He could not save the treasure which the guard under him plundered, but he fulfilled his pledge to her

From The Great Mutiny by Christopher Hibbert. Page 139.

As at Delhi, several of the fugitives managed to escape with the help of friendly Indians or faithful servants. Mrs Blake, widow of Major Blake of the 2nd Native Infantry who had been shot through the chest by his men, was shepherded to safety past jeering crowds by their khidmatgar who risked his life for hers. Esther Anne Nicholson, a seventeen-year-old girl living with her father, an opium agent, at Gorakhpur, was dragged out of danger by twelve peasants who put their shoulders to a 'very primitive sort of covered wagon, like a huge Noah's ark', which had been made by her father and into which were crammed her two younger sisters, her baby brother, her aunt and two cousins. Sarah Fagan, wife of a captain in the Engineers who lived in a house remote from the barracks at Jullundur, was still there with her sister-in-law, her five youngest children and their English nurse when her husband's men mutinied. On the first sounds of the firing she went out boldly

to the havildar of the guard which had been placed over the treasure chest of the Engineers' department in the compound. Giving him his proper titles, an act of courtesy too often neglected by the English, she told him there were only women and children in the house and she placed their lives in his hands. He said to her, 'Go in and shut all the doors and windows, stop the punkahs and put out all the lights and do not suffer a single person to enter the house, and I will answer for your safety with my life.' He could not save the treasure which the guard under him plundered, but he fulfilled his pledge to her.