At length all were on board who had not disappeared below the waves; and, by dint of hard shoving, the boat scraped herself off the shoal, and continued her sluggish and devious course:—that hapless Argo with her freight of heroes.
"At nine, or half-past nine in the morning," writes Nanukchund, who was in hiding at a neighbouring village, "I heard the report of cannon, and immediately despatched my servant for news, and to learn why guns were being fired. At about noon, more or less, he returned, and reported that the people who came to bathe in the Ganges informed him that the intrenchment had been taken by the rebels, and the corpses of Europeans were floating down the river. The villagers exclaim, in their village dialect, that the Ganges has turned crimson, and it is impossible to look upon it. The terror and alarm that now seizes me baffles description. It seems sacrilege to take any sort of food or drink. I can think of nothing but moving about from side to side with terror." Besides Nanukchund, there was another, whose agitation, arising from very different passions, displayed itself by the same noticeable symptom. A rich Hindoo, even though he be not of such gross habit as was the Nana, never walks a step unless under dire compulsion: and yet, during the early forenoon, Dhoondoo Punth seldom rested quiet in his chair, but paced to and fro in front of his tent, straining his ears to catch the noise of horse-hoofs. At last a trooper galloped down with the tidings that all was going well, and that the Peishwa would soon obtain ample compensation for his ancient wrong. The Maharaja bade the courier return to the field of action, bearing a verbal order to keep the women alive, but kill all the males. By the time Tantia's aide-de-camp returned to his chief, the latter injunction appeared all but superfluous: though there was still something to be done. The sepoys posted on the Oude bank had excepted certain Englishmen from the slaughter of the two boatfuls which had fallen into their hands. These, to the sum of seventeen, they now sent over as their contribution. On reference being made to the Maharaja, he graciously acknowledged the present, and desired a firing-party to be told off; suggesting, however, that powder should not be wasted on the wounded. His directions were obeyed to the letter. A couple of files were likewise detached to see that the sufferers who still lingered in the intrenchment did not take too long to die.