About an hour elapsed before the attack was resumed. During this interval the beleaguered party broke through the plaster and took up their position in the outer room. Thus far they had made good their defence, but a still greater danger awaited them. As they were congratulating themselves on their success they heard a dull, heavy, rumbling noise. Home started up and shouted, “Now, men, or never! Let us rush out and die in the open air, and not be killed like rats in a hole. They are bringing a gun on us!” The men were preparing to act on this advice, when they observed that it was not a gun but a screen, moved on wheels, which the rebels pushed up against the door. A minié rifle fired at the distance of a few yards made no impression on it. On observing this our men retreated into the room they had formerly occupied, while the enemy mounted on the roof, broke through the plaster, and threw lighted straw down upon them. The house took fire; their position was no longer tenable, and death seemed to stare them in the face.
What were they to do? One thing was evident—they could no longer remain in the house; the smoke and heat had become intolerable. Raising the three most helpless and wounded in their arms, they rushed through the back door into the open square. At the distance of about ten yards they observed a shed on the north side of the square and made for it. During the passage the three wounded men were hit, and subsequently died of their wounds, while those who carried them escaped unhurt. Among the wounded was Lieutenant Swanson, of the 78th, whose name has been already mentioned. They found the floor of the shed covered with dead and dying Sepoys. This movement took the enemy by surprise; they had expected them to issue forth by the door, and not by the way they came; and though the little party was exposed to the fire of at least six hundred men, none but the wounded were hit. On rallying their forces they found that they had six men capable of bearing arms, and four wounded able to do duty as sentries. It was now three o’clock in the afternoon, and, though their position seemed desperate, no one dreamed of surrendering; they knew that they could expect no mercy from their ruthless assailants, and determined to hold out to the last. Their position must be known to the general; Havelock was not a man to abandon them in the hour of danger. Could it be that his gallant little army had been destroyed by the rebels, and that they were the last survivors? If so, their only resource was to hold out to the last and to sell their lives as dearly as possible.
Such were the thoughts that presented themselves to the minds of these heroic men. No time was to be lost; the enemy was already upon them. The shed, which was loopholed in every direction, afforded little shelter; it had been used the day before by the mutineers for the purpose of firing on our army. Two shots were suddenly fired on the little party through a broken passage in one end of the shed; a sentry was placed there to guard it against the enemy. Such was their cowardly terror, that the presence of one man was sufficient to ward them off. They now came creeping stealthily up to the walls, discharged their pieces through the loopholes, and then made off. To guard against this annoyance a sentry was placed at every loophole; the wounded men cheerfully did their duty the same as the others. So long as they had remained in the house at the archway, they had been able to protect the doolies from the attacks of the enemy, but now that they had changed their position they could no longer afford them any assistance. On observing this, the Sepoys came rushing through the gate, and began to massacre the wounded men; some were burnt alive in the doolies; others were cut to pieces by their savage assailants. Their countrymen were saved the horror of witnessing this spectacle, as the enemy, while engaged in this massacre, kept on the other side of the doolies, so as to escape observation; but their blood was chilled and their own sufferings intensified by the piercing shrieks of the tortured men, who were now beyond the reach of all human aid.
At this moment a singular incident occurred. While the Sepoys were passing from doolie to doolie engaged in their ruthless work, they came to one which contained Lieutenant Knight, a wounded officer of the 90th Regiment. A Sowar drew aside the curtain and made a thrust at him with his sword. With that sudden energy which is often imparted to the helpless in the hour of danger, Knight sprang through the opening in the other side of the doolie, and ran off in the direction of the rear-guard, pursued by the enemy, who had witnessed his escape. He was already wounded in the leg, but, notwithstanding this drawback, he succeeded in distancing all his pursuers. More than fifty shots were fired at him, two of which struck him in the legs, making three wounds in all; he had strength, however, to continue his flight till he reached the rear-guard, where he found himself in safety.
On finding that the loopholes in the walls of the shed were guarded, the Sepoys mounted the roof, made holes through it, and began to fire on the party below. Though the muzzles of their pieces were only about four feet from our men, none of the latter were seriously wounded; in truth, the miraculous escapes that occurred on this occasion are so numerous and surprising as to be almost incredible, if they were not well authenticated. As the shed was no longer tenable, they bored through the wall into the courtyard, so as to escape for a moment from the heavy fire from the roof. Their position was desperate; the most sanguine had almost ceased to hope; the strongest were prostrated by hunger, heat, anxiety, and fatigue; the wounded, parched with thirst and terror-struck by the shrieks of the tortured, longed to escape from such misery, and prayed for death at the hands of their countrymen. We have heard men who shared in the horrors of this fearful scene declare that, if they had not been restrained by Christian principle, they would have laid violent hands on themselves, or courted death from the bullets of the enemy.
