"ONLY THE KING OF DELHI."

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 325, 4 January 1911, Page 2

"ONLY THE KING OF DELHI."

In "Harper's " Robert Shackleton sets down verbatim the narrative of James Irvine, a veteran of the siege of Delhi. The humours as well as the horrors of war are vividly pictured.

"A terrible time it was. We went fit .several places at once, dividing the attack, and pot into the city at last, and there was nothing but shooting ami smoke and yells and charges with the bayonet. A. wild time. Bitter lighting it was in the streets, for the natives didn't seem to care for their lives, and went back slow, shooting and stabbing and screeching to the last. "Did you ever try to force your way through a crowd ? —pushing against men to get them out of your way ? Well, just fancy every one of those men with a gun or a knife, crowding up against you, and every one yelling and every one hacking at ynu or blading away right in your face—then you'll know what the attack on Delhi was like.

"There was nothing to do but push right along against them and hack ancl fire quicker and truer than they did. There was days of it — several days of that last attack, fighting through the streets after our army was actually in the city ; days of gasping and struggling and killing and many was the officer and many the man who went down- but not one of us went down without, accounting for a lot of those Indians. Their dead was so thick in the streets that, (hey just piled up there. "Put at last the fighting was over, and Delhi was ours again.

"And it was queer, the end of it. For the King of Delia —they called him Emperor of India, but among ourselves we always called him King of Delhi—-th-3 King, he ran away, with his women and sons and things, and hid in what they called a tomb, though it was as big as a palace and had a top liks St. Paul's dome. And Captain Hodson, a dare devil of fii ofTicer went with his troop of native cavalry (natives who had stayed loyal to us), and he rides up to the tomb and says to the Emperor, says he, 'Surrender.' And tb.3 Emperor he surrenders, an,d the captain puts him in a sort of palankeen fmd starts back for Delhi, And the officer of the guard at the gate :alls out—T didn't see it, but all the army was talking about it—he calls out, careless, 'What you got there. Hodson ?' —and Hodson, just as nuiet as if he was going to church, says, 'Only the King o' Delhi.' says he —yes, hn says, alt the army say.*i he says, 'Oniy the King of Delhi,' says he,"