Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/257

Rh into the houses of the English sergeants; and calling out to one of them, “Jennings, jump up behind me,” he was shot dead by the Sepoys, and fell from his horse. Jennings mounted it. They shot the horse under him. He jumped off, ran for his life, and escaped. Captain Patterson, with other officers, was fired on in the orderly room. They escaped by the opposite door, ran to their stables, got their horses, and fled. Colonel Troup heard the firing, and was leaving his house when his own orderlies tried to stop him. He got out by another door, and escaped on foot, but was followed by his syce (groom) with his horse. Dr. Bowhill, of the Eighteenth, was in his bath when he heard the firing. He jumped out, drew on his clothes, got out his watch and one hundred rupees, ran to the stable to order his horse, returned, and found that his rascally bearer had made off with money and watch too. I have only heard of one who had time to save a single thing except the clothes they had on them. Captain Gibbs had to ride across the parade ground through a volley of musketry, and the artillery men fired on him with grape. He escaped unhurt. All was so sudden, so unexpected, there was no time for preparation—nothing but to mount and fly. Two minutes after Colonel Troup left his house he saw it in flames; and before ten minutes every bungalow in the cantonments seemed on fire. The road to Nynee Tal was direct through the city. A band of officers and gentlemen, about forty in number, evaded the city, took a by-road for a couple of miles, and escaped. Those who tried the city I believe all perished. Of Lieutenant Gowan (our good friend of the Eighteenth Native Infantry) we could hear nothing; but he was saved by his own Sepoys, who liked him. Under cover of night, when it came, they took him out of a house where they had concealed him, and escorted him, with their Sergeant-Major Belsham and his wife and five children, and conducted them two miles beyond Bareilly to the south, giving the sad party what money they could spare, and their good wishes for their escape. They were joined during the night by four officers that had escaped the massacre, and they resolved to keep together for mutual protection; but the slow