The youngest were the least to be pitied. In such a plight, ignorance
of happier days was indeed bliss:--ignorance that there was a fair
world without, where people laughed merrily, and slept soundly, and
lived in the anticipations of enjoyment, not in the terrors of death.
To the small children the present was very weary; but, reasoning in
their way, they concluded that that present could not last much longer.
It must come to an end like the tiresome journey up the great river,
when the barge stuck fast in the mud, and mamma cried, and papa called
the boatman by that Hindoostanee name which they themselves were always
whipped for using. The restraint of our protracted incarceration was to
them intolerably irksome. There was neither milk, nor pudding, nor jam,
nor mangoes, nor any one to cuddle them, or sing to them, or listen to
their romances, and their wishes, and their grievances. The gentleman
who once was most kind to them would now come home from shooting all
black, and grimy, and with a rough beard, and would stand at the table
and eat quickly, and then run out again without taking any notice
of them: and some day or other he would be carried in on a shutter,
looking so pale and weak: and some day, perhaps, he never came back
at all. When they asked a lady to scold the servants for getting them
such a nasty breakfast, she only kissed them, and sobbed, and called
them poor darlings. They sorely missed the fond and patient bearer,
that willing playmate and much-enduring slave, whom Mrs. Sherwood's
charming tale has rendered a household word in English schoolrooms.
Left to their own tiny discretions, the dear creatures, unconscious of
danger, would toddle out of the crowded barrack, and betake themselves
to some primitive game which demanded no very elaborate provision of
toys. What was it to them that every half minute a big black ball came
hopping along amidst puffs of dust, or that little things which they
could not see flew about humming louder than cock-chafers or bumble
bees? With unexampled barbarity the sepoy sharpshooters forbore to
respect these innocent groups. The peril, which some incurred through
inexperience, was sought by others under the pressure of despondency.
One unhappy woman, unable to support the burden of her existence, ran
out from the shelter of the walls leading in each hand a child, and
was dragged back, despite of herself, by a private soldier, who freely
risked his life to preserve that which she was bent on losing. Not a
few native domestics refused to desert their employers. Over-worked and
under-thanked, with short-commons, and, if captured by the mutineers,
a shorter shrift, they stayed on, not for the sake of their pittance
of wages, but actuated solely by the ties of duty, gratitude, and
attachment. Most of them were soon dismissed from service, for no
fault, and with no warning. Three were killed by the explosion of a
shell. Another was shot through the head as he was hurrying to the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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