the enemy, who were escaping by a bridge of boats, the
material for which the country people had collected for them. But their
retreat was now completely cut off, and about three hundred of them were
reported either killed or drowned in the Ramgunga.

About 3 P.M. a tremendous sandstorm, with thunder, and rain in
torrents, came on. The Ramgunga became so swollen that it was impossible
for the detachment of the Ninety-Third to recross, and they bivouacked
in a deserted village on the opposite side, without tents, the officers
hailing across that they could make themselves very comfortable for the
night if they could only get some tea and sugar, as the men had
biscuits, and they had secured a quantity of flour and some goats in the
village. But the boats which the enemy had collected had all broken
adrift, and there was apparently no possibility of sending anything
across to our comrades. This dilemma evoked an act of real cool pluck on
the part of our commissariat _gomashta_,[44] _baboo_ Hera Lall
Chatterjee, whom I have before mentioned in my seventh chapter in
reference to the plunder of a cartload of biscuits at Bunnee bridge on
the retreat from Lucknow. By this time Hera Lall had become better
acquainted with the "wild Highlanders," and was even ready to risk his
life to carry a ration of tea and sugar to them. This he made into a
bundle, which he tied on the crown of his head, and although several of
the officers tried to dissuade him from the attempt, he tightened his
_chudder_[45] round his waist, and declaring that he had often swum the
Hooghly, and that the Ramgunga should not deprive the officers and men
of a detachment of his regiment of their tea, he plunged into the river,
and safely reached the other side with his precious freight on his head!
This little incident was never forgotten in the regiment so long as Hera
Lall remained the commissariat _gomashta_ of the Ninety-Third. He was
then a young man, certainly not more than twenty. Although thirty-five
more years of rough-and-tumble life have now considerably grizzled his
appearance, he must often look back with pride to that stormy April
evening in 1858, when he risked his life in the Ramgunga to carry a
tin-pot of tea to the British soldiers.

Among the enemy killed that day were several wearing the uniforms
stripped from the dead of the Forty-Second in the ditch of Rooyah; so,
of course, we concluded that this was Nirput Singh's force, and the
defeat a