Can you imagine the breathless horror with which the garrison of Lucknow listened to these details of a most cruel and treacherous onslaught upon wounded men, upon refined ladies, and innocent children? How they sighed for a force strong enough to take an adequate revenge upon these miscreants! But for the present they were besieged themselves, though reinforced; and who of them could count upon a day’s security? Perhaps, if the bullet spared them at Lucknow their would-be rescuers might be unable to fight their way through the city, and these poor ladies and children of the Lucknow garrison might be reserved for a lot even worse than death. “Will they come?--will they come to help us here at Lucknow? That is our anxious thought night and day.” CHAPTER XII THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW (1857) The scene at Cawnpore--Fights before Lucknow--Nearly blown up--A hideous nightmare--Cheering a runaway--All safe out of the Residency--A quick march back--Who stole the biscuits?--Sir Colin’s own regiment. “I had enlisted in the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders to go to India to put down the Mutiny,” writes Mr. Forbes-Mitchell, an old friend of the author. “We reached Cawnpore on the 27th of October, having marched the last forty-six miles in two days. We were over 1,000 strong, and many of us had just been through the Crimean War. After a few hours’ rest we were allowed to go out in parties of ten or twelve to visit the scene of the late treachery and massacre.” Wheeler’s entrenchments at the highest place did not exceed 4 feet, and could not have been bullet-proof at the top. The wonder was how the small force could have held out so long. In the rooms were still lying about broken toys, pictures, books, and bits of clothing. They then went to see the slaughter-house in which our women and children had been barbarously murdered and the well into which their mangled bodies were flung. On the date of this visit a great part of the house had not been cleaned out. The floors of the rooms were still covered with congealed blood, and littered with trampled, torn dresses, shoes, locks of long hair, many of which evidently had been severed by sword-cuts. But the most horrible sight they saw was an iron hook fixed into the wall. This was covered with dried blood, and from the marks on the whitewashed wall it was evident that a little child had been hung on to it by the neck, with its face to the wall. There the poor thing must have struggled for long, because the wall all round the hook was covered with the hand-prints, and below the hook with the footprints, of a little child--in blood. The number of victims killed at Cawnpore, counted and buried in the well by Havelock’s force, was 118 women and 92 children. This sight was enough, they said, to make the words “mercy” and “pardon” appear a mockery.