§14. Havelock failed to reach Lucknow. His brave little column worked wonders. It scattered large armies of rebels by bayonet charges, but it was rapidly reduced by three fatal diseases--fever, dysentery and cholera. Havelock could not spare troops for keeping up his communications with Cawnpore; he was compelled to carry his sick and wounded with him, and he was losing fifty men a day. Before he had fought his way a third of the distance, he was compelled with a heavy heart to fall back on Cawnpore. [Sidenote: Mutiny in Behar: defence of Arrah.] Havelock reached Cawnpore just in time to save Neill from being overwhelmed by rebel armies. European reinforcements from Bengal had again been delayed by mutinies. At Patna there had been a Mohammedan plot which was quashed at the outset by Mr. William Tayler, a Bengal civilian. At Dinapore, ten miles west of Patna, three sepoy regiments had mutinied. At Arrah, twenty-five miles still further to the west, a large body of rebels had attacked and plundered the station; but sixteen Europeans and fifty Sikhs defended a single house against 3,000 rebels for an entire week, when they were relieved by a detachment of Europeans from Dinapore under the command of Major Vincent Eyre. [Sidenote: European garrison at Lucknow.] Meanwhile the suspense of the Europeans in the Residency at Lucknow was becoming intense. The provisions were coarse and beginning to fail. Most of the native servants and all the bakers had fled at the beginning of the siege. Balls, bullets, and fragments of shells fell into every dwelling-place; and ladies and children on beds of sickness were as much exposed to the fire of the enemy as the soldiers in the trenches. There was, however, no slackening on the part of the garrison. Every man in the Residency worked in the trenches. Officers, soldiers, and civilians were either returning the enemy's fire, or digging with spades and pickaxes. The rains allayed the burning heat; but fever, dysentery, and cholera carried off their victims. No one thought of capitulation. Cawnpore had steeled every British heart. Husbands and fathers would have slain their own wives and daughters, rather than they should have fallen into the hands of the merciless besiegers. [Sidenote: Delay of Havelock.] All this while General Havelock was impatient to attempt a second advance on Lucknow. His force was too small to fight a way through the streets of the city into the Residency enclosure. Could the garrison have cut their way out, he might possibly have convoyed the whole body in safety to Cawnpore. But Brigadier Inglis, who commanded the garrison, was hampered with 450 women and children. He had no carriage, and in any case he was unwilling to abandon the guns and treasure. So Havelock and Inglis were both compelled to await the arrival of further reinforcements from Bengal. [Sidenote: Advance of Havelock and Outram, September.]