There was yet another well, which yielded nothing then: which will yield nothing till the sea, too, gives up her dead. It lay two hundred yards from the rampart, beneath the walls of the unfinished barracks. Thither at an hour varied nightly, for fear lest the rebel shot should swell the funeral, with stealthy step and scant attendance the slain of the previous day were borne. When morning broke the battle raged around that sepulchre. Overhead the cannon roared, and men charged to and fro. But those below rested none the less peacefully; their last cartridge bitten; their last achievement performed: their last pang of hunger and affliction undergone and already forgotten. There were deposited, within the space of three weeks, two hundred and fifty English people, a fourth by tale of the whole garrison. As in a season of trouble and lawlessness men bury away their jewels and their gold against the return of tranquillity and order: so the survivors committed to the faithful mould their dear treasures, trusting that time and the fortune of war would enable our country to honour her lost ones with a more solemn rite, and a worthier tomb. Brief was the service whispered on the brink of that sad well in the sultry summer night. It was much, when they came to the grave, while the corpse was being made ready to be laid into the earth, if the priest then said: "In the midst of life we are in death. Of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?"
"Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death."
And again, while the earth was being cast upon the body by some standing by, the priest might with the assent of all declare that it was of His great mercy that it had pleased Almighty God to take unto Himself the soul of the dear brother there departed.
Throughout the siege public worship, at stated hours, and of prescribed length and form, neither did nor could take place: but the spirit and the essential power of religion were not wanting. The station chaplain, Mr. Moncrieff, made it his concern that no one should die or suffer without the consolations of Christianity. And whenever he could be spared from the hospital, this shepherd of a pest-stricken flock, he would go the round of the batteries, and read a few Prayers and Psalms to the fighting folk. With heads bent, and hands folded over the muzzles of their rifles; soothed, some by genuine piety, some by the associations of gladsome Christmas mornings and drowsy Sunday afternoons spent in the aisle of their village church; they listened calmly to the familiar words, those melancholy and resolute men. Each congregation was more thin than the last. There were always present some two or three to whom never again would grace be given to join with accord in the common supplication. The people of Cawnpore might say in the language used in a like strait by a brave and God-fearing soldier, the Greatheart of English History:--"Indeed we are at this time a very crazy company; yet we live in His sight, and shall work the time that is appointed us, and shall rest after that in peace."