[13] The reports sent home at the time of the Hot Springs affair were inaccurate as to the manner in which I was wounded, and also Major Wallace Dunlop, who was the only European anywhere near me at the time. Major Dunlop shot his own man, but at such close quarters that the Tibetan's sword slipped down the barrel of his rifle and cut off two fingers of his left hand. General Macdonald and Captain Bignell, who shot several men with their revolvers, were standing at the corner where the wall joined the ruined house, and did not see the attack on myself and Dunlop.
The Tibetans could not have chosen a spot more fatal for their stand--a bluff hill to the north, a marsh and stream on the east, and to the west a stone wall built across the path, which they had to scale in their attempted assault on General Macdonald and his escort. Only one man got over. Inside there was barely an acre of ground, packed so thickly with seething humanity that the cross-fire which the Pioneers poured in offered little danger to their own men.
The Lhasa General must have fired off his revolver after I was struck down. I cannot credit the rumour that his action was a signal for a general attack, and that the Tibetans allowed themselves to be herded together as a ruse to get us at close quarters. To begin with, the demand that they should give up their arms, and the assurance that they might go off unmolested, must have been quite unexpected by them, and I doubt if they realized the advantage of an attack at close quarters.
My own impression is that the shot was the act of a desperate man, ignorant and regardless of what might ensue. To return to Lhasa with his army disarmed and disbanded, and without a shot having been fired, must have meant ruin to him, and probably death. When we reached Gyantse we heard that his property had been confiscated from his family on account of his failure to prevent our advance.
The Depon was a man of fine presence and bearing. I only saw him once, in his last interview with Colonel Younghusband, but I cannot dissociate from him a personal courage and a pride that must have rankled at the indignity of his position. Probably he knew that his shot was suicidal.
The action has been described as one of extreme folly. But what was left him if he lived except shame and humiliation? And what Englishman with the same prospect to face, caught in this dark eddy of circumstance, would not have done the same thing? He could only fire, and let his men take their chance, God help them!