Meanwhile the heat was such as no words can adequately describe. The Europeans died of sunstroke at an average rate of two a day. Our troops had outstripped their Commissariat, and could get neither bread, nor coffee, nor drugs, nor fans, nor screens of moistened grass: appliances which, known to an English housekeeper as "luxuries" and "comforts," in the estimation of those who have spent an Indian June in the tented field, merit quite another denomination. Unfortunately, though the larder and the medicine-chest were empty, the cellars of Allahabad were only too well furnished. They were pillaged by some Sikhs, who, without applying for a license, at once opened a lively trade: selling beer, brandy, madeira, and champagne at a uniform charge of sixpence the bottle. Cholera soon broke out among our poor fellows, living as they did on wine and spirits without even a halfpenny-worth of bread in a temperature of a hundred and thirty-five degrees. In the course of seventy-two hours forty deaths occurred in the ranks of the Madras regiment. The Colonel bought up and destroyed the whole stock of liquor; ransacked the neighbourhood in quest of wholesome provisions; removed his patients to the most healthy quarters which he could command; and was repaid by seeing the mysterious disease vanish as suddenly as it had appeared, after carrying off one out of every nine among his soldiers.
As when a slender rill, ominous to an experienced eye, trickles through the crack in an embankment behind which is gathered, not long there to stay, an immense weight of water: so came along the valley of Ganges this little band, the forerunner of a mighty multitude of warriors. Every morning brought into Allahabad a fresh batch of Englishmen, jaded, indeed, and suffering cruelly from the climate, but eager to be led forward to rescue or revenge. Continental authors who descant glibly on the stolidity and insensibility of the British private might have learned a useful lesson could they have overheard the talk of those pale and sickly lads. By the last day of June Neill judged himself strong enough to detach towards Cawnpore two guns and eight hundred men, half of whom were Europeans. The column was placed under the orders of Major Renaud, who pushed up the road; fighting as occasion offered; tranquillizing the country by the very simple expedient of hanging everybody who showed signs of insubordination; and using all endeavours to procure information concerning the fate of the Cawnpore garrison. On the fourth July he was met by a report of the capitulation and the massacre. Corroborated, and contradicted, and qualified, and again confidently affirmed, rumour insensibly matured into undoubted fact: but to this day no man ventures to name the precise hour when he himself became assured that the worst was true.