Artillery mess.  Then they pulled up, and said they could go no further.  Gough did all he could to persuade them to remain with him, but to no purpose.  They told him it was impossible for them to separate themselves from their friends and relations, and making the officer they had so carefully protected a respectful salaam, they rode off to join their mutinous comrades.  Gough never heard of them again, though he tried hard to trace what had become of the men who proved themselves such ‘friends in need.’

However much the authorities at Meerut deserved to be censured for their dilatoriness in dealing with the revolt in the first instance, and their lack of energy in not trying to discover in what direction the mutineers had gone, I doubt whether anything would have been gained by following them up, or whether it would have been possible to overtake them before they reached Delhi.  Only a very few European Cavalry were available for pursuit, for the Carabineers, having lately arrived in India, were composed mainly of recruits still in the riding-school, and their horses for the most part were quite unbroken.  These few, with the six Horse Artillery guns, might have been despatched; but the mutineers had a considerable start, the Cavalry could not have been overtaken, and as soon as the Infantry became aware that they were being followed, they would have scattered themselves over the country, the features of which were familiar to them, and, favoured by the darkness, could have defied pursuit.  Delhi is forty miles from Meerut, and it would not have been possible for the 60th Rifles, marching in the terrible heat of the month of May, to have reached that place before the next evening (the 11th), and, as was afterwards ascertained, the work of murder and devastation there began on the morning of that day.  The three Native Infantry regiments and the battery of Artillery stationed at Delhi were prepared to join the insurgent troopers from Meerut directly they arrived.  The magazine, with its vast stores of war material, was in the hands of the King, and the 150,000 inhabitants of the city were ready to assist in the massacre of the white men and women, and the destruction of their property.

After careful consideration of all the circumstances of the revolt at Meerut, I have come to the conclusion that it would have been futile to have sent the small body of mounted troops available in pursuit of the mutineers on the night of the 10th May, and that, considering the state of feeling throughout the Native Army, no action, however prompt, on the part of the Meerut authorities could have arrested the Mutiny.  The sepoys had determined to throw off their allegiance to the British Government, and the when and the how were merely questions of time and opportunity.

[Footnote 1:  A metal drinking vessel, which the Hindu religiously guards against defilement, and to which he clings as a cherished possession when he has nothing else belonging to him in the world.]