town for their second line of defense. The country on either side of the road was little better than a lake; so, as it was impossible for Havelock to turn the position, he had to advance along the road which they so completely commanded, to drive them from their position. But he did this, and gained the town, and drove the rebels through and beyond it. He had only a handful of cavalry to follow up his advantage. This was his seventh victory.
But now appeared an invisible foe whom he could not conquer. The terrible Asiatic cholera broke out among his men, and he was in the field, exposed to the elements, and surrounded by swamps and malaria. He had, therefore, to retreat again, not from the face of man, but from the fearful pestilence. He retired upon Munghowur, which was on rising ground, and here he wrote one of his last letters to Mrs. Havelock, evidently fully conscious of the emergencies of his position, and says: “I have every-where beaten my foes, but things are in a most perilous state. If we succeed in restoring any thing, it will be by God's especial and extraordinary mercy. I must now write as one whom you may see no more, for the chances of war are heavy at this crisis. Thank God for my hope in the Saviour! We shall meet in heaven.”
What the Duke of Wellington said of a soldier whom he saw turn pale as he looked at the fearful breach which he was mounting up to storm—“There is a brave man; he sees his danger, and yet he faces it”—might with every propriety be said of this warrior and his men. They were fully sensible of their risks, and yet they gallantly faced them. What would four or five thousand men have been to Havelock then! But help was far away. A few hundreds were struggling up to him from Calcutta, but the forces he needed were tossing on the billows off the Cape of Good Hope, while twenty thousand Sepoys, well provisioned, and in splendid condition, lay extended across the road by which he wanted to march to the relief of the beleaguered garrison in the Residency. He had lost one hundred and forty men out of a thousand, and was but ten miles on his road to Lucknow. He evidently had no alternative but to go back to Cawnpore and wait for help. On the thirteenth
