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Rh nothing for it but flight to some less threatened spot. So men, women, and children sallied forth: alike those who had remained and those but just arrived from the main-guard. Their sufferings were terrible. They had to undergo physical tortures, and the still less endurable tortures of the mind. Tearing from their persons everything in the shape of glitter or ornament, crouching in by-ways, wading rivers, carrying the children as best they could, hiding in hollows, enduring the maltreatment of villagers, and the abuse of stray parties of wanderers, hungry, thirsty, weary, at times hunted, they at length reached shelter. Some found their way to Mírath, some to Karnál, others to Ambálah. A few perished on the way; some giving up the struggle from fatigue, others succumbing to disease. The behaviour of the women of the party was such as to make the men proud of their companions. When Captain Wood sank exhausted, unable to proceed, it was his wife, and his wife's friend, Mrs Peile, who supported him to the haven of safety. Nor was this a solitary instance. When it was found, on arriving at the night's bivouac, that one or more were missing, the less fatigued of the party went back to search for and bring them in. Generally the search was fruitless, for the scum of the population, which would have shrunk from attacking a party, had no mercy for a solitary invalid. It is due, however, to the natives to add that they were not all imbued with the hatred which animated a section of them. There were instances of assistance given by some of them, men of high and low caste alike to the suffering and the wounded. There are those alive now who owed their safety to the compassion felt for them in their terrible straits by the kind-hearted Hind, and the loyal Muhammadan.

Meanwhile, in and immediately around the Imperial