During the suppression of the Mutiny, a campaign which was unique and unlike any other, the iron bands of discipline were, in some respects, not so tightly drawn as usual, and many things happened which would now be impossible. For instance, it was not at all unheard of for an enterprising officer, with no other sanction than that of his commanding officer, to take a small party of mounted men and start off on the prowl in search of adventures. Very frequently he found them, and took good care, in view of the irregularity of his proceedings, that no report of them reached the General. On some such occasion, a captain who was doing duty with us, and who was well-known for his eccentricity, almost verging on insanity, his fearlessness, and his unsparing thirst for vengeance against the mutineers, found himself, with a squad of sixteen or twenty men, many miles from camp, in front of the gateway of a walled enclosure, inside which were about forty rebel sepoys who, relying on their distance from danger, had taken no precautions against surprise, and were quietly cooking their dinner. H---- took in the situation at once. "Halt!" he shouted in a stentorian voice, to his men, adding in Hindustani "Only twenty men follow me into the gate. Let the rest of the regiment remain outside." "Throw down your arms in that corner," he roared to the terror-stricken sepoys. "Gather together in the opposite corner, and be quick about it, or I will slay you all." He was immediately obeyed. "Now," said he, "I see among you a number of men older than the others, whom they have probably led astray. Drive them out from among you, that I may destroy them." The miserable cowards of young men instantly thrust out the older ones, struggling and fighting for dear life: and H---- and his party fell on them and killed them.
Then turning to the traitorous remnant, "What dirt have you eaten! Oh children of owls!" and he "smote them also, hip and thigh."
Before utterly and unreservedly condemning this undoubtedly savage action, I would beg the reader to remember that in this Mutiny war no quarter was given on either side. We looked, and rightly looked, upon the mutineers, not as honest enemies, but as foul and cruel murderers for whom to die by the sword was too good a fate, and whose only fit end was on the gallows. If they had confined themselves to a revolt against the Government, and in attempting it had slaughtered their officers and all men who tried to suppress it, they would not have placed themselves outside the pale of mercy; but since they had butchered our defenceless women and children, we would have been more than human, we would have been less than men, if we had not exterminated them as men kill snakes whenever we met them. H---- well knew that if he did not destroy these sepoys they would destroy him. The slightest hesitation on his part, and they would have sprung to arms, and being caught like rats in a trap, would have fought with the energy of despair. Their muskets against our men's swords would have given their superior numbers a decisive advantage. We should undoubtedly have lost several men, and would probably have been driven back. From this nothing but the prompt and clever strategy adopted by H---- saved his party. With all this, it is impossible to avoid a feeling of regret that this incident should have occurred.