Hope Grant says that “before the order was given a native Sikh officer started forward, sword in hand, followed by his men.” The 93rd determined not to let the Sikhs outcharge them, and instantly ran forward. The Sikhs had a few yards’ start, but “a sergeant of the 93rd, Sergeant-Major Murray, a fine active fellow, outstripped them, jumped through the opening like a harlequin, and, as he landed on the other side, was shot through the breast and fell dead.” Archibald Forbes says the first man through the breach was an Irishman, Lance-Corporal Donnelly, of the 93rd, killed as he jumped through the breach; the second was a Sikh, the third a Scotchman, Sergeant-Major Murray, also killed. Who shall decide when there is such a conflict of testimony betwixt the very actors in the great scene! Roberts confirms Hope Grant in the statement that a Highlander was the first to reach the goal, and was shot dead as he reached the enclosure; and he adds one curiously pathetic detail. A drummer-boy of the 93rd, he says, “must have been one of the first to pass that grim boundary between life and death; for when I got in I found him just inside the breach, lying on his back, quite dead, a pretty, innocent-looking, fair-haired lad, not more than fourteen years old.” What daring must have burned in that lad’s Scottish blood when he thus took his place in the very van of the wild rush of veterans into the Secundrabagh! Forbes-Mitchell, who actually took part in the charge, gives yet another account. The order to charge, he says, was given, and the Sikhs, who caught it first, leaped over the mud-wall, behind which they were lying, shouting their war-cry, and, led by their two British officers, ran eagerly towards the breach. Both their officers were shot before they had run many yards, and at that the Sikhs halted. “As soon as Sir Colin saw them waver, he turned to the 93rd, and said, ‘Colonel Ewart, bring on the tartan! Let my own lads at them.’” Before the command could be repeated, or the buglers had time to sound the advance, “the whole seven companies like one man leaped over the wall with such a yell of pent-up rage as I never heard before nor since. It was not a cheer, but a concentrated yell of rage and ferocity, that made the echoes ring again; and it must have struck terror into the defenders, for they actually ceased firing, and we could see them through the breach rushing from the outside wall to take shelter in the two-storeyed building in the centre of the garden, the gate and doors of which they firmly barred.” The Secundrabagh, it must be remembered, was held by four strong Sepoy regiments, numbering in all from 2000 to 3000 men, many of them veteran soldiers, wearing the medals they had won in British service, and they fought with desperate courage. The human jet of stormers through the gap in the wall was a mere tiny squirt, but the main body of the 93rd blew in the lock of the great gate with their bullets, and came sweeping in.