Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/193

 buildings outside gave the assailants cover within pistol-shot of the besieged; while indeed the latter were thus to a large extent shielded against artillery fire, as had been Lawrence's design in not completing his work of destruction here. Some of the rebel batteries played upon the works at a range of from fifty to a hundred yards. On one side, only a dozen yards of roadway separated the fighters; and from behind their palisades the loyal Sepoys could often exchange abuse, as well as shots, with the mutineers, who would steal up at night, tempting them to desert, as many did in the course of the siege, yet not so many as might have been expected under such trying circumstances.

This entrenchment was occupied by nearly a thousand soldiers, civilians, clerks, traders, or travellers turned by necessity into fighting-men, with a rather less number of staunch Sepoys, as well as about five hundred women and children, shuddering at the peril of a fate so fearful that English ladies kept poison ready for suicide in case of the worst, and loving husbands promised to shoot their wives dead, rather than let them fall alive into hands freshly blood-stained from the horrors of Cawnpore. As there a girls' school were among the victims, so at Lucknow the motley garrison included the boys of the Martinière