268 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



" I came up just in time, as a large mob had col- 

 lected and were turning on the guard, I rode in 

 among them at a gallop, and in a few words I 

 appealed to the crowd, saying that these were the 

 butchers who had murdered and brutally used help- 

 less women and children, and that the Government 

 had now sent their punishment : seizing a carbine 

 from one of my men, I deliberately shot them one 

 after another." " God is great ! " w^as the cry that 

 broke from a multitude of lips, and slowly but 

 quietly the crowd of awestricken Mussulmans melted 

 away. 



" I am not cruel," he adds, " but I confess I did 

 rejoice at the opportunity of ridding the earth of 

 these wretches. I intended to have had them hung, 

 but when it came to a question of ' they ' or ' us,' I 

 had no time for deliberation." 



All things considered, it is hard to see, as I have 

 remarked elsewhere, why this deed of summary 

 justice should have provoked the indignant censures 

 of more than one historian. It mig-ht have been 

 best, for certain reasons, had the slaughtered princes 

 lived to undergo a regular trial. But Hodson had 

 gleaned from fairly trustworthy sources evidence 

 which convinced him of their actual guilt. He had 

 been virtually told to deal with them as he thought 

 fit. A man so brave and cool in any crisis was little 

 likely to overrate the danger which threatened his 

 small party from a crowd of angry natives, many of 

 whom bore arms which they had even begun to use. 

 To shoot the princes with his own hand seemed only 

 the natural act of one who saw the danger of a 

 moment's delay, and scorned to shift upon other 



