When the Nana learned how his soldiers had conducted themselves he flew into a violent passion, which could be relieved only by vicarious letting of blood. After attending at the execution of eight ill-fated couriers, who had been intercepted from time to time with English despatches in and about their persons, he felt sufficiently composed to face the emergency. Determined to reserve his own sacred self for the supreme venture, he sent into the field a Patroclus in the person of Bala Rao, whose stake in the cause was indeed no light one. Every available mutineer was equipped and marched down the road, and the captured pieces were replaced from the magazine. On the morrow the Peishwa's brother followed his reinforcements, and took up a position round a hamlet named Aoung, twenty-two miles south of Cawnpore. He found the rebel mind in high perturbation. The gossip of the camp-fires ran mainly on the disagreeable sensations produced by strangulation; and the disquisitions of certain among the sepoys who had witnessed that operation were so circumstantial and picturesque that many who had come best off in the partition of the spoil doffed the remains of their uniforms, and stole away with their riches to the seclusion of their native villages. The behaviour of those who remained proved that the army had rather gained than lost in efficiency by the withdrawal of such as had nothing to acquire and something to enjoy. Their valour was soon to be tested. At nine in the morning of the fifteenth up came the English; Maude and his battery leading the way; with the Fusileers and the sharpshooters of the Sixty-fourth close at his heels. Shrapnel shells and conical bullets quickly cleared away everything from our front, and strewed the highway with corpses, weapons, and abandoned tents and waggons. The Second Cavalry caught sight of our baggage, which had been left beneath a grove in the care of a slender guard, and fancied that they discerned an occasion for distinguishing themselves after their own fashion. But they were lamentably disappointed. The regiment had to bustle back with empty pockets and not a few empty saddles, and thenceforward was contented to rest on the renown of previous exploits.