Campbell’s imagination, it seems, was haunted by the sense that each Sepoy position, when it was carried, was an abandoned powder-magazine, packed thick with the possibilities of dreadful explosions. And facts justified that uncomfortable belief. The story of one such fatal explosion may be briefly told. In the Jumma Musjid no less than nine cart-loads of gunpowder were discovered. The powder was packed in tin cases, and it was resolved to destroy it by flinging the cases down a well. A line of men was formed, and the cases passed quickly from hand to hand. The first case flung down struck against the side of the well, and exploded. The flame ran from case to case along the whole line till it reached the carts. The cases in the very hands of the men exploded, the nine cart-loads went off in one terrific blast of flame and sound, and, with one exception, the whole party—numbering twenty-two men, with two engineer officers in command—was killed. The only man who escaped was the one that threw that fatal first case down the well! When the Kaisarbagh and the Mess-house fell, and the third line of Sepoy defences was thus carried, Lucknow was practically in the British power. But on the next day, March 15, Colin Campbell, wary and war-wise soldier though he was, committed a second blunder, which helped to rob the success of some of its best fruits. He realised the blunder he committed when he held back Outram, and to remedy it he perpetrated a further mistake. He despatched his two cavalry brigades in pursuit of the flying Sepoys, and despatched them on the wrong roads. The absence of the cavalry created a huge gap in the British lines on the north of the Goomtee, and a great body of Sepoys, said to be more than 20,000 strong, escaped through it unharmed. “In this way,” says Lord Roberts, “the campaign, which should then have come to an end, was protracted for nearly a year by the fugitives spreading themselves over Oude, and occupying forts and other strong positions, from which they were able to offer resistance to our troops till the end of May 1859; thus causing needless loss of thousands of British soldiers.” That is a severe condemnation to be written by one great soldier on another.