Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/419

Rh commanding officer had just received the message which announced that Delhi had fallen!

I stood there, wrapt in thoughts never to be forgotten, and a luxury of feeling flowed through my heart, which will make that moment a bright spot in my life and recollection forever.

How often before had the thunder of those British cannon proved the inlet of salvation to the oppressed and persecuted! I was not the first American missionary to whom they had announced “glad tidings of great joy.” I thought of Judson and his heroic wife, of Wade and Hough, on whose ears, in their melancholy captivity, those cheerful peals proclaimed approaching liberty.

None but those who, like ourselves, have been practically captive for months, not knowing but that any day our doom might be sealed by the hand of violence, can imagine how every gun seemed to ring the knell of the Moslem city and power, while it proclaimed liberty to the Christian and the missionary of the cross—none but those so situated can appreciate the luxury of an hour like that.

It was impossible, as I returned down the hill, to repress the tears that so freely flowed; yet they were caused by no craven love of life, nor coward fear of death. I had passed through sufficient ordeals to know “in whom I had believed.” No, my tears flowed, but they were for India's own sake; shed in joyful hope and largeness of heart, that God was once more setting free those Christian agencies which alone could redeem “her from her sins” and sufferings, and which would lead her to the possession of those untold mercies that even she shall yet enjoy in common with all Christian nations.

If time is to be measured by the magnitude of events that transpire within any given space, how long and how much we seemed to have lived during those past five months!

The capture of Delhi is too well known to the reader to require any thing more than mere references in these pages. It was the event on which our fate, and the fate of British India, seemed to hang during those long months; and its capture by a mere handful