When, after the lapse of some twenty minutes, the dead began to outnumber the living;--when the fire slackened, as the marks grew few and far between:--then the troopers who had been drawn up to the right of the temple plunged into the river, sabre between teeth, and pistol in hand. Thereupon two half-caste Christian women, the wives of musicians in the band of the Fifty-sixth, witnessed a scene which should not be related at second-hand. "In the boat where I was to have gone," says Mrs. Bradshaw, confirmed throughout by Mrs. Setts, "was the schoolmistress and twenty-two missies. General Wheeler came last, in a palkee. They carried him into the water near the boat. I stood close by. He said 'Carry me a little further towards the boat.' But a trooper said: 'No; get out here.' As the general got out of the palkee, head foremost, the trooper gave him a cut with his sword into the neck, and he fell into the water. My son was killed near him. I saw it: alas! alas! Some were stabbed with bayonets; others cut down. Little infants were torn in pieces. We saw it; we did; and tell you only what we saw. Other children were stabbed and thrown into the river. The school girls were burnt to death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the water, a few paces off, by the next boat, we saw the youngest daughter of Colonel Williams. A sepoy was going to kill her with his bayonet. She said, 'My father was always kind to sepoys.' He turned away, and just then a villager struck her on the head with his club, and she fell into the water." These people likewise saw good Mr. Moncrieff, the clergyman, take a book from his pocket that he never had leisure to open, and heard him commence a prayer for mercy which he was not permitted to conclude. Another deponent observed a European making for a drain like a scared water-rat, when some boatmen, armed with cudgels, cut off his retreat, and beat him down dead into the mud.
At this point those Englishmen who had learned to use their limbs in the water, perceiving that all was lost, with a hurried last look and a parting shudder, stripped, and made for Vibart's boat, which just then was aground not far from the opposite shore. Thomson swam, and Private Murphy, neither for the last time. Three cavalry soldiers chased Lieutenant Harrison on to a small island two hundred yards from the land. One only waded back again, quicker than he came; while Harrison made the best of his way to the stranded vessel, and clambered over the side, satisfied at having taught his pursuers that it was never safe to trifle with a Sahib, as long as he had breath in his body and a charge in a single chamber. Few were vigorous or fortunate as he. Their strength failed some; while more than one stout swimmer, shot dead in the middle of his stroke, rolled over and sank amidst the reddening tide. Of the two Hendersons, the younger went down in his brother's sight, while the elder hardly struggled in with a shattered hand through the pattering mitraillade. At length all were on board who had not disappeared below the waves; and, by dint of hard shoving, the boat scraped herself off the shoal, and continued her sluggish and devious course:--that hapless Argo with her freight of heroes.