1 TTIE WTJZEERTJT OF HEERA SING. Ill
2 Sing and his followers arose to meet their fate like good
3 soldiers as they were. As they stood up, a cry was heard
4 without, and they beheld the host of fifteen thousand men
5 with fixed bayonets, rushing forward upon them on all sides.
6 When the enemy was within a hundred yards, Suchet Sing-
7 put himself at the head of his men and was rushing forward
8 to meet the foe. But he was pulled back by his Wuzeer
9 Rai Kissera Sing1, and placed in the centre of the little band,
10 who dauntlessly advanced to meet the hostile ranks. As
11 they set forward, Rajah Suchet Sing exclaimed in bitter irony,
12 that the number of troops sent by the Wuzeer was somewhat
13 too small for the occasion ! The handful of heroes, sword in
14 hand, now rushed upon the thickest mass of their destroyers
15 and so furious and desperate was their onset, that they actually
16 broke through or drove back four entire battalions, killing
17 upwards of thirty of the foremost ranks. Rai Kissera Sing-,
18 a brave and powerful man, with his own hand cut down nine
19 of the most forward of the enemy, and several men were
20 killed by the bayonets of their comrades in their attempts
21 to flee. But this desperate valour availed not the devoted
22 band so fearfully overmatched j in a short time forty-two
23 of the men were lying dead on the field, and four fell badly
24 wounded, of whom only one survived. Rajah Suchet Sing*,
25 it is hardly needful to say, was among the • slain. The
26 entire loss of the assaulting force was seventy-eight killed on
27 the spot, and fifty-nine wounded, of whom twenty-seven subse-
28 quently died. About thirty more fell upon the weapons of their
29 comrades in the panic and confusion of the onset made by
30 Suchet Sing and his band. The total loss of the Khalsa, on
31 this occasion, was, in killed and wounded, about one hundred
32 and sixty.
33 When all was over, the troops were ordered back to their
34 lines, and Heera Sing went out to view the bodies of his
35 uncle and others of his relatives who had fallen with Suchet