A few officers stayed to remonstrate

From The Great Mutiny by Christopher Hibbert. Page 82.

Hugh Gough, too, was starting to get dressed. He was Orderly Officer of the day, and would soon have to be on parade. He was still in his shirt-sleeves when a servant came rushing into his bedroom to tell him that the Native Infantry lines were on fire. He dashed outside, half dressed, to see clouds of smoke billowing up into the evening sky from the burning bungalows, and heard the sharp cracking sound of musketry fire. His syce was already running towards the veranda steps, holding a bunch of lucerne grass in one hand and the reins of Gough's black charger in the other. As the horse took a munch of the grass, Gough jumped on to his back and galloped down towards the parade-ground of the 20th Native Infantry.

Several officers of this regiment had been sitting quietly talking in their Commanding Officer's bungalow when they had been called down to the men's lines where about seventy badmashes from the bazaar were clamouring outside the regimental magazine. Some sepoys, it was said, had assured the prostitutes in the bazaar - who were taunting them with their failure to rescue their imprisoned comrades - that they need not worry, for the native troops were going to mutiny that very evening; and a rumour had since got about that the European soldiers had been ordered to disarm all the native regiments. By the time the officers arrived in the lines both the sepoys and the rabble of the bazaar appeared dangerously close to violence. The senior officer present ordered the grenadier company to disperse the mob around the regimental magazine. But the sepoys, paying no attention to his command, slunk away from him; and when a sowar of the 3rd Light Cavalry galloped into their lines, shouting that the Europeans were coming and that if they intended to act they must do so at once, they rushed upon the bells of arms, breaking into them, seizing weapons for themselves and for the badmashes who followed after them. Soon the lines were in uproar, with sepoys and badmashes firing off their weapons in every direction. The Colonel of the 11th Native Infantry galloped across ' to see what all the noise was about'. His horse was shot; and then he, too, was shot; and within minutes his own regiment, in which he had 'the old traditionary faith', was also in uproar, groups of wildly shouting sepoys ransacking their bells of arms and shooting at all Europeans in sight. Other sepoys, holding their fire, urged their officers to escape while they could. A few officers stayed to remonstrate, knocking the 'loaded and cocked' muskets down with their fists. But now most realized their men were beyond control and 'made up their minds to be off'. One or two walked away slowly, refusing to run from their own men; but the majority hurried off as fast as they could to seek hiding-places for themselves or to protect their women and children. Six of them, led by the Commanding Officer of the 20th, sought shelter in a servants' latrine in the compound of Colonel Carmichael-Smyth's bungalow. Three of these attempted to escape from here, going their separate ways; but all of them were killed, either shot by sepoys or cut down by badmashes from the bazaar. The other three stayed where they were until they heard the sound of European troops on the march when they rushed out to join them and were saved.