"Then there was no end of the confusion. The Nana got frightened, and
fled away. We blew up the magazine, so that they might not have powder;
and the Feringhees came at once into the town. There never were people
so savage or angry. The sight of the well and the Bibi's house seemed to
drive them wild. They were more like tigers than human beings. Every
sepoy whom they caught they shot at once for vengeance, because that is
their religion: and many who were not sepoys, and who had not borne arms
against them, they shot on false evidence. Every man who had a grudge
against another told the Feringhees that their enemy had helped to cut
down the ladies; and the Feringhees were so greedy for blood that they
believed it all, and shot them down at once. So much blood was never
shed in Cawnpore: for one life they took ten. Then we knew it was all
true what the jemadar had said, and that they would take the whole Doab
back, and put back the land-tax, and the salt-tax; and we thought too
that they would make us all into Christians; but _that_ they have not
done, for so long as they get their taxes, and have high pay and good
bungalows, and cow's flesh and beer, they don't care about, or reverence
any religion, not even their own. For we Hindoos respect our fakeers,
and even the Musalmans respect their pirs; but the Feringhees think as
little of the missionaries as we do ourselves, and care more for dances
than for their churches. That is why they have not compelled us to
become Christians.
"All the time the Feringhees were in Cawnpore, I lay hid in the
jemadar's house. He was a good man, though he had gone over to the
Feringhees as soon as they came in sight: and nobody suspected his
house, because he was now on their side, and had given them news of all
that took place in the town when we killed the officers and the ladies.
So I was quite safe there, and got dal and water every day, and was in
no danger at all.
"Presently, the Feringhees moved off again, abandoning Cawnpore, because
Havelock Sahib, who was the most terrible of their generals, wanted to
go on to Lucknow. There the Musalmans of Oude had risen and were
besieging the Presidency, with all the soldiers and officers. I would
not go to Oude, because I did not care to fight for Musalmans,
preferring rather to wait the chance of the Nana coming back; for only a
Mahratta could now recover the kingdom for the Hindoos; and the
Musalmans are almost as bad as the Feringhees themselves. In a short
time, however, the Gwalior men came. They were good men, the Gwalior
men: for though Sindiah, their rajah, had commanded them not to fight,
they would not desert the other Hindoos, when there were Feringhees to
be killed: and they disobeyed Sindiah, and rebelled, and so I joined
them gladly. They pitched only fifteen miles from Cawnpore, and there I
went out and enlisted with them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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