The Chase

So they set out alone and their road was taking them to Banda. The night was just light enough to pick out the road ahead, and it was with some relief they found it was not guarded. They went along, quietly and steadily, passing villages and always answering they were travellers. Everyone they passed knew who they were, but no one stopped them. As a precaution, Scot occasionally resorted to leading the party through fields to lose and pursuers, but there were none. “There was a terrible to do at one very large village. Drums were beat, and men turned out. We lost our way there but escaped. Our only chance was flight, of course, and pistols and swords if overtaken.”
They marched on through the night, finally giving way to exhaustion at two in the morning under a grove of trees. Of water, there was none. At dawn, Scot set off to find some, but his search was fruitless. Only as the day began to brighten did they realise they had been sleeping near a well. The party, exhausted and hungry, started talking of giving themselves up – anything would have been better than this, wandering around the countryside, bruised and blistered with no sustenance and nowhere to go. But the water proved to be a better counsellor – after a few long drinks, they decided to push on. As some men were coming, they picked up the pace. This was now Mr. Barber’s fault. A coolie had been offered five rupees to show them the Banda road – in his desperation, Mr. Barber unwisely offered him a thousand if he took him to Calcutta:

“I fear it was thought he had the thousand with him, for those villagers pursued us with a vigour and courage that was very much wasted on five rupees, if that was all they wanted. Barber let two get up to him, and he stopped and talked to them. He should have known, as well as we did, that men with bamboos, made expressly for affrays, ought not to be trusted. It ended in him getting a clout from one and galloping after us. It was well he was not knocked off, for the bamboos were very heavy, and the men used them well, throwing them at us. When they began to pursue and to shout, Ewart went back and fired at them. Unfortunately, he missed, and the villains gathered others with loud cries of Sahiban, i.e., ” the gentlemen.”

What followed was catastrophic.
Sergeant Kirchoff was on foot and people from the surrounding villages were gathering. Scot had mounted a horse but he had Mr. Smalley behind him and Scot was holding in his left arm little Lotty Mawe. He set the Smalley baby into Kirke’s arms and then ordered Ewart to come with him to the rear to try and extricate Kirchoff from his predicament. Mrs. Kirchoff was set behind someone else on a horse and Kirchoff persuaded to mount hers. But it was a wasted effort.
“The three did so twice, and gave plenty of time; but it was not made use of. I pulled twice, and missed once, and missed fire once. The party were now moving on rapidly, and poor Mrs Kirchoff was holding her husband’s hand trying to drag him on, and appealling most piteously to us. I put a new cap on, and went to the rear again. Mrs Kirchoff had been dragged off by her husband, and was lying on the ground. A party of two horsemen and some ten men, all armed, were coming from the road to join against us, and villagers were coming up by the score.”
Young Henry Kirke was uselessly trying to help, but he had unwisely left Nowgong with a double-barrelled gun instead of the brace of double-barrelled pistols which he had intended to take, and now was ineffectually attempting to use his gun from the back of his horse with the Smalley baby in his arms. Scot could not use his sword, hampered as he was by Lotty and Mr. Smalley clinging to him for dear life.

“It was a most disastrous position, and I thought we had only to fight it out and die. I wished to get off and fight on foot. Thank God it was not easily done, and I did not… I had only one ball in my pistol, and though I had just put on a new cap, it was a question if it would do any good…Our bad shots had given them courage, still it was amazing that men with sticks should brave pistols. This time a man with a spear met me. I kept two opposite me at bay for a good while by pointing the pistol. At length bamboo No. 2 came at me. It, like one before it, went over my head. I fired, and the horse wheeled round, and a second after, ran off in the wildest way..“

Scot’s bridle was but a bit of thin cord without a curb chain as the drunken Artillery Sergeant had destroyed the proper bridle. He had Lotty in his arms, and the horse was out of all control. “I loathed running away this way but was quite powerless. At other times, with a complete double bridle and both hands, I could not stop this horse, so I had no advantages. Mr Smalley was bumping along behind me. Mr Franks was galloping alongside on a mare, closely followed by Mrs Kirchoff’s horse.”

Mr. Franks was pistol-whipping his pursuer and managed to shoot him twice, once in the chest and again in the head. Lieutenant Remington had completely misunderstood the situation, and, thinking it was a general stampede of sorts, he did what he thought everyone else was doing, pushing his horse on as fast as he could. Scot barely managed to stop his horse from jumping down a river bank by turning its head, forcing it to stop. They had run on for three miles and the rest of the party was nowhere in sight. Going back to help seemed fruitless; Scot had no bullet for his pistol and only a sword, and Mr. Smalley had no weapons at all. Only Franks had a pistol, but it was not enough to go back and face an unknown enemy to save people who, in Scot’s estimation, were probably all dead. Only now that they had come to a stop was Franks able to tell Scot his horse had a spear in its leg, which explained why the poor beast had run off so suddenly.

Onwards
Injured or not, there was nothing for it but to push on. The noonday sun was starting to tell on the men and little girl who struggled in Scot’s arms while he vainly tried to cover her little head with what remained of his shirt. They had eaten nothing since Kabrai the day before and had had no water since dawn. Remington and Franks spotted some huts up ahead and insisted on stopping, disregarding Scot’s misgivings. As it turned out, they were not wrong. The people (all watchmen by trade) proved to be hospitable, giving them food and shelter and even tending to their exhausted horses. Their host, one Ferukh Khan, a one-eyed chowkidar, did what he could for them, but he could not protect them past sunset, fearing they would be caught and murdered in his house.
Scot asked for the directions to Chunar but possibly due to a misunderstanding in pronunciation, they were sent off towards Cawnpore instead. Until dark, they invainly looked for a well Khan told them to go to, but instead they ended up on the banks of a river instead. Water was water, and they drank their fill before laying down under some trees for a little rest. Scot recited as much of the Littany has he could remember, and laying Lotty down on his shooting coat, they went to sleep.

They were now on the banks of the River Ken. With high banks and no boat to take them over, their only course was to proceed along the riverside – though had they done so, it would have been certain death. Scot realised the chowkidar’s mistake just in time – they were on the road to Cawnpore. Hastily, he turned the party around; any place, he reasoned, would be better than that cursed city.
They had been seen as they had ridden off in the morning, now, taking the same way back, swarms of villagers came out to see them, some hostile but no one gave chase. Perhaps by now, looking so bedraggled, they weren’t even worth plundering. Around noon, they stopped in a thick grove of trees, so thick that they could not see into it, which Scot hoped would shelter them not just from the sun but from anyone watching. They got some water and then lay down to rest.