"At first it was damned bad news all round: the Mutiny kept spreading, Nana had sheered off after losing Cawnpore and was raising cain farther up-country, Delhi was still held by the pandies with our people banging away at it, and Havelock at Cawnpore didn't have the men or means to relieve Lucknow, only forty miles away, where Lawrence's garrison was hemmed in."