The left battalion was the 64th. Major Stirling promptly brought forward his leading files, and Havelock’s son and aide-de-camp galloped down, and, riding beside Stirling, shared with him the leadership of the charge—a circumstance for which the 64th, as a matter of fact, scarcely forgave him, as they wanted no better leadership than that of their own major. There was less of _élan_ and dash about this charge than in the earlier charges of the day; but in steady valour it was unsurpassed. On came the 64th, silently and coolly. Havelock himself, in a letter to his wife, wrote with a father’s pride about his son. “I never saw so brave a youth,” he wrote, “as the boy Harry: he placed himself opposite the muzzle of a gun that was scattering death into the ranks of the 64th Queen’s, and led on the regiment under a shower of grape to its capture. This finished the fight. The grape was deadly, but he calm, as if telling George stories about India.” When the steady but shot-tormented line of the 64th found itself so near the battery that through the whirling smoke they could see the toiling gunners and the gleam of Sepoy bayonets beyond them, then the British soldiers made their leap. With a shout they charged on and over the guns, and through the lines behind, and Nana Sahib’s force was utterly and finally crushed. Havelock had not a sabre to launch on the flying foe; but his tired infantry, who had marched twenty miles, and fought without pause for four hours, kept up the pursuit till the outer edge of Cawnpore was reached. Then Havelock halted them; and, piling arms, the exhausted soldiers dropped in sections where they stood, falling asleep on the bare ground, careless of food or tents. They were aroused long before daybreak, and through their ranks ran in whispers the story, grim and terrible, of the massacre which, by only a few hours, had cheated their splendid valour of its reward. How great was the valour, how stubborn the endurance, shown thus far by Havelock’s men is not easily realised. In nine days—betwixt July 7-16—they had, to quote their commander’s words “marched under the Indian sun of July 126 miles, and fought four actions.” What better proof of hardihood, valour, and discipline could be imagined? But the British soldier is a queer compound, with very sudden and surprising alternations of virtue. When Cawnpore was won and plundered, immense stores of beer and spirits fell into the hands of the soldiers, and for a time it seemed as if Havelock’s band of heroes would dissolve into a mere ignoble gang of drunkards. Havelock promptly ordered every drinkable thing in Cawnpore to be bought or seized. “If I had not done this,” he wrote, “it would have required one half my force to keep the other half sober, and I should not have had a soldier in camp!”