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Subsequently he was joined by General Neill, with reinforcements from Allahabad; and on July 20th he set on for the relief of Lucknow, leaving Cawnpore in charge of General Neill. The defence of Lucknow against fifty-two thousand rebels was, next to the siege of Delhi, the greatest event in the mutiny. The whole Province of Oudh was in a blaze of insurrection.
A flash of rage distorted the major's face. His blue eyes burned with strange fire. "Never!" he shouted, crouching there at the brink of the jewel-pit. "Call it insubordination, mutiny, anything you like, but I'm going to have my fill of these! Faith, but I will, now!" "Sir " "I don't give a damn! Jewels for mine!" His voice rose gusty, raw, wild.
By this means the mutiny had been quelled, but a dangerous precedent established. Anxiety concerning this rebellion is supposed to have hastened the Grand Commander's death. A violent fever seized him on the 1st, and terminated his existence on the 5th of March, in the fifty-first year of his life.
He avowed his determination to go to Amsterdam in order to offer himself as a hostage to the soldiery, if by so doing he could quell the mutiny.
It was said that early in life he had been apprenticed to an attorney at Aberdeen as George Carruthers. His third cousin, the Marquis of Killiecrankie, had been killed out hunting; the second scion of the noble family had fallen at Balaclava; a third had perished in the Indian Mutiny; and a fourth, who did reign for a few months, died suddenly, leaving a large family of daughters.
Such was the sacredness of this obligation, that even in the midst of the political contests by which the city was distracted, the soldiers, though eager to secure the freedom of their country, would not attempt to gain it by mutiny against their commanders.
The death of Havelock, following the story of the capture of Delhi, and told with the same breath that proclaimed the deliverance at Lucknow, was received in England with a universal sorrow that will never be forgotten so long as men are living who can recall the memory of the "Mutiny of Fifty-seven."
The month of June is the hottest month of the year at Delhi; the average height of the thermometer being 92°. There, in such weather, the force must sit still, watch the pouring in of reinforcements and supplies to the city which it was too small to invest, and hear from day to day fresh tidings of disaster and revolt on every hand, tidings of evil which there could scarcely be any hope of checking, until this central point of the mutiny had fallen before the British arms.
Another source of distress to the Queen and the Prince, when the mutiny began to be put down, was the indiscriminate vengeance which a section of the rulers in India seemed inclined to take on the natives for the brutalities of the rebels. At length Lucknow was relieved, and England breathed freely again, though the country had to mourn the death of Havelock.
Then had come the mutiny, if such it could he called an uprising of some of the sailors, driven to almost insane anger because of the refusal of the captain to put into a port, the harbor of which could not he made in such a sea as was running, nor in the teeth of such furious wind. The only thing to do was to scud before the gale, with the engines and crew doing what they could.
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