Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/234

 desperately to the last; some threw down their arms begging for mercy, but found no mercy in hearts maddened by the remembrance of slaughtered women and children. "Cawnpore!" was the cry with which our men drove their bayonets home; and when the wild din of fire and sword, of shrieks and curses, at length fell silent, this pleasure-garden ran with the blood of two thousand dusky corpses, piled in heaps or strewn over every foot of ground. We may blame the spirit of barbaric revenge; but we had not seen that well at Cawnpore.

The advance was now resumed across a plain dotted by houses and gardens, where soon it came once more to a stand before the Shah Nujeef, a mosque surrounded with high loop-holed walls, that proved a harder nut to crack than the Secunder Bagh. For hours it was battered and assaulted in vain, the General himself leading his Highlanders to the charge. In vain the guns of Peel's Naval Brigade were once brought up within a few yards of the walls, worked as resolutely as if their commander had been laying his ship beside an enemy's. In vain brave men rushed to their death at those fiery loop-holes, while behind them reigned a scene of perilous confusion, the soldiers able neither to advance nor retreat among blazing buildings and deadly missiles.