The Party Retreats in Disorder

Now started a most dreadful journey.
The mass of sepoys was by now a long way off and the remaining rear-guard too had scuttled, leaving Scot to walk after them. On sepoy remained at the tree some time longer, a show of bravado perhaps but of little use. The matchlock men continued to fire at them every now and then but with no effect. Some of the women and children in two carts fell behind, the remaining sepoys refusing to stay with them. Scot was left on his own to bring up the rear – the sepoys clearly disdained the presence of the women, thinking them a nuisance; their only concern was the safety of their officers. Scot ordered the carts abandoned, and the women were forced to walk, carrying or dragging their children along as best they could, barefoot for the most part, over the thorny ground. Scot remained in the rear with the sepoys, occasionally turning around to fire on their pursuers.
After an hour, they came to a pile of rocks, high enough to afford both shelter and protection. Here, they stopped. Mr. Sturt went off to a nearby village – it was not clear what he actually expected to achieve, but when he came back, he said the villagers had tried to take his pistols, and he had lost his horse, though whether he had got off or fallen off, he wouldn’t say. Fairly soon a fire was opened on them. The rocks provided ample shelter, but panic had taken hold, and some men led the party off. A heated discussion ensued as to whether or not now was the time to shoot the leaders, whom Scot called cowards, but it was finally decided that now was not the time. The dacoits who had started this little shooting match soon let off following the retreating party, refusing to leave their own territory and the villagers had no stomach for a fight, plunder being their only real concern.

Scot now describes the fugitives – and even though he was writing sometime after the fact, his disgust was not tempered with time nor the horror at his predicament.

I had Townsend’s horse with me—it was a very strong one—and I took up three children on it before and behind me and made a very fat woman, who would have hidden an elephant under her vast proportions, take hold of my stirrup leather. There was another woman, Mrs Langdale, wife of the writer of the station office; she was about as fat and unfit to travel as the other, and her husband (once a serjeant of the 14th Dragoons) was not much inclined to help her; he did very little for her. I had now got among the bandmen’s wives and children, who could not keep up with the main body, and it was most distressing. I could not carry more than three children, and yet there were many, old and young, who needed help. The Sepoys who stuck by me were anxious that I should push on and abandon those about me. They look on half castes with intense disgust, and the idea of being brought into danger for them was most distasteful. They thought the two English ladies an encumbrance, and these they began to look on with hostility. They wished to save their officers and were willing to risk much for them, but for the others, they cared little.

The situation only worsened.
Scot sent Captain Ewart to advise them to trace their steps back to Chhatarpur, rather than Mahoba, and to bring back word on the whereabouts of the rest of the corps, as they were no longer in sight. Ewart went, but he was unable to return to tell Scot what he had found out. Villagers told Scot the sepoys had made for Mahoba, and without any other intelligence, Scot decided they should make their way there.
The two corpulent women Scot had so complained of disappeared on this march; one died of sunstroke, and the other was abandoned by her husband. Instead of caring for her, when he was unable to get her along, he had left her where she was.
They reached Mahoba around 1 pm. The first thing Scot found was the accoutrements of some five men, fearing the rest would follow course, but very few did. The sepoys of the Chirkaru Raja were outside and inside Mahoba, and they refused them the right to enter but let them pass by the town. Durga Singh, one of the remaining men to stay with Scot, went and spoke to the guard and was told that Mr. Carne, who had separated himself from the party, had taken a guard of the Raja and pushed onto Chirkaru, where it was supposed the Raja had received him.
They now stopped by a well next to a mango grove, getting some relief from the water and the fruit. Durga Singh, in the meantime, was giving Scot rather menacing looks – Scot had got himself in with the bandsmen’s wives, and perhaps to soothe the sepoy’s growing ferocity, he quickly brought on the children. The villagers, besides giving them sullen glances, offered them no menace, and after ten minutes, Scot pushed the party on.