This was on the 4th of July, and Sir Henry Lawrence had said he thought it would be possible to defend the Residency for a fortnight. But as time went on the English grew fewer and fewer; every day more soldiers were killed, and every day many died of their wounds, while those who were left alive had to fight day and night. The English ladies nursed the sick men, and cooked the food, which they used to bring out to those who were fighting; and they looked after the children, very many of whom died too. For it was the hottest time of the year in India—a time when English children are sent away to the hills to get fresh air—and, besides suffering from the heat, they missed all the comforts they were accustomed to; they had no milk and very little to eat, and they were terrified by the noise of the firing and all the confusion.

But still the fighting went on day after day, long after the fortnight was over, and day after day the enemy saw the English flag still flying on the roof of the Residency, and began to think they never would conquer this brave little band of Englishmen.

All this time, however, though they did not know it in the Residency, Sir James Outram[12] and Sir Henry Havelock, with more English soldiers, were fighting their way to Lucknow.[13]

They had both been for many years in India, and were two of the bravest and best men who could possibly have been sent to the relief of the little band who had been besieged for so many weeks. On the 23rd of September, nearly twelve weeks after the day Sir Henry Lawrence died, it was heard in Lucknow that Sir James Outram and Sir Henry Havelock were close by, and on the 25th the Highlanders were in the city and fighting their way through the narrow streets to the Residency. Then from every window and every balcony and every roof the rebels fired down on them. Many were killed and more were wounded. A story is told, by Mr. Archibald Forbes,[14] of two Irishmen who were in the Highland regiment. “They were great friends, named Glandell and M‘Donough, and in going through one of these narrow streets M‘Donough’s leg was broken by a bullet. He fell, but he was not left to die, for his friend who was by him took him on his back and trudged on with his heavy burden. Although he was carrying M‘Donough, Glandell determined to fight at the same time, so when there was a chance to fire a shot, he propped his wounded comrade up against a wall and took up his rifle instead; then he would pick up M‘Donough again and stagger cheerily on till a place of safety was reached.”

At last the gate of the Residency was in sight of the relieving force, and then the besieged people looking out saw through the smoke officers on horseback—Outram with a great cut across his face, and one arm in a sling, on a big white horse, and Havelock walking by his side (for his horse had been shot), and the Highlanders in their kilts and for the most part in their shirt-sleeves, with no coats on. “Then,” wrote some one who had been all these weeks in the Residency—“then all our doubts and fears were over, and from every pit, trench, and battery, from behind the sand-bags piled on shattered houses, from every post still held by a few gallant spirits, even from the hospital, rose cheer on cheer.” Sir James Outram’s horse shied at the gate, but with a shout the Highlanders hoisted him through; Sir Henry Havelock followed, “and then in rushed the eager soldiers, powder-grimed, dusty, and bloody, ... and all round them as they swarmed in crowded ... the fighting men of the garrison, and the civilians whom the siege had made into soldiers, and women weeping tears of joy, and the sick and the wounded who had crawled out of the hospital to welcome their deliverers. The ladies came down among the soldiers to shake their hands, and the children hugged them.” “We were all rushing about,” said a lady, “to give the poor fellows drinks of water, for they were perfectly exhausted; and tea was made, of which a large party of tired, thirsty officers partook without milk and sugar, and we had nothing to give them to eat. Every one’s tongue seemed going at once with so much to ask and to tell, and the faces of utter strangers beamed on each other like those of dearest friends and brothers.” So ended the siege of Lucknow. Sir Henry Havelock had not been wounded, but he had suffered much from hard work and from having so little to eat. “I find it not so easy to starve at sixty as at forty-seven,” he said one day. At last, in November, he became very ill, and when Sir James Outram went to see him in the common soldier’s tent which he had always used since he had been in Lucknow, he told him that he was going to die; “but I have for forty years so ruled my life that when death came I might face it without fear,” he added. He died on the 24th of November, 1857, and was buried just outside Lucknow, under a mango tree, and even now the letter H, which was carved in the bark—for no other monument could be put up to his memory in those days of war and disturbance—can just be seen, more than thirty years afterwards.

