Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/362

352 Alumbagh. Bread, tea, coffee, sugar, soap, and all such articles, were then unknown luxuries there. The wretches outside still sustained their incessant din of shells and bullets, and raged in tens of thousands in the streets and occupied the buildings which all around commanded the Residency. They were as resolved as ever to destroy the garrison, while they must have been well aware that it could never escape from that position unless relieved by a powerful English army.

But that army, though not large in numbers, was now on its way. Sir Colin Campbell had landed at Calcutta, and with the first five thousand men that arrived he started for Lucknow.

On the 16th of November Sir Colin approached the city. Avoiding the crowded and barricaded streets, he took a course around by the Royal Park on the east, and, being on rising ground, his force, as they fought the enemy, could be seen from the Residency. They were sternly resisted the whole day. The garrison eagerly watched the conflict. One person was most conspicuous; he was mounted on a white horse, and seemed to be everywhere. They all felt very anxious for this person, for they guessed, and rightly too, that he was the Commander-in-chief. He advanced upon the Residency by the Dilkoosha and Martiniere and the line of palaces; but it required three days of fighting for him to accomplish his purpose. How fierce that fighting was may be imagined from a single item in the Commander-in-chief's dispatch, wherein he says that within the limits of a single building, the Secunderbagh, and its garden, the bodies of two thousand Sepoys were counted.

As soon as they left the Park and entered the city they were of course hidden from view, and terrible was the anxiety within the Residency for their success, and even their fate, as hour after hour went over, and the second, and even the third, day came and yet they could not see them. Nothing was known of them but the noise of the firing, the shouting, and the smoke of battle; still they felt that they must be coming nearer to them, for these sounds gradually became more distinct. This was the moment