Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/211

 *man was taken by a brother negro of scarcely less fatal fame; and the enemy always expressed their resentment for these attacks by fresh bouts of more furious bombardment. Once, they had nearly destroyed a vital point of our line by piling up a bonfire against the Bailey Guard Gate; but Lieutenant R. H. M. Aitken, the burly Scot who held this post with his Sepoys, rushed out and extinguished the flames, under a rain of bullets, before much mischief could be done.

By this time the inmates of the Residency, from looking death so hard in the face, had grown strangely callous both to suffering and to danger. Men now showed themselves indifferent before the most heart-rending spectacles, while they coolly undertook perilous tasks at which, two months ago, the boldest would have hesitated. Children could be seen playing with grape-shot for marbles, and making little mines instead of mud-pies. Women took slight notice of the hair-breadth escapes that happened daily with them as with others. "Balls fall at our feet," says Mr. Rees in his journal, "and we continue the conversation without a remark; bullets graze our very hair, and we never speak of them. Narrow escapes are so very common that even women and children cease to notice