Breakfast was over by half-past eight on the morning of September 25, when the order was given to advance. The first opposition met with by the leading column, headed by Outram, was near the Yellow House, which lay along the road to the bridge. Here Maude, one of the best officers in the army, who was to win his V.C. that day, charged the two guns whose fire was so deadly, and silenced them, and the troops went on till they were close to the canal. Then Outram took the 5th Fusiliers and bore away to the right in order to clear the gardens of the sepoys hidden in them, and to draw off the attention of the enemy; lieutenant Arnold, with a company of the Madras Fusiliers, took his station on the left of the bridge with orders to fire at the houses across the canal, and right out in the open facing the bridge was Maude, with two light guns straight in front of the battery. In a bend of the road on one side some of the Madras Fusiliers supported him, and on the other side, a little way off, stood Neill and his detachment, waiting for the diversion to be made by Outram's movement. To Neill's surprise, not a trace of Outram was to be seen, and Maude stood shelterless, his gunners falling before the continuous fire from the bridge. Again and again the Fusiliers from behind filled their places, only to be swept down like the rest, and now Maude and a subaltern were doing the work. 'You must do something,' called out Maude to young Havelock; 'I cannot fight the guns much longer.' Havelock nodded and rode through the fire that was raking the road to Neill, urging him to order a charge. But Neill refused. He was not in command, he replied, and could not take such a responsibility. The young aide-de-camp did not waste time in arguing, but hurried on to Fraser-Tytler, only to receive the same answer. Then, turning his horse's head, he galloped hard down the road, in the direction of the spot where his father was stationed. In a few minutes he was back and, reining up his horse at Neill's side, while he saluted with his sword, he said breathlessly: 'You are to charge the bridge, sir.' It did not occur to Neill that there had not been time for young Havelock to have reached his father's position and come back so soon, and therefore that no such order could have been given by the general, and was simply the invention of the aide-de-camp himself. Quite unsuspiciously, therefore, he bade the buglers sound the advance, and Arnold, with twenty-five of his men, rushed on to the bridge and were instantly shot down. For fully two minutes Harry Havelock on his horse kept his position in front of the guns with only a private beside him, and the dead lying in heaps on all sides. 'Come on! Come on!' he cried, turning in his saddle and waving his sword, while the fire from the houses was directed upon him, and a ball went through his hat. And they 'came on' with a rush, wave upon wave, till the guns were silenced and the barrier carried.