The day after the assault, Major Banks was shot dead. Others who could be ill-spared fell one by one, every man placed _hors de combat_ leaving more work to be done by his overstrained comrades. Then there were dissensions among the remaining leaders. The English soldiers, made reckless by peril, sometimes gave way to a spirit of insubordination, or disgraced themselves by drunkenness. The Sepoys could not be fully trusted. The enemy, there was reason to fear, had spies within the place to report its weak points and the embarrassment of its defenders. A proof of this was that they had ceased firing on the hospital when some native dignitaries, held as prisoners, were quartered there in the lucky thought of making them a shield for the sick. It was hard on those hostages, who had to take their share of the general want and peril. The rations of coarse beef and unground grain were found insufficient to keep the garrison in good case; and before long these had to be reduced, while the price of the smallest luxury had risen beyond the means of most. If a hen laid an egg it came as a god-send; a poor mother might have to beg in vain for a little milk for her dying child. What the English soldiers missed most was tobacco; and when some of the Sikhs deserted, they left a message that it was because they had no opium. The priceless Crown Jewels of Oudh, and the public treasure guarded in the Residency, were dross indeed in the eyes of men longing for the simplest comforts. How yearningly they fixed their eyes on the green gardens and parks blooming among the towers of Lucknow! And Havelock did not come to fulfil their hopes, soon dashed by news that he had been forced to fall back on Cawnpore, to recruit his own wasted forces. At the beginning of August, our people had heard heavy firing and the sound of English music in the city, which brought them out cheering and shaking hands with each other on the tops of the houses, eager to catch the first sight of their approaching friends. That night they slept little, and rose to be bitterly disappointed. The rebels tauntingly derided this short-lived joy, shouting over the cause of yesterday's commotion. They had been saluting the boy crowned as puppet-king of Oudh. Their bands, indeed, were often heard playing familiar tunes, taught them in quieter days, and always wound up their concerts with "God Save the Queen!" which must have sounded a strange mockery in those English ears. Once it was the turn of the English to make a joyful demonstration, firing off a general salute on a report of the fall of Delhi, which turned out false, or at least premature.