258 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



had learned to serve guns were dismounted ; they 

 scrambled up the breach in the Mori Bastion, and 

 directed the abandoned guns with great effect 

 against the rebels, who were at this time advancing 

 to attack us. But the failure at the Lahore Bastion 

 left its defenders at liberty to assume the offensive. 

 They turned a 24-pounder gun against us, and with 

 grape inflicted a terrible loss on our men, who were 

 not more than 500 yards distant. Tombs' troop 

 lost 27 men out of 48, and 19 horses. Two guns 

 of a battery under Lieutenant Campbell suffered in 

 proportion ; the 200 men of the 9th Lancers had 

 42 men and 61 horses killed or wounded; and the 

 Guide cavalry, which was in support, 15 men and 

 19 horses." ' 



" For more than two hours," writes Hodson, whose 

 own men formed part of Hope Grant's force, " we 

 had to sit on our horses under the heaviest fire 

 troops are often exposed to, and that, too, without 

 the chance of doing anything but preventing the 

 enemy coming on. . . . My young regiment behaved 

 admirably, as did all hands. The loss of the party 

 was, of course, very severe. . . . 



" I am most humbly and heartily grateful to a 

 merciful Providence that I was spared." 



An officer who was present during this sharp 

 ordeal wrote thus to his wife : "I found time for 

 admiration of Hodson, who sat like a man carved in 

 stone, and as calm and apparently as unconcerned 

 as the sentries at the Horse Guards, and only by his 

 eyes and his ready hand, whenever occasion oftered, 

 could you have told that he was in deadly peril, 

 and the balls flying amongst us as thick as hail." 



^ Incidents in the Sepoy War. 



