His first move was to the Dilkoosha, a hunting palace with a walled enclosure, which he fortified as a depôt for his stores and for the great train of vehicles provided to carry off the women and children. The same day he seized the Martinière College close by, and pushed his position towards the banks of the Canal, from their side of which the enemy made hostile demonstrations. Next day was spent in final arrangements and in repelling attacks. By ostentatious activity in that direction, the Sepoys were led to believe that they would be assailed on the English left; but on the morning of the 16th Sir Colin marched off by his right, crossed the bed of the Canal, dry at this point, gained the bank of the river, and penetrated the straggling suburbs upon the enemy's rear, with no more than three thousand men, the rest left posted so as to keep open his retreat. A small force this for a week's fighting, under most difficult circumstances, against enormous odds, where a way must again and again be opened through fortified buildings! [Illustration: The Kaiserbagh, Lucknow.] [Illustration: Ruins of the Residency, Lucknow. Page 204.] The line of march lay along narrow winding lanes and through woods and mud walls, that for a time sheltered our troops from fire. The first obstacle encountered was the Secunder Bagh, one of those walled gardens which played such a part in the operations about Lucknow and Delhi. Its gloomy ruins stand to-day to tell a dreadful tale. The approaches had first to be cleared, and the walls battered by guns that could hardly be forced up a steep bank under terrible fire. In half-an-hour, a small hole had been knocked through one gate, then, Highlanders and Sikhs racing to be foremost in the fierce assault, the enclosure was carried, where two thousand mutineers were caught as in a trap. Some fought desperately to the last; some threw down their arms begging for mercy, but found no mercy in hearts maddened by the remembrance of slaughtered women and children. "Cawnpore!" was the cry with which our men drove their bayonets home; and when the wild din of fire and sword, of shrieks and curses, at length fell silent, this pleasure-garden ran with the blood of two thousand dusky corpses, piled in heaps or strewn over every foot of ground. We may blame the spirit of barbaric revenge; but we had not seen that well at Cawnpore.