The Bebeeghur has disappeared. The site where it once stood is now a beautiful garden. In the centre of the garden, circled with a fringe of ever-sighing cypresses, is a low mound, with fence of open stonework. The circular space within is sunken, and upon the centre of the sunken floor rises the figure—not too artistic, unhappily—of an angel in marble, with clasped hands and outspread wings. On the pedestal runs the inscription: “Sacred to the perpetual memory of the great company of Christian people, chiefly women and children, who, near this spot, were cruelly massacred by the followers of the rebel Nana Doondoo Punth, of Bithoor, and cast, the dying and the dead, into the well below, on the 15th day of July 1857.”
CHAPTER VI
LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England flew.—Tennyson.
On the night of May 30, 1857, the steps of the Residency at Lucknow witnessed a strange sight. On the uppermost steps stood a group of British officers in uniform. Sir Henry Lawrence was there, with his staff; Banks, the chief commissioner; Colonel Inglis, of the 32nd. The glare of a flaming house a hundred and fifty yards distant threw on the group a light as intense almost as noonday. Forty paces in front of the group stood a long line of Sepoys loading in swift silence. The light of the flames played redly on their dark faces, on their muskets brought quickly into position for capping. For weeks the great city had been trembling on the verge of revolt, and an officer of his staff had brought Lawrence news that gun-fire that night, nine o’clock, was to be the signal for the outbreak.
SIR HENRY LAWRENCE
Reproduced by permission of Sir Henry Waldemar Lawrence, from a drawing in his possession
Lawrence had taken all human precautions, and was familiar with such warnings as that now brought to him, and he sat down with his staff to dinner with iron composure. At nine o’clock there rolled through the sultry darkness the sound of a gun, and silence fell for a moment on the dinner party. Nothing followed the roar of the gun. Lawrence leaned forward with a smile on his face, and said to the officer who brought the news, “Your friends are not punctual.”
At that moment there rose in sharp succession on the still night air the crack of a dozen muskets. Then came the sound of running feet, the confused shouts of a crowd. The Mutiny had come!