The order having been given, the dhoolies were picked up by very reluctant native bearers, the surgeons closed in round their charges, and they started off, while the escort covered their progress as best they could. After a terrible hour’s journeying, with sepoys hanging on flank and rear, the little company eventually reached the Martinière (a building erected by a French soldier of fortune in the eighteenth century). Their stay here was short, however, for a well-directed cannonade drove them once more afield. A flooded nullah was next crossed, and beyond this seemed to lie safety, but a fatal blunder on the part of their guide led them into a veritable death-trap.
The street into which they filed appeared to be deserted. As a matter of fact it was full of sepoys, who were concealed in the houses on either side. This was the narrow street leading to the Bailey Guard Gate, the entrance to the Residency; along its three-quarters of a mile, some hours previously, the 78th Highlanders and Brasyer’s Sikhs had won their way through a perfect tempest of shot. A similar reception awaited the dhoolies.
As the ill-fated train passed through and gained the square at the farther end, the storm of musketry broke into full blast over their heads. In a moment the panic-stricken bearers dropped the dhoolies and fled for dear life, leaving the wounded men in the middle of the square exposed to every sepoy marksman. The fire of close on a thousand muskets must have been concentrated on that small enclosure, but Surgeon Home managed, with nine men of the escort, to get half a dozen of the wounded within the shelter of a building before which was a covered archway.
Surgeon Bradshaw, meanwhile, who had been in the rear of the train, had collected his dhoolies as soon as the nature of the trap was disclosed, and turned hastily back to seek the turning that their guide ought to have taken. The luckless Thornhill had been killed, having been one of the first to be shot down. It is satisfactory to add that Bradshaw was successful in bringing his dhoolies to safe quarters without further mishap.
Would that such had been the case with Surgeon Home! He and his party had gained shelter for the time, but none could say how long it would be before the horde of sepoys would storm it. The most daring of the mutineers had already ventured out into the square to kill those of the wounded whom they could reach and to fire through the windows of the house.
