And they reached their destination. On the evening of the ninth of June the little squadron was brought to on a sandbank a few furlongs above Nawabgunge, the north-west suburb of Cawnpore. Here they abode forty-eight hours, listening to the ceaseless cannonade which pealed along the stream from the south. Then they sent a messenger bearing a request for permission to pass on their way: the answer to which was brought by a horde of mutineers, who had no sooner appeared in view than the boatmen set the thatch alight, and fell with bludgeons and sabres upon the passengers, who were taking their afternoon tea, and who now threw themselves over the bulwarks, and sought concealment in a patch of high grass. But their cover was fired by the rebel guns; two ladies and a child were scorched or suffocated to death; and the rest of the company fell into the hands of the troopers of the Second Cavalry, to whose _esprit-de-corps_ this one-sided work was more suited than the dubious contest which was raging around our intrenchment. The captives were made fast to a long rope, and marched as far as ladies with bare and bleeding feet could carry the babies and drag along the children: for by this time all their servants had fled, with the exception of two Ayahs and a few menials of the very lowest order. Here, as elsewhere, fortitude and fidelity were in inverse proportion to dignity of caste. Our people spent the night supperless, on the spot where they had halted; and at daybreak, after breakfasting on a mouthful of water a-piece, were distributed among sixteen bullock carts, and conveyed into the presence of the Nana: to whom they pointed out the folly of which he would be guilty if he indulged himself in wanton and indiscriminate murder. It was no easy task, they bade him reflect, to empty Europe of Europeans. He is said to have been inclined to mercy: but Bala Rao, who, if there was a choice between the brothers, seems to have been the blackest villain of the three, made such an outcry that the Nana stifled his nascent humanity in order to prevent the scandal of a family quarrel. The ladies and the little ones received orders to seat themselves on the ground; and the gentlemen, with their hands tied behind them, were drawn up as a rear rank. The Second Cavalry had soon another victory to inscribe upon their standards. "I witnessed all this with my own eyes," says a Hindoo nurse, who, while they were both above the soil, would not lose sight of her dear young charge: "for I was sitting about thirty paces on one side. Two pits were dug, and all the bodies thrown in. The Nana was not present. May God take vengeance on him, and on these wicked men!" Nanukchund notes in his diary that "reports of guns were heard from the direction of Nawabgunge. A little after twelve A.M. two dead bodies of Europeans were seen floating down the Ganges; and sepoys were seen in a boat coming down behind these corpses and firing off their muskets as they came." Next day he found