Outram meanwhile was pushing cautiously on in the direction of Campbell’s attack, occupying building after building; and late in the afternoon Outram and Havelock and Campbell had clasped hands on the sloping ground in front of the Mess-house. A hole had to be broken through the western wall of the Pearl Palace enclosure to let the chiefs of the beleaguered garrison through, and a slab in the wall still marks the spot. Campbell, Havelock, and Outram met on the slope outside the Mess-house, and the meeting of three such soldiers under such conditions was a memorable event. No red-coated Boswell, unhappily, has told us how the veterans greeted each other. The Kaisarbagh, strongly held by the mutineers, overlooked the little patch of rough soil on which the three famous soldiers stood, and every gun that could be trained upon the group broke into fire. It was to an accompaniment of bellowing cannon, of bursting shells, and of whistling bullets that Campbell, Havelock, and Outram exchanged their first greeting.

Young Roberts, with Captain Norman, accompanied Outram and Havelock back to the Residency, and he has described how he passed from post to post, held with such long-enduring and stubborn courage by the relieved garrison. “When we came,” he says, “to the Bailey Guard, and looked at the battered walls and gateway, not an inch without a mark of a round shot or bullet, we marvelled that Aitken and Loughnan could have managed to defend it for nearly five months.” It was found difficult to get the relieved garrison to talk of their own experiences; they were too hungry for news from the outside world! Jones-Parry says, “The first man of the garrison I met was my old schoolfellow and chum, Meecham. He was an excellent specimen of the condition of the defenders, for he looked more like a greyhound than a man. He was thin as a lath, and his eyes looked sunken into his head.”

Lucknow was relieved; but to reach the Residency had cost Sir Colin Campbell a loss of 45 officers and 496 men. Campbell found his position difficult. He had broken through the besieging force; he had not ended the siege. To hold the Residency meant to be besieged himself. He decided to bring off the Residency garrison, with the women and children, abandoning the shot-wrecked walls and foul trenches to the enemy. To evacuate the Residency, carrying off in safety, through the lines of a hostile force five times as numerous as his own, 600 women and children, and more than 1000 sick or wounded men, was a great feat, but Sir Colin Campbell accomplished it, and did it so adroitly that not a casualty was incurred, and not a serviceable gun abandoned. So completely, in fact, did Sir Colin Campbell deceive the enemy that their guns were pouring their fire angrily on the Residency for at least four hours after the last British soldier had left it!

Havelock died just as he was being carried out of the slender and battered defences he had reached and held so gallantly. He died of an attack of dysentery, brought on, says Major Anson, “by running nearly three-quarters of a mile under fire from the Residency to meet the Commander-in-Chief and greet him as his deliverer.”

He lies buried in the Alumbagh, the place Havelock himself won by an assault so daring when advancing to relieve Lucknow. He was buried on the morning of November 25, and round his rude coffin, on which the battle-flag lay, stood his sorrowing comrades, a group of the most gallant soldiers that earthly battlefields have ever known—Campbell, and Outram, and Peel, and Adrian Hope, and Fraser Tytler, and the younger Havelock, with men of the Ross-shire Buffs and of the Madras Fusileers, whom Havelock had so often led to victory. On a tree that grew beside the grave the letter H was roughly carved, to mark where Havelock’s body lay. To-day the interior of the Alumbagh is a garden, and a shapely obelisk marks the spot where sleeps the dust of one of the bravest soldiers that ever fought for the honour and flag of England.

CHAPTER IX
THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN

The losses of the beleaguered English during the siege of the Residency were, of course, great. When the siege began the garrison consisted of 927 Europeans—not three out of four being soldiers—and 765 natives. Up to the date of the relief by Havelock—87 days—350 Europeans, more than one out of every three of the whole European force, were killed or died of disease!

It is curious to note how all the swiftly-changing events and passions of the Mutiny are reflected in such of the diaries and journals of the period as have been published; and frequently a view of the actors in the great drama and of their actions is obtained from this source, such as grave historians, much to the loss of their readers, never give us. One of the best diaries of the kind is that of Lady Canning, as published in “The Story of Two Noble Lives,” by Augustus J. C. Hare. This journal gives us dainty little vignettes of the principal figures in the Mutiny, with pictures of all the alternating moods of fear and hope, of triumph and despair, as, moment by moment, they were experienced by the little circle of Government House in Calcutta. Here, for example, is a quaint picture of Havelock, which Lady Canning draws when the news reached Calcutta of his death:—

Nov. 27.—We had a grievous piece of news from Alumbagh. Havelock died two days ago. He died of dysentery, worn out in mind and body.... It is curious now to remember how his appointment was abused here, when he was called “an old fossil dug up and only fit to be turned into pipe-clay.” I knew him better than almost any one, and used to try and keep him in good-humour when he seemed a little inclined to be affronted. He was very small, and upright, and stiff, very white and grey, and really like an iron ramrod. He always dined in his sword, and made his son do the same. He wore more medals than ever I saw on any one, and it was a joke that he looked as if he carried all his money round his neck. He certainly must have had eleven or twelve of those great round half-crown pieces.