But the moment they emerged from the village, the great howitzer in the Nana’s centre opened fire upon the Highlanders, and once more the unequal duel between bayonet and cannon had to be renewed. Havelock himself galloped up to where the Highlanders were reforming after the confusion and rapture of their rush, and, pointing with his sword to the great howitzer, pouring its red torrent of flame upon them, cried: “Now, Highlanders! another charge like that wins the day.”
The Gaelic blood was still on fire. The officers could hardly restrain their men till they were roughly formed. In another moment the kilts and bonnets and bayonets of the 78th were pouring in a torrent over the big gun, and the rebel centre was broken! Meanwhile the 64th and 84th had thrust roughly back Nana Sahib’s right wing; but, fighting bravely, the Sepoys clung with unusual courage to a village about a mile to the rear of the position they first held, and their guns, drawn up in its front, fired fast and with deadly effect.
The Highlanders, pressing on from the centre, found themselves shoulder to shoulder with the 64th, advancing from the left. Maude’s guns, with the teams utterly exhausted, were a mile to the rear. Men were dropping fast in the British ranks, worn out with marching and charging under heat so cruel. In the smoke-blackened lines men were stumbling from very fatigue as they advanced on the quick red flashes and eddying smoke of the battery which covered the village. But Havelock, riding with the leading files, knew the soldier’s nature “from the crown of his shako down to his ammunition boots.” “Who,” he cried, “is to take that village—the Highlanders or the 64th?” Both regiments had Northern blood in them—the 64th is now known as the North Staffordshire—and that sudden appeal, that pitted regiment against regiment, sent the stout Midlanders of the 64th and the hot-blooded Gaels from the clachans and glens and loch sides of Ross-shire, forward in one racing charge that carried guns and village without a check.
The battle seemed won, and Havelock, reforming his column, moved steadily forward. But the Nana was playing his last card, and his generals at least showed desperate courage. They made a third stand athwart the Cawnpore road, and within a short distance of Cawnpore itself. A 24-pounder, flanked on either side by guns of lighter calibre, covered the Nana’s front, and his infantry, a solid mass, was drawn up behind the guns. Havelock’s men had marched twenty miles, and made a dozen desperate charges. Their guns were far in the rear. Yet to halt was to be destroyed.