field-battery, No. 17 of the Honourable
East India Company's artillery. We started from the Alumbagh late in the
afternoon, and reached Bunnee Bridge, seventeen miles from Lucknow,
about 11 P.M. Here the regiment halted till daylight on the
morning of the 28th of November, but the advance-guard with the women
and children, sick and wounded, had been moving since 2 A.M.

As already mentioned, all the subaltern officers in my company were
wounded, and I was told off, with a guard of about twenty men, to see
all the baggage-carts across Bunnee Bridge and on their way to Cawnpore.
While I was on this duty an amusing incident happened. A commissariat
cart, a common country hackery, loaded with biscuits, got upset, and its
wheel broke just as we were moving it on to the road. The only person
near it belonging to the Commissariat Department was a young _baboo_
named Hera Lall Chatterjee, a boy of about seventeen or eighteen years
of age, who defended his charge as long as he could, but he was soon put
on one side, the biscuits-bags were ripped open, and the men commenced
filling their haversacks from them. Just at this time, an escort of the
Ninth Lancers, with some staff-officers, rode up from the rear. It was
the Commander-in-Chief and his staff. Hera Lall seeing him rushed up and
called out: "O my Lord, you are my father and my mother! what shall I
tell you! These wild Highlanders will not hear me, but are stealing
commissariat biscuits like fine fun." Sir Colin pulled up, and asked the
_baboo_ if there was no officer present; to which Hera Lall replied, "No
officer, sir, only one corporal, and he tell me, 'Shut up, or I'll shoot
you, same like rebel mutineer!'" Hearing this I stepped out of the crowd
and saluting Sir Colin, told him that all the officers of my company
were wounded except Captain Dawson, who was in front; that I and a party
of men had been left to see the last of the carts on to the road; that
this cart had broken down, and as there was no other means of carrying
the biscuits, the men had filled their haversacks with them rather than
leave them on the ground. On hearing that, Hera Lall again came to the
front with clasped hands, saying: "O my Lord, if one cart of biscuits
short, Major Fitzgerald not listen to me, but will order thirty lashes
with provost-marshal's cat! What can a poor _baboo_ do with such wild
Highlanders?" Sir Colin replied: "Yes, _baboo_, I know these Highlanders
are very wild fellows whe