The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8. Dodd George
away, and their fate unknown. At length came the news that the 38th had openly revolted; that none of the native regiments at Delhi could now be depended upon; and that the inmates of the tower ought to effect their escape as speedily as possible. There had been one company of the 38th at the Flagstaff Tower all day; and as the building was very strong, and armed with two guns, the brigadier long deemed himself able to protect the numerous persons there assembled; but as soon as the defection of the main body of this regiment became known, all reliance on the smaller corps was at an end. Such carriages and horses as could be obtained were immediately put in requisition, and various parties hastened off, mostly northward on the Kurnaul road. The small group whom we have here under notice – namely, the officer with his wife and child, reached Kurnaul the next day; but danger was all around, and the fugitives were forced to continue their flight, as soon as they could obtain means of conveyance. It is touching to read how ‘baby’ occupied the mother’s thoughts through all this agitating escape. During a sojourn at a place called Thwanessur, on the road between Kurnaul and Umballa, they stopped at the assistant-commissioner’s house. ‘Before we had rested two hours we were alarmed by being told that a regiment of sepoys was come to attack us; we had to fly from the house and hide as best we could, under the bushes, &c., in the garden; and I kept dear baby in my own arms the whole time until morning.’ The alarm proved to be false, and the fugitives proceeded. They arrived safely at Umballa on the morning of Thursday the 14th, having left Delhi on Monday evening. That the brave wife was ‘quite fatigued and worn out’ may well be conceived when she adds, ‘for dear baby had never left me since we left Delhi.’
This adventure, however, was far exceeded in length, in privation, in strange situations, in hair-breadth escapes, by one which befell a party of four persons – an officer of the 38th regiment, an army surgeon, and their two wives: all of whom, in the wilderness of confusion, sought the Kurnaul route rather than that to Meerut. These ladies were among the many who sought refuge in the Flagstaff Tower. There they had the pain of witnessing the sufferings of poor Colonel Ripley, who, as already narrated, had been bayoneted by men of his own regiment, and had been brought thither for succour; they tended him as women only can tend the sick; but their ministrations were of brief avail. After hours of suspense, in which small hope was mingled with large despair, the necessity for escape became obvious. A little bitterness is expressed, in the narratives of some of the fugitives, concerning the delay in making any preparations for the escape of the women and children; and a few of the head officers are blamed for supineness; but those who suffer are not always, at the time, the best judges of the cause of their sufferings. When evening approached, many of the native coachmen drove away the vehicles belonging to the Europeans, and appropriated them, thus leaving the women and children in dreadful perplexity how to reach Kurnaul or Meerut. The two Englishwomen whose narrative we now follow were among the last of those who left the city, when evening was approaching. They were in a buggy, but had been parted from their husbands during the confusion of the arrangements for departure, and one of them had lost her little child. They drove on, with no male protector, across rugged fields, fearful of the high road: treated sometimes respectfully by the natives, but at other times robbed and vilely addressed. Even the velvet head-dress of one of them was torn off, for the value of the bugles that adorned it. A jewel-box had been brought away in haste, as the only treasure preserved; and it became every hour more uncertain whether this would be a prey to the spoilers. Returning to the high road, the ladies met some gunners with two guns; and as the men told them certain death would be the result if they took the road to Kurnaul, they drove in another direction to the Company’s garden outside Delhi. Here, marauding was everywhere going on; the poor ladies soon had the misery of seeing their carriage, horse, jewel-box, and most of their outer clothing reft from them. In the dead of the night they ventured to a neighbouring village. The surgeon, husband to one of the ladies, here managed to join them; but being enfeebled by previous sickness, and wounded in the jaw during the day’s exciting troubles, he was powerless as a defender, and – far from being able to succour others – needed succour himself. During the next fifteen hours were these three persons hiding in fields and huts, befriended by a few natives, and conscious that roving sepoys were near, ready for murder or pillage. Sallying forth again on the evening