Page:The Indian Mutiny of 1857.djvu/202

176 seeing no chance of overtaking her, and still followed by the sipáhís, they made for a Hindu temple which seemed to offer a position of vantage. The door of this temple they defended so fiercely against the advancing enemy, with their bayonets, that there was soon formed in front of it a barrier of corpses, which served to them as a rampart. Within the temple they obtained a little putrid water, which refreshed them. Meanwhile, the assailants, despairing of other methods, heaped up beneath the walls of the temple leaves, faggots, and other combustible materials, with the intent to smoke out the little garrison. But the wind was on the side of the English. It blew the smoke strongly in the eyes of the assailants. Under cover of it, the besieged made a sudden spring forward, and firing a volley, charged them. In the hand-to-hand fight seven of the English were struck down. The remaining seven, unhurt, dashed into the stream, the sipáhís following along the bank, and firing as they ran. Presently two of the swimmers were shot through the head; a third was caught on a sandbank and killed, but the remaining four, Mowbray Thomson, Delafosse, and privates Murphy and Sullivan, struck vigorously down the stream, and, aided by the current, succeeded in evading their pursuers. They pushed on till, panting and exhausted, they reached, on the Oudh side, the territories of a rájá friendly to the British, who befriended them until they could rejoin the army in the field.

It is a sad supplement to this story to add that the boat from which they had issued to charge the sipáhís on the bank was captured, and its living cargo taken back to Kánhpur. The number of the survivors of the massacre at the ghaut and in the boats amounted to eighty-four. Four of these, as we have seen, escaped. The remaining eighty were carried before the Náná. That chieftain