d.
Captain Paton despatched a messenger to the Resident to say, that he
could hold the gate no longer without troops: but before he could get
a reply, the insurgents brought up an elephant to force in the gate
with his head. The first failed in the attempt, and drew back with a
frightful roar. A second, urged on by a furious driver, broke in the
gate, one-half fell with a crash to the ground, and the elephant
plunged in after it. Captain Paton was standing with his back against
this half, and must have been killed; but Mukun, one of his
chuprassies, seeing the gate giving way, caught him by the arm and
dragged him behind the other half. The other three chuprassies ran
off in a fright and hid themselves. Two of them were Surubdawun Sing
and Juggurnath, two brothers, who will be mentioned elsewhere in this
diary.*

[* See Juggurnath chuprassie in Chapter V., Vol. II.]

The furious and confused mass rushed in through the half-opened gate,
and beat Captain Paton to the ground with their bludgeons, the hilts
of their swords, and the butt-ends of their muskets. Mukun,
chuprassie, his only remaining attendant, was beaten down at the same
time and severely bruised, but he soon got up, covered with blood,
made his way out through the crowd, and ran to meet the five
companies of the 35th Regiment, then not far distant, under Colonel
Monteath. As soon as he heard from Mukun the state in which he had
left his master, he sent on a party of thirty sipahees under Captain
Cowley, with orders to make all possible haste to the rescue. They
arrived in time to save his life from the fury of the assailants, but
found him insensible from his wounds.

In a few minutes every court-yard within the palace walls was filled
with the armed and disorderly mass. The Resident, Captain Shakespear,
and their few attendants, tried to stop them by every impediment they
could throw in their way, but in vain. The assailants rushed past or
over them, brandishing their swords and firelocks, with loud
shoutings and flaming torches, and soon filled all the apartments of
the palace, save those occupied by the ladies and their female
attendants, and the dead body of the late King. The Resident and his
Assistant, and the Meer Moonshee, were soon separated from the new
sovereign and his small party, who lay for some time concealed in the
small room in which he had been left to repose, while they were
confined to the northern verandah overlooking the river, and