Lord Roberts gives another version of this incident. The Sepoys, he says, were driven out of the earthwork which covered the gateway, and were swept back into the Secundrabagh, and the heavy doors of the great gateway were being hurriedly shut in the face of the stormers. A subahdar of the 4th Punjab Infantry reached the gate in time enough to thrust his left arm, on which was carried a shield, between the closing doors. His hand was slashed across by a tulwar from within, whereupon he drew it out, instantly thrusting in the other arm, when his right hand, in turn, was all but severed from the wrist! But he kept the gates from being shut, and in another minute the men of the 93rd, of the 53rd, and of the gallant Punjabee’s own regiment went storming in. The men of the 53rd again tried, with success, another device. They lifted their caps on the tips of their bayonets to a line of iron-barred windows above their heads, and thus drew the fire of their defenders. Then they leaped up, tore away the bars, and, clambering on each other’s shoulders, broke through. Forbes-Mitchell was the fifth or sixth man through the breach, and was immediately fired upon point-blank by a Sepoy lying in the grass half-a-dozen yards distant. The bullet struck the thick brass buckle on his belt, and such was the force of the blow that it tumbled him head over heels. Colonel Ewart came next to Forbes-Mitchell, who heard his colonel say, as he rushed past him, “Poor fellow! he is done for.” Ewart, a gallant Highlander, of commanding stature, played a great part in the struggle within the Secundrabagh. His bonnet was shot or struck off his head, and, bareheaded, amidst the push and sway and madness of the fight, he bore himself like a knight of old. The fight within the walls of the Secundrabagh raged for nearly two hours, and the sounds that floated up from it as the Sepoys, “fighting like devils”—to quote an actor in the scene,—were driven from floor to floor of the building, or across the green turf of the garden, were appalling. The fighting passion amongst the combatants often took queer shapes. Thus one man, known amongst the 93rd as “the Quaker,” from his great quietness, charged into the Secundrabagh like a kilted and male Fury, and, according to Forbes-Mitchell, quoting a verse of the Scottish psalm with every thrust of his bayonet or shot from his rifle:— “I’ll of salvation take the cup, On God’s name will I call; I’ll pay my vows now to the Lord Before His people all.” Scottish psalm, punctuated with bayonet thrusts: this surely is the strangest battle-hymn ever heard!