Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/575

Rh was, quite well, when they came to tell me; and oh!" she continued, struggling with her tears, "to think that if he had been spared for a few moments longer the danger would have been over! But it is very hard on you men, when you are doing your duty so bravely, to be worried by the selfish complaints of us useless women. But you will go and try and find him early in the morning, won't you?"

"She selfish!" thought Yorke, as he strode away; "then what must I be? To think that I should be watching her face to see how much of her regard for me is real, while she, poor thing, is breaking her heart for her dead husband lying unburied somewhere in the kennel — yet even in her grief she has time to think of others."

But although Yorke with several of the others renewed the search at daybreak, Falkland's body could not be found. Kirke excused himself from going, having pressing business to look after, but he described the place where the search should be made so clearly that it could not be mistaken. Falkland had fallen in leading an advance on horseback down one of the streets of the city; the party following him had then been repulsed and given way, and the point had not been carried till Kirke advancing down another line took it in rear. Many dead still cumbered the roadway, stripped, and some of them foully mutilated; and Yorke did not dare to tell Olivia when he returned, after the sun was high, from his fruitless errand, that although he believed he had not found the body of her husband, it might possibly have been among those he saw without his being able to recognize it. It added to the grief felt by the members of the garrison at the loss in the moment of victory of the gallant leader who had been the soul of the defence, that they could not give him decent burial with their own hands; but Yorke was not sorry that Olivia should be spared the shock of receiving back, as the body of her husband, one of the mangled corpses amid which his search had been made.

During Yorke's absence in the morning, the bodies of the brigadier and young Raugh were buried in a shady spot in the corner of the garden, and a little grave beside it contained the two children, who made their exit from the world almost at the moment when their little brother came into it. Another funeral took place at the same time. It has been mentioned that just as the relieving force was issuing from the city, some of the garrison had sallied out, and, lining the park-wall, had taken some parting shots at the flying enemy. The latter were for the most part too panic-stricken to reply; but here and there a sepoy, as he stole away, turned round to fire at random, and one of these stray shots had taken effect. When the party, after the first excitement of Kirke's arrival, had time to look about them, it was seen that the jemadar, who had made one of the sally, was lying under the wall with a bullet through his heart — the last man to fall, killed a few minutes after the death of the master he had served so faithfully. As many of the garrison as could be spared followed the body to the Mohammedan burial-ground; for Ameer Khan's gallantry and faithfulness had won universal respect, and the Europeans had come to regard him as a comrade and friend.

"That makes fifteen casualties altogether," said Egan, as the party were returning home; "eleven killed and dead, and four wounded, besides non-combatants. It would not have taken very much longer to use up the whole of us, especially as the rate was increasing."

"The loss was not so great after all," observed Yorke; "there are still some thirty-seven of us untouched. Many a single company at Inkerman must have had as many or more knocked over in a few minutes."

"Yes," said Braddon, who was walking beside the other two; "but it is just the difference between losing your leg at one slice, and having it chopped away bit by bit. Which is likely to try your spirits most? No, depend on it, the relief did not come very much too soon."

And now the survivors set about making their various preparations, some for departure to a place of greater security, others for reorganizing British authority on the spot; while a still more fortunate few, among whom Yorke was included, were invited by Kirke to accompany him in his progress onwards. During that day Kirke would halt, for he had made a long forced march the day before, and with his men had been eighteen hours in the saddle; but on the next he must push forward, his orders being urgent to hasten to the seat of war, where cavalry were much needed. The ladies and sick were to proceed to the hills under escort of a detachment of his troopers. The rebels were known to have moved in the opposite direction; and once over the river, the country for the remainder of the way was in comparative order. The nawab, now reinstated in authority, lent his camel-carriage to convey some of the party, and