Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/201

Rh ing on two boats, followed the fugitives. Their aim was but too deadly. Moore, Ashe, and Bolton were shot dead as they were propelling the boat with the only implement available, a long pole, for the oars had been taken away. During the first day and the first night the pursuit continued, varied occasionally by the launch of a blazing fire-boat of smaller tonnage. One pursuing boat, armed with fifty natives, was rapidly approaching when it grounded, to the joy of the pursued, on a sandbank. For them this was an opportunity. Disembarking, they attacked the rebels on the sandbank so vigorously that but few were left to tell the tale. They then seized their boat, which they found well provided with ammunition; then casting it on the stream, they slept whilst it drifted down stream.

They woke soon after midnight to find the wind had risen, and that the boat was still drifting, whither they knew not. The hope that it might have descended beyond the enemy's range was dissipated as soon as the day broke. They found to their despair that the boat had been carried out of the main channel into a small creek, on the banks of which the enemy were huddled, with muskets loaded. In such an extremity there was but one chance — the English charge, which has never failed. The few able-bodied survivors tried it. There were but two officers unwounded capable of such a service, Mowbray Thomson and Delafosse; but they had with them a few stalwart men of the 32d and 84th. Wading through the water, they dashed at the astonished sipáhís, rushed through them, then back again to the place where they had left the boat. But the boat was no longer there. They saw her in the distance, drifting down the stream.

The two officers and their companions pushed at once down the river-bank in the direction taken by the boat, but