o'clock in the morning, when several musket-shots were suddenly heard in different parts of the fort.
This unprecedented circumstance naturally astonished those whose slumbers it broke; but none, as it appears, considered it to be their duty to ascertain its cause or consequence. They little thought that at every shot a sentry had fallen, thus murdered in cold blood! It had been the first object of the rebels to put the guards to death, and to place parties of their own in possession of the posts; and this bloody work was accomplished by a simultaneous discharge of musketry upon every individual sentinel.
The next object appears to have been to prevent any opposition on the part of the main-guard; a large party accordingly proceeded thither, attacked the guard, put to death both those awake on duty and those stretched in slumber on the guard-beds; while, to add to the confusion, they set fire to the guard -house. One of their first acts showed the wanton cruelty by which they were inflamed: this was an attack on the hospital, where they murdered all its helpless and hapless inmates.
The noise which by this time was necessarily produced by the mutiny roused and alarmed Colonel Fancourt, the officer commanding the garrison, whose house was not far distant from the main-guard. Having quickly dressed himself, he left his residence with a view to cross over to the main-guard, to ascertain, doubtless, the cause of the firing and the conflagration; but before he had gone a hundred yards he was shot dead by a musket-ball. A more general alarm had now been created, and Colonel McKerras had succeeded in getting together some of his men. He was in the act of addressing a few words to them, when a well-aimed shot killed him also; and thus the two senior officers of this doomed garrison were amongst the first persons who fell victims to the mutiny of Vellore.
From the firing of the first shot at two o'clock in the morning, the work of mutiny and murder proceeded with
