re the surgeons were, fully expecting
that he would be dead before anything could be done for him. It will
thus be seen that the assertion that Major Hodson was looting when he
was killed is untrue. No looting had been commenced, not even by Jung
Bahadoor's Goorkhas. That Major Hodson was killed through his own
rashness cannot be denied; but for any one to say that he was looting is
a cruel slander on one of the bravest of Englishmen."

Shortly after I had lifted poor Hodson into the _dooly_ and sent him
away in charge of his orderly, the two men who had gone for the powder
came up with several bags, with slow-matches fixed in them. These we
ignited, and then pitched the bags in through the door. Two or three
bags very soon brought the enemy out, and they were bayoneted down
without mercy. One of the men who were with me was, I think, Mr. Rule,
who is now _sans_ a leg, and employed by the G.I.P. Railway in Bombay,
but was then a powerful young man of the light company. Rule rushed in
among the rebels, using both bayonet and butt of his rifle, shouting,
"Revenge for the death of Hodson!" and he killed more than half the men
single-handed. By this time we had been over two hours inside the
breach, and almost all opposition had ceased. Lieutenant and Adjutant
"Willie" MacBean, as he was known to the officers, and "Paddy" MacBean
to the men, encountered a _havildar_, a _naik_, and nine sepoys at one
gate, and killed the whole eleven, one after the other. The _havildar_
was the last; and by the time he got out through the narrow gate,
several men came to the assistance of MacBean, but he called to them not
to interfere, and the _havildar_ and he went at it with their swords. At
length MacBean made a feint cut, but instead gave the point, and put his
sword through the chest of his opponent. For this MacBean got the
Victoria Cross, mainly, I believe, because Sir Edward Lugard, the
general in command of the division, was looking down from the ramparts
above and saw the whole affair. I don't think that MacBean himself
thought he had done anything extraordinary. He was an Inverness-shire
ploughman before he enlisted, and rose from the ranks to command the
regiment, and died a major-general. There were still a number of old
soldiers in the regiment who had been privates with MacBean when I
enlisted, and many anecdotes were related about him. One of these was
that when MacBean first joined, he walked with a rolling gait, and the
dr