of Tuesday, they were speedily stopped by six men, who robbed them of a further portion of their scanty apparel, and only stopped short of murder when the officer’s wife pleaded for mercy, on the ground that she was searching for her husband and her child, both of whom had gone she knew not whither. The three fugitives walked all that night, the wounded surgeon dragging himself along. In the morning they were again accosted, and only escaped death by the ladies yielding up a further part of their attire, the only property they had left to give. During the remainder of that day they crept on, obtaining a little food and water from some villagers, who were, however, too much afraid of the sepoys to afford the fugitives the shelter of a roof; and it was terrible work indeed to roam along the roads with a burning sun overhead and burning sand under foot. They sat down by a well-side, and drank some water; but rude fellows accosted them, and after insulting the hapless women, compelled them to withdraw. They next encountered a party of irregular horse, who had not yet joined the mutineers; the men were at first inclined to befriend them; but fears of the consequences supervening, they soon deserted the fugitives. Here were these two Englishwomen, gently nurtured, and accustomed to all the amenities of good society, again compelled to wander like miserable outcasts, helping along a male companion whose under-jaw had been shattered, and who was otherwise in a weak state. They crawled on during another night, and then reached a village, which, as they saw it was Hindoo, they did not scruple to enter. Kindness was accorded to them for one whole day; after which the humane natives, timid lest the sepoys should burn their village if they heard of Feringhees having been harboured, declared they could no longer afford shelter. Once more, therefore, were the fugitives driven forth: having seen renewed symptoms that the sepoys, or rather the marauding ruffians, would not scruple to murder them, if opportunity offered. They had now been five days wandering about, and yet were only ten miles distant from Delhi: so completely had each day’s plans been frustrated by the events of the next day. Again they entered a friendly village, and again were they compelled soon to depart, after receiving simple but kind assistance. No villagers, it was found, were free from dread at having assisted a Feringhee. Once they hid for shelter under a bridge; but an armed ruffian detected them, and behaved so unbearably towards the women that the surgeon, who was a Roman Catholic, took a gold cross from his bosom, and gave it as the price of their freedom from further molestation: a wounded, shattered, sinking man, he could not offer them a strong arm as a shield from insult. On the night of the 17th, at a little more than twenty miles from Delhi, they were glad to obtain the shelter of an outhouse containing twenty cows, the only roof that the owner dared to offer them. They made an attempt to have a letter forwarded to Kurnaul, praying for assistance; but none in those parts could be depended upon for faithfulness beyond an hour or two: so much was there of treachery on the one hand, and timidity on the other. On the 18th they heard that Major Paterson, of the 54th regiment, was in the same village as themselves; and he, powerless to succour, contrived to send a short message to them, written with a burnt stick on a piece of an old broken pan. Shortly afterwards they were greatly astonished, and not a little delighted, to see an officer, the husband of one of the ladies, enter the village; but more like a naked savage, blistered from head to foot, than like an English gentleman.
An eventful tale had this officer to narrate. When the scenes of violence on the 11th at Delhi had reached such a point that to remain longer was to meet certain slaughter, he sent off his little boy with friends towards Meerut, and saw his wife and her lady-companion start for Kurnaul. After being robbed of his horse, and having three bullets sent through his hat, and one through the skirt of his coat, he ran past the blazing houses of the cantonment, and, being ill at the time, sank down under a tree exhausted. A gang of ruffians found him, stripped him, robbed him of everything, and endeavoured, Thug-like, to strangle him – using, however, the sleeve of his own shirt instead of a silken cord. Happily the choking was only partial; he recovered, staggered on a mile or two, rested briefly in a hut, and then walked twelve miles to Alipore in a broiling sun. He obtained a little water, a little bread, and a few fragments of clothing, but was refused shelter. He wended his painful way barefoot, keeping to ploughed fields as safer than the high road, and reached a village where the headman gave him an asylum for five days. During these days, however, he twice narrowly escaped death from sepoys prowling about the village.