days' march within six miles of the Alumbagh. They had with them a great
convoy of siege material and provisions, and these were next day escorted
safely into the Alumbagh, where the little garrison had held their own,
though frequently attacked, for six weeks. The Sixty-fourth Regiment had
already done so much fighting that it was not to form part of the advance.
The naval brigade was increased on the 1st of November by the arrival of
Captain Peel himself, with two hundred more sailors and four hundred
troops. They had had a heavy fight on the way up, and had protected the
convoy and siege guns of which they were in charge, and had defeated the
enemy, four thousand strong, and captured all his guns, but with a loss to
themselves of nearly one hundred men. Soon after the commencement of the
engagement, Colonel Powell, who was in command of the column, was killed;
and Captain Peel then took command of the force, and won the victory.

The astonishment of the people of Cawnpore at the appearance of the brawny
tars was unbounded. The sailors went about the streets in knots of two or
three, staring at the contents of the shops, and as full of fun and good
humor as so many schoolboys. Greatly delighted were they when the natives
gave them the least chance of falling foul of them--for they knew that the
people of the town had joined the mutineers--and were only too glad of an
excuse to pitch into them. They all carried cutlasses, but these they
disdained to use, trusting, and with reason, to their fists, which are to
the natives of India a more terrible, because a more mysterious weapon
than the sword. A sword they understand; but a quick hit, flush from the
shoulder, which knocks them off their feet as if struck by lightning, is
to them utterly incomprehensible, and therefore very terrible.

One day the Warreners were strolling together through the town, and turned
off from the more frequented streets, with a view of seeing what the
lower-class quarters were like. They had gone some distance, when Ned