“Three sides of a hollow square facing inwards was formed. On the fourth side of the square were drawn up the guns, ten 9-pounders, which were to be used for the execution. The prisoners, under a strong European guard, were then marched into the square, their crimes and sentences read aloud to them and at the head of each regiment; they were then marched round the square and up to the guns. The first ten were picked out, their eyes bandaged, and they were bound to the guns, with their backs against the muzzles and their arms fastened backwards to the wheels. The port fires were lighted, and at a signal from the artillery major the guns were fired. It was a horrid sight that then met the eye. A regular shower of human fragments--of heads, arms, and legs--appeared in the air, whirling through the smoke; and when that cleared away, these fragments lying on the ground--fragments of Hindoos and of Mussulmans mixed together--were all that remained of those ten mutineers. Three times more this was repeated; but so great is the disgust we all feel for the atrocities committed by the rebels, that we had no room in our hearts for any feeling of pity. Perfect callousness was depicted on every European face; a look of grim satisfaction could even be seen in the countenances of the gunners serving the guns. But far different was the effect on the native portion of the spectators. Their black faces grew ghastly pale as they gazed breathlessly at the awful spectacle. You must know that this is really the only form in which death has any terror for a native. If he is hanged or shot, he knows that his friends or relatives will be allowed to claim his body and will give him the funeral rites required by his religion; if a Hindoo, that his body will be burned with all due ceremonies, and if a Mussulman, that his remains will be secretly interred, as directed in the Koran. But if sentenced to death in this form, he knows that his body will be blown into a thousand pieces, and that it will be altogether impossible for his relatives, however devoted to him, to be sure of picking up all the fragments of his own particular body; and the thought that perhaps a limb of someone of a different religion to himself might possibly be burned or buried with the remainder of his own body, is agony to him. But notwithstanding this, it was impossible for the mutineers’ direst hater not to feel some degree of admiration for the way in which they met their deaths. Nothing in their lives became them like the leaving of them. Of the whole party, only two showed any signs of fear, and they were bitterly reproached by the others for so disgracing their race. They certainly died like men. After the first ten had been disposed of, the next batch, who had been looking on all the time, walked up to the guns quite calmly and unfalteringly, and allowed themselves to be blindfolded and tied up without moving a muscle or showing the slightest sign of fear or even concern.”