Sir James Outram was nursed in Dr. Fayrer’s house in Lucknow until he was well, and three years afterwards, in 1860, he left India and came back to England. Then he had many honours shown him; but, like Sir Henry Havelock, he felt the effects of all he had gone through in India, and gradually he became more ill, and was at last sent to the south of France, where he died on the 11th of March, 1863. His body was brought to England and buried in the Abbey under the grey stone which you will see in the nave, and on it were written these words—

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR JAMES OUTRAM,
BORN JAN. 29TH, 1805; DIED MAR. 11TH, 1863.
“THE BAYARD OF INDIA.”

I remember, in one of the sermons which he used to preach to children, Dean Stanley spoke of this grave of Sir James Outram, and said, “There was a famous French soldier of bygone days whose name you will see written in this Abbey on the gravestone of Sir James Outram, because in many ways he was like Bayard. Bayard was a small boy—only thirteen—when he went into his first service, and his mother told him to remember three things: first, to fear and love God; secondly, to have gentle and courteous manners to those above him; and thirdly, to be generous and charitable, without pride or haughtiness, to those beneath him; and these three things he never forgot, which helped to make him the soldier without fear and without reproach.” And it was in these three things that Sir James Outram was supposed to be so like the French soldier, Bayard.

One more thing I must tell you before we pass on to David Livingstone. On the morning of the day when Outram was to be buried, some Highland soldiers came to his house and asked to be allowed to carry the coffin on their shoulders down to the Abbey. They were some men from the 78th Regiment—the very same men who had fought under him at the relief of Lucknow, and who had been with him when Sir Henry Havelock was buried under the mango tree; and they came now hoping to carry the body of Sir James Outram to his burial. Unfortunately, they were too late, and were told, much to their disappointment, that this was impossible because other arrangements had been made.

We come now to David Livingstone,[15] the great traveller and missionary. He was born in Scotland in 1813. His father and mother were very poor, and when he was ten years old he was sent to work in a cotton factory. He grew up to be a very extraordinary man, as you will see, and he certainly was a very unusual boy. He saved up his wages, and the first thing he bought was a Latin grammar, from which he used to learn in the evenings after he left his work; and so interested was he that he often went on till twelve o’clock at night, when his mother took away the book and sent him to bed, for he had to be at the factory at six every morning. When he grew up he became a missionary, and went to Africa, where he made many discoveries, travelling into parts of the country where no one had ever been before, and teaching the natives, who were quite ignorant and wild, but who grew very fond of this “white man who treated black men as his brothers”—for so one native chief described him—and who cared for them, and doctored them when they were ill, and gave up all his life to them. He had all sorts of adventures. Once he lived for some time in a place which was full of lions, who used to come and kill the cattle even in the day time. The people made up their minds to try to kill one lion; for if one of a party of lions is killed, the rest generally go away. Livingstone went out with them, and they found the lions on a little hill covered with trees. Some of the men fired, but did not hit any of them. Presently Livingstone “saw one of the beasts sitting on a rock, behind a little bush”—these are his own words—“about thirty yards off. I took a good aim at his body through the bush, and fired at him. The men then called out, ‘He is shot—he is shot!’ others cried out, ‘He has been shot by another man, too; let us go to him.’ I did not see any one else shoot at him, but I saw the lion’s tail erected in anger behind the bush, and, turning to the people, said, ‘Stop a little till I fire again.’ When in the act of ramming down the bullets I heard a shout. Starting and looking half round, I saw the lion in the act of springing on me. I was upon a little height. He caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the ground together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat.” It was wonderful that Livingstone did not seem to feel any pain or fear; he said he seemed to be in a kind of dream, but knew quite well all that was happening. Of course, in another minute he would have been killed, had not some of the people fired again at the lion and this time killed it. But Livingstone never afterwards could use quite easily the arm which the lion had crushed. During his travels he discovered Lake Nyassa, which you can find marked now on every map of Africa. Before he went there all that part of the country used to be marked “unexplored.”