212 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



farther and farther, for neither had brought arms, 

 and the former was glad indeed to get one of a brace 

 of horse-pistols which constitued my armament." 



As they approached the Mori Bastion Hodson's 

 attention was drawn to an old woman crossing the 

 road in front of him. "With the sweetest of smiles 

 he began questioning her about the various roads 

 in that neighbourhood. At length one of the party, 

 says General Thomason, " suggested to Hodson the 

 place was hardly well chosen for a flirtation, where- 

 upon we deliberately returned to camp by the same 

 road, and not a shot was fired at us the whole 

 evening. . . . Salkeld, who won his V.C. and lost 

 his life at the Kashmir gate's final assault, told me 

 that he regarded this reconnoitring trip as the 

 maddest one he had ever made, but I am quite 

 sure Hodson looked upon it as a most ordinary 

 event." 



By this time, indeed, it was becoming daily 

 clearer that not half-a-dozen regiments only, but 

 the whole of the great sepoy army of Bengal, had 

 been fired with the mutinous spirit provoked by 

 the new musketry drill, which ordained the biting 

 of cartridges greased with the fat of cows and 

 swine. In spite of later attempts to repair the 

 original mistake, nothing could persuade the bulk 

 of our native soldiers that the British Government 

 had not been plotting to make Christians of them 

 all by means of paper smeared with the fat of 

 animals sacred to the Hindus and unclean to the 

 Mohammedans, 



As soon as each fresh body of mutineers arrived 

 in Delhi, it was sent forth to receive its baptism 

 of fire from the besieging army. About 5 p.m. of 



