The British gun ammunition was exhausted, but Lawrence ordered the empty guns to be planted across the bridge, and the gunners to stand beside them with lighted port-fires, and before the menace of those unloaded guns the Sepoy pursuit was arrested! Out of his little European force no fewer than 112 men and five officers of the 32nd were slain. The memory of those gallant men poisoned Henry Lawrence’s dying moments. He blamed himself because, as he said, he “had been moved by the fear of man to undertake so hazardous an enterprise.” How darkly that night settled down on Lucknow may be imagined. The scene when the broken troops, blackened with dust, staggering with exhaustion, bloody from wounds, came streaming into the Residency, was one of the wildest confusion. It seemed as if everything was lost. The victorious Sepoys might carry the Residency with one breathless rush. “The end of all things seemed to have come,” says Dr. Fayrer—who was busy dressing wounds amid all the tumult. “The poor ladies,” he adds, “who, like others, were anticipating immediate death, were perfectly calm, and showed great fortitude.” Lady Inglis has told how she “watched our poor soldiers returning—the most mournful sight. They were straggling in by twos and threes; some riding, some on guns, some supported by their comrades.” “Almost every other cavalry volunteer,” says another eye-witness, “was encumbered with two, three, or even four foot-soldiers; one perhaps holding his hand, another laying fast hold on the crupper, or the tail of the horse, or the stirrup, or on all together.” Lady Inglis tells the story of how the news of Colonel Case’s death was brought to his wife. “Mrs. Case came up to me and said, ‘Oh, Mrs. Inglis, go to bed. I have just heard that your husband and mine are both safe.’ I said, ‘Why, I did not know Colonel Case went out.’ Just then John (Colonel Inglis) came in. He was crying, and after kissing me turned to Mrs. Case and said, ‘Poor Case!’ Never shall I forget the cry of agony from the poor widow.” It was at a crisis like this that the gallant and masterful spirit of Henry Lawrence shone out. The Sepoys had a saying that “when Lawrence Sahib had looked once down to the ground, and once up to the sky, and stroked his beard, he knew what to do.” He had, that is, in an unrivalled degree, the faculty of seeing into the heart of a difficulty, and the twin faculty of swift decision. The disaster of Chinhut had changed the whole situation. Lawrence had armed and garrisoned a cluster of castellated buildings, called the Mutchee Bhawan, about a thousand yards from the Residency, for the purpose of over-awing the city. But his losses at Chinhut made it difficult to hold the Residency, and impossible to hold both the Residency and the Mutchee Bhawan; and on the morning of July 1, from a rough semaphore on the roof of the Residency, a message was signalled to the Mutchee Bhawan, “Retire to-night at twelve. Blow up well.”