Hearsey summoned the guard to advance, but the native officer answered as before. The General, however, by a significant motion of his revolver, gave the Jemmadar to understand that this time he had to deal with a man of very different kidney from the Colonel. The guard, accordingly, went forward; the Jemmadar in front, watched on either side by a young Hearsey, pistol in hand. Their sire himself rode straight at the mutineer, who, seeing that the game was up, turned the muzzle to his own breast, touched the trigger with his toe, and fell, severely hurt. He was secured, and conveyed to the hospital; and the concourse dispersed quietly to their lines, after having been roundly taken to task by the General for their cowardice and unsoldierlike behaviour in standing by without moving a finger while their officers were being cut to pieces.
Mungul Pandy was condemned by court-martial, and duly hanged on the 8th of April. At first there was some difficulty about finding an executioner. Public opinion had become less squeamish before the year was out. From this miserable fanatic was taken the name of "Pandy," which in Anglo-Indian slang signified mutineer. There were those who loved to apply the horrible nickname of "white Pandies" to those wise and good men who, amidst the general frenzy, preserved some spark of justice and humanity; who would not lend their countenance to a barbarous policy dictated by cruelty and craven fear; who refused to devastate provinces and depopulate cities, to butcher the women of Delhi and torture the shopkeepers of Allahabad, to confound innocent and guilty in one vast proscription and one universal massacre: just as, at the end of the last century, there were those who stigmatized as "Jacobins" the English statesmen who could not be reviled or shocked out of the belief that the king and the nobility of France had been less sinned against than sinning; and that, in any case, it was not our business to avenge the wrongs of alien dukes and marquisses upon the senators who had abolished their privileges, the peasants who had shot their game, and the board which was busily engaged in dividing their provinces into departments.
Seven companies of the Thirty-fourth regiment were disbanded, after all pecuniary claims had been discharged. The closing effect was dramatic enough. General Hearsey made the men a spirited harangue, reminding them of their misdeeds, and giving some hints as to their future conduct which they would have done well to have laid to heart. Then came the parting; not without tears, it is said, on both sides. The sepoys stripped off their accoutrements, and were ferried across the river, bag and baggage, in Government steamers, and there sent about their business. In order to disprove the report that the Company had designs against their religion, they were informed that every facility would be afforded them for visiting Hindoo shrines of repute before they bent their steps towards their villages in Oude and Bahar.