No prayer was said, no blessing invoked, no passover eaten before that inauspicious exodus. Moore went about from group to group, and impressed upon his colleagues that it would be idle to attempt to preserve order in the embarkation. His instructions were to push off as soon as all had been got on board, and make for the opposite shore, where further arrangements might be completed at leisure and in comparative safety. And then a drink of water was handed in at the door of each palanquin, and the expedition set forth. A mob of peasants at once rushed upon the deserted premises, and spread themselves about in quest of plunder. They might have spared their pains. A camel-rider, who entered among the first, saw nothing except "three useless brass guns that had been split, two leathern bottles of liquid butter, a sack of fine flour, and the bodies of eleven Europeans. They were on quilts on the floor, some of them still breathing, though dying from severe gunshot wounds."
The show was not such as would dazzle a vulgar eye: but in the soul of those with whom glory is not skin-deep, the retinue of an imperial coronation would fail to inspire the reverence excited by that ragged and spiritless cavalcade. First came the men of the Thirty-second regiment, their dauntless captain at the head;--thinking little, as ever, of the past, but much of the future;--and so marching unconscious towards the death which he had often courted. Then moved on the throng of naked bearers, groaning in monotonous cadence beneath the weight of palanquins, through whose sliding panels might be discerned the pallid forms of the wounded;--their limbs rudely bandaged with shirtsleeves, and old stockings, and strips of gown and petticoat. Mayhap, as they jolted along, they fed their sickly fancies with a listless anticipation that the hour was not remote when they might forget the miserable present amidst the joys of ice, and lemonade, and clean sheets, and nourishment more appetising than parched grain and bad pease-porridge. Behind these creaked a caravan of carts, dragged by bullocks, on which were huddled ladies used to a very different equipage; while here and there paced a stately elephant, his tusks adorned with rings of brass, and his forehead painted in grotesque patterns, who, perchance, a century back, was tugging a gun across the field of Plassey, and who now bore a cluster of English women and children clinging nervously to the ropes which encircled his huge girth. And next, musket on shoulder and revolver in belt, followed they who could still walk and fight. Step was not kept in those ranks. Little was there of martial array, or soldier-like gait and attitude. Lace might not be seen, nor embroidery, nor facings, nor uniforms which could be recognised at the Horseguards or smiled on in county ballrooms. In discoloured flannel and tattered nankeen, mute and in pensive mood, tramped by the remnant of the immortal garrison. These men had finished their toil and had fought their battle: and now, if hope was all but dead within them, there survived, at least, no residue of fear.