ful the days came on; yet still they fought and suffered. Their hopes of relief were still deferred, and their hearts were sick, while their foes grew stronger in numbers and determination to destroy them, and would frequently yell out, with fearful imprecations—for they were near enough to be heard—what they would do with them when they did get in. But the garrison were determined there should not be another Cawnpore. Sir Henry's injunction “never to surrender” was fully accepted. It is fearful to read their resolves should the worst come, and to find the ladies acquiescing; and even, in some cases, requiring an engagement from their husbands to fulfill those wishes rather than that they should fall into the hands of the Sepoys.
This awful alternative was actually taken by some of those who fell at Jansee. One lady in particular is mentioned, who pledged her husband, an English officer, that when death became inevitable, he was not to allow her to fall alive into the power of the Sepoys, but she was to die by a pistol-ball from his own hand. Sadly and reluctantly he gave the promise; and when the fearful hour came, and the enemy broke in upon them, she sprang to his side, and, with a last caress exclaimed, “Now, Charley, now—your promise!” He kissed her, put the pistol to her head, and then turned and sold his own life dearly to the wretches around him.
Such cases cannot be judged by ordinary rules. Those who entertained such thoughts were confronted by an Oriental foe, whose fiendish malice and cruelty to women and children are not known in civilized warfare. It is a matter of devout thankfulness that the Lucknow garrison were not reduced to this dreadful extremity. It would have clouded the bright record of their heroic endurance.
Space would fail to give even a brief outline of their sorrows during the next three months. Reduced to starvation allowances of the coarsest food, many of them clad in rags, and all crowded into the narrowest quarters, so that Mrs. Harris's Diary speaks of the ladies lying on the floor, “fitting into each other like bits in a puzzle, until the whole floor was full,” they still courageously endured.
