Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/191

Rh railway engineers, traders, and clerks were another hundred, and there were some forty Christians besides, including the drummers. They had six guns of different calibres. Had the 450 men above enumerated been alone, they could have fought their way to Allahábád. But they had with them 330 women and children, many of them reared tenderly, and some unable to travel. Their lot, indeed, in the terrible contest was the hardest of all.

The defences which, since the 14th of May, Wheeler had been able to throw up were far from formidable. The earthworks were little more than four feet high, and were not bullet proof at the crest. The apertures for the artillery exposed alike the guns and the gunners, whilst in the unfinished barracks on the left front an enterprising enemy could easily find cover for attack. The scantiness of the earthworks was mainly due to the iron-like hardness of the ground, baked by a sun which had shone uninterruptedly for seven months, and unmoistened during that period by a drop of rain. Within the intrenchment supplies calculated to last four weeks had been stored. But these, like everything else behind the feeble earthworks, were subject to destruction from the various causes incidental to war.

From the very first the sufferings of the garrison were intense. The heat was great, the space was scanty, the fire of the guns of the rebels was incessant, the absolutely necessary exposure of the officers and men to that fire was deadly. From the first day the casualties were considerable. Then rose the question how to dispose of the dead. There was a well, outside the intrenchment, not far from the unfinished barracks. This was appointed to be the cemetery. The bodies of those killed during the day were placed at once