Three boats out of the forty, meanwhile, had actually got away. Two drifted to the Oude shore, and were overtaken by instant massacre. One boat, however, had for the moment a happier fate. It caught the mid-current of the Ganges, and went drifting downwards; and that solitary drifting boat, without oars or rudder, bearing up in its crazy planks above the dark waters of the Ganges the sole survivors of the heroic garrison of Cawnpore, started on a wilder, stranger voyage than is recorded elsewhere in all history. It was Vibart’s boat; and by a curious chance it included in its passengers the most heroic spirits in the garrison. Moore was there, and Ashe, and Delafosse; Mowbray Thomson swam out to it from his own boat, and with him Murphy, a private of the 32nd—two of the four who finally survived out of the whole garrison. The boat was intended to carry only fifty, but nearly a hundred fugitives were crowded within its crazy sides. A cannon-shot smashed its rudder. It had no oars nor food. From either bank a hail of shot pursued it. Every now and again the clumsy boat would ground on some shallow; then, while the Sepoys shot fast and furiously, a group of officers would jump overboard, and push the clumsy craft afloat again. Moore, pushing at the boat in this fashion, with broken collar-bone, was shot through the heart. Ashe and Bowden and Glanville shared the same fate. Soon the dying and the dead on the deck of this shot-pelted boat were as many as the living. “We had no food in the boat,” wrote Mowbray Thomson afterwards; “the water of the Ganges was all that passed our lips. The wounded and the dead were often entangled together in the bottom of the boat.” When evening came the boat ran heavily aground. Under the screen of darkness the women and children were landed, and the boat, with great effort, floated again; the Sepoys accompanying the operation with volleys of musketry, flights of burning arrows, and even a clumsy attempt at a fire-ship. “No one slept that night, and no one ate, for food there was none on board.” When day broke the tragical voyage was continued, still to an accompaniment of musketry bullets. At two o’clock the boat stranded again. “Major Vibart,” says Mowbray Thomson, “had been shot through one arm on the preceding day. Nevertheless, he got out, and, while helping to push off the boat, was shot through the other arm. Captain Turner had both his legs smashed, Captain Whiting was killed, Lieutenant Harrison was shot dead.” These are sample records from that strange log.