Such feelings may have sprung up in their minds as they listened to the shrieks of the tortured, and thought of their own fate if they fell into the hands of the enemy; but the love of life is strong, and they continued to defend themselves. Was there no other place of shelter than the shed they occupied? On looking out from the courtyard they observed the rear of a large building at the distance of thirty yards. Dr. Home and one of his party stole cautiously out to reconnoitre; night was setting in, and the darkness was favourable to their undertaking. They reached the building without attracting the notice of the Sepoys, and discovered that it was a large mosque, with an arched opening about eight feet from the ground. By mounting on the shoulders of his companion, Dr. Home was enabled to enter the building through this opening, and found himself in a spacious courtyard looking into a garden. No pious Mussulman was performing his devotions there; the place seemed to have been designed by Providence for their preservation; and Dr. Home, after advancing a short distance into the mosque, returned to the opening in the wall, and beckoned to the others to join him. They hesitated to do so, and during this delay Dr. Home and his companion were discovered by the enemy, who opened fire on them from the roof of the shed, and drove them back to their former position. Their enterprise was not altogether fruitless; inside the mosque they had found a chatty of excellent water belonging to the Sepoys—a prize at that moment far more precious in their eyes than all the gold of Ophir or the diamonds of Golconda. They had been biting cartridges all day; their lips were dry and cracked with thirst; but they thought of the wounded, whose sufferings were still more intense, and carried with them the chatty of water for their relief. All partook of the reviving draught, which, to borrow their own expressive language, “made them twice the men they were before.” It is a common belief among physiologists that water only increases the sufferings of those who have long been unable to satisfy their thirst; but it was not so in this instance. It made them twice the men they were before, and thus enabled them to continue their resistance.
Sentries were told off for the night, and every man who could stand had to take his share of duty. Every loophole had its guardian; owing to the length of the shed none were left unemployed. The darkness which had now set in was favourable to our men; it prevented the enemy on the roof from watching their movements or observing the position they occupied, and enabled them to fire through the roof with the additional advantage of knowing from the sound of their feet where the Sepoys stood. On discovering this, the latter quitted the roof, and for a time all was still; it seemed as if they had given up the attack as hopeless. When the firing ceased, a reaction set in after the fierce excitement of the day; the stoutest hearts were almost appalled by a sense of their desperate condition. They had long since ceased to hope for deliverance; they clung to life with that instinctive feeling which leads the shipwrecked mariner to cling to a plank, though he knows that escape is all but impossible. If the shed was forced, their only thought was to rush forth and sell their lives as dearly as possible. As they listened to the shrieks of the tortured, they swore in their hearts that, come what might, they would never fall into the hands of the enemy. Death had lost all its bitterness; the grim king was stripped of all his dark imagery of terror. If he had come of his own accord, they would have welcomed him as a friend, but as Christian soldiers, whose lives were not their own, they were bound to wait for his coming. And all through the long, dreary hours of that night of horror they did wait for him, but he came not; those who retained their consciousness almost envied the wounded who had become delirious. Their ammunition was almost exhausted; there only remained about seven rounds for six men; if the enemy renewed the attack, all would soon be over. But the enemy did not renew the attack; they found it easier and safer to torture the wounded in the doolies than to dislodge or destroy a few resolute men driven to bay.
Sleep would at times overpower them; they sank down on the floor, but the mental tension was too great to permit them long to rest. Their fearful position was still present to their minds, and after a few minutes of troubled sleep, they would start to their feet with the impression that the enemy were upon them. No enemy appeared; on finding that it was a false alarm, they would keep watch for a time, till, overpowered by sleep and exhaustion, they again sank upon the floor. One desperate man proposed to his comrades to rush forth and fight their way back to the rear-guard; two offered to join him in the attempt; the others refused to leave the wounded in the hands of the enemy.
About two o’clock in the morning they were roused to a fresh life by the sound of heavy firing close at hand. Their hearts leaped to their mouths as they heard the sharp crack of the Enfield rifles and the rush of the enemy over their heads. Hurrah! Havelock had not forgotten them; it was their own countrymen advancing to the rescue. The revulsion of feeling made them wild with joy; they shouted with all their might, “Europeans! Europeans!” they cheered them on to the attack—“Charge them! charge them! Keep to your right!” The firing died away in the distance; in a few minutes all was silent. They listened for the advancing tramp of armed men, but no such sound was heard; again they gave themselves up to despair. Any fate was preferable to further suspense; they agreed to fight their way to the Residency or perish in the attempt; but on creeping forward under the shadow of the building, they observed a large body of men clustered round a fire in the archway. Escape in that way was evidently impossible; it would have been madness for a few starving men to attack a body of the enemy who had just repulsed our own troops; so they crept back to their former place of shelter. The bitterness of death was already past; they could meet their fate with indifference. The dreary hours passed silently on till a little after daybreak, when they heard the sound of distant firing; it failed to rouse them from their apathy; the hope of deliverance had died out within them. The sound came nearer and nearer, till at length they could distinguish the sharp crack of the Enfields, and the regular rattling volleys which told them that their countrymen were at hand. Ryan, the sentry, with the usual vivacity of his country, was the first to express the feelings of his comrades; jumping up with sudden energy, he shouted, “Oh, boys! them’s our own chaps!” Ryan’s language was far from being elegant or correct; but their position was too critical for weighing the niceties of speech, and we question whether Demosthenes himself could have spoken more to the point. Its effect was immediate and striking; those who were prostrated by despair sprang to their feet with renewed energy, and shouted to their deliverers to keep to the right. “Cheer together, men,” cried Home. They cheered, and waited anxiously for the result. They had not long to wait; a ringing cheer came back from their countrymen, which told them that deliverance was at hand. They had still a few charges remaining; these were expended on the Sepoys, who were firing from the loopholes on our men. The enemy were soon dislodged; the party of rescue forced their way into the shed; Dr. Home received the congratulations of his countrymen on his successful resistance, and the wounded, whom he had defended to the last, were conducted in safety to the Residency.
When the report of their gallant conduct reached England, Home and Bradshaw were rewarded with the Victoria Cross. Mr. Desanges has assigned them a place in his Gallery. All who have read this simple narrative of their heroic defence of the wounded intrusted to their care, will admit that they were entitled to this honourable distinction.