iddle of the march
a poor sailor lad, just in front of me, had his leg carried clean off
above the knee by a round-shot, and, although knocked head over heels by
the force of the shot, he sat bolt upright on the grass, with the blood
spouting from the stump of his limb like water from the hose of a
fire-engine, and shouted, "Here goes a shilling a day, a shilling a day!
Pitch into them, boys, pitch into them! Remember Cawnpore, Ninety-Third,
remember Cawnpore! Go at them, my hearties!" and he fell back in a dead
faint, and on we went. I afterwards heard that the poor fellow was dead
before a doctor could reach the spot to bind up his limb.

I will conclude this chapter with an extract from Sir Colin's despatch
on the advance on the Shah Nujeef:

The Ninety-Third and Captain Peel's guns rolled on in one
irresistible wave, the men falling fast, but the column
advanced till the heavy guns were within twenty yards of the
walls of the Shah Nujeef, where they were unlimbered and
poured in round after round against the massive walls of the
building, the withering fire of the Highlanders covering the
Naval Brigade from great loss. But it was an action almost
unexampled in war. Captain Peel behaved very much as if he
had been laying the _Shannon_ alongside an enemy's frigate.

But in this despatch Sir Colin does not mention that he was himself
wounded by a bullet after it had passed through the head of a
Ninety-Third grenadier.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] _Ficus Indica._

[19] The author is quite right in this surmise; the road was made
through the old breach in 1861.

CHAPTER V

PERSONAL ANECDOTES--CAPTURE OF THE SHAH NUJEEF--A FEARFUL EXPERIENCE

I must now leave for a little the general struggle, and turn to the
actions of individual men as they fell under my own observation,--actions
which neither appear in despatches nor in history; and, by the way, I
may remark that one of the best accounts extant of the taking of the
Shah Nujeef is that of Colonel Alison, in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for
October, 1858. Both the Alisons were severely wounded on that
occasion,--Colonel Archibald Alison, Military Secretary, and his
brother, Captain F. M. Alison, A.D.C. to Sir Colin Campbell. I will now
relate a service rendered by Sergeant M. W. Findlay, of my company,
which was never noticed nor rewarded. Sergeant Findlay, let me state,
merely considered that he had done his duty,