The taking of the Shah Nujeef alone was worthy of Homeric praise. It was a mosque that stood in a garden, bounded by a high and stout wall and protected by jungle and mud hovels. Its peculiar position, joined to the number of guns mounted on its walls and the thousands of sepoys who held it, made it impossible for a devoted artillery to create an effective breach. Yet, if the relieving force failed here, they failed altogether. So Sir Colin asked his men for a supreme effort. Riding forward himself, accompanied by his staff and Sir Adrian Hope, Colonel of the 93d, he cheered on his loved Highlanders. Cannot one hear the skirl of the pipes amid that din of cannon and musketry? Cannot one see the shot-torn colors fluttering in the breeze, the plaids of the gallant Highland gentlemen who led the 93d, vanishing in the smoke and dust? Middleton’s battery of the Royal Artillery came dashing up, “the drivers waving their whips, the gunners their caps,” unlimbered within forty yards of the wall, and opened fire with grape. Men and horses fell in scores, but somehow, anyhow, an entrance was gained and the Shah Nujeef was taken. Feeble must be the pulse that does not beat faster, dim the eye that does not kindle, as one hears how those Britons fought and died, but did not die in vain.
Next day Captain Garnet Wolseley led a storming party against the Motee Mahal, and the self-sacrificing heroism of the Shah Nujeef was displayed again here and with the same result.
And so the wild fight went on, till Outram and Havelock, Napier, Eyre, Havelock’s son and four other officers ran from the Residency through a tempest of lead showered on them from the Kaiser Bagh, and Hope Grant, dashing forward from the van of Colin Campbell’s force, shook hands with the hero of the First Relief.
Half an hour later Malcolm entered the Residency. At first sight it was an abode of sorrow. Death and ruin seemed to have combined there to wreak their spite on mankind and his belongings. Even the men and women whom he met were tear-laden, and it was not till he heard their happy voices that he knew they were weeping because of the overwhelming joy in their souls.
He hurried on, scanning each excited group for one face that he thought he would recognize were it fifty years instead of five months since their last meeting. He, of course, was even a finer-looking and better set-up soldier now than when he galloped along the flame-lit roads of Meerut on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday night in May, and it is not to be wondered at if he failed to allow for the effect on Winifred of the ordeal she had gone through.
Perhaps his keen eyes were covered with a mist, perhaps the growing fear in his heart forbade his tongue to ask a question, because he dreaded the answer. Perhaps sheer agitation may have rendered him incapable of distinguishing one among so many. Howsoever that may be, he knew nothing, saw no one, until a wan, slim-figured woman, a woman clothed in tattered rags, down whose pallid cheeks streamed the divine tears of happiness, touched his arm and sobbed:
“Are you looking for me—dear?”
The Mutiny was by no means ended with the fall of Delhi and the Second Relief of Lucknow. North and south and east and west the rebels were hunted with untiring zeal. Sometimes in scattered bands, less often in formidable armies, they were pursued, encountered and annihilated. Quickly degenerating into mere robber hordes, they became a pest to the unhappy villagers in the remoter parts of the different provinces, and it was long ere the last embers of the fire that had raged so fiercely were stamped out. Nana Sahib perished miserably under the claws of a tiger in the Nepaul jungle, the Moulvie of Fyzabad and the Ranei of Jhansi fell in action, while Tantia Topi was hanged. But the end came, and on November 1, 1858, amid salvoes of artillery and to the accompaniment of festivities innumerable, Queen Victoria proclaimed the abolition of the East India Company, and assumed the sovereignty of the country. Her Majesty took no territory, confirmed all treaties, promised religious toleration and civil equality to all her Indian subjects, and gave full and complete pardon to every rebel who was not a murderer.
The Queen’s gracious and peace-bringing words supplied a fitting close to India’s Red Year. Europeans and natives alike tried to forget both the crime and its punishment. And that was a good thing in itself.