I shall not dwell on the agonies
and bloodshed which have hallowed this place for ever; they are done
with, and those who suffered have been at rest for nearly sixty years.
The deep peace around us overlies their torments and forbids us to think
too much of the darker side of the picture. But the heroism, the
courage, the indomitable spirit that animated these men and women, these
things live for ever, rising up from the earth in a flood of inspiration
for all who pass over the place.

[Illustration: THE WELL OF CAWNPORE.]

There are certain little animals called Tasmanian devils, who do not
know what it is to give in; they die fighting and attack their
persecutors as long as one limb hangs on to another; of such stuff were
the people besieged at Cawnpore. They were encamped here on a wretched
piece of flat ground, quite open except for a low mud wall, which anyone
could have jumped over easily. There were about nine hundred and fifty
of them altogether, some soldiers, some civilians, some women and
children and a few native soldiers who remained loyal. Outside were
unending hordes of natives well armed and well trained, because the
greater part were the men of the native regiments who had mutinied,
known by the name of Sepoys. A few huts built of thin brick were all the
shelter the beleaguered people had; they were constantly under a
shrieking storm of bullets and shells, and were ringed around by steel.
You would have said two days at the outside would see the end of it, and
that then the black hordes would sweep clean over that field, having
wiped out the garrison completely; but so amazing is the power of pluck
that those within held the hordes at bay for twenty-three days! They not
only prevented any single Sepoy from getting inside alive, but they
constantly sallied out and acted on the defensive, burning their
enemies' defences and killing scores of them, while thousands fled in
confusion before them! The sublime impudence of it! And all the time
they were short of food; women and children were laid in holes in the
earth covered with planks to protect them from the bullets. And
water--ah, that was the worst--water had to be fetched from a well which
was quite exposed in the midst of the encampment, and the Sepoys kept up
an incessant fire on it. We are now beside it, this well where water was
drawn at the price of blood, and yet volunteers were never lacking. The
very ground our feet now rest upon was ringed aro