and hidden victims of the riot, to bury corpses, extinguish fires, penetrate to European bungalows in the city and in outlying places, to publish abroad that the Military Prison was a safe refuge, to seize and empty ammunition shops and toddy shops, to mount guards at the railway-station, telegraph office, the banks, the gate-house of the great Jail, the Treasury and the Kutcherry,[64] and generally, to use their common sense and their rifles as the situation demanded.

  [64] Collector’s Court and Office.

Day by day external operation became more restricted as the mob grew larger and bolder, better armed and better organized, daily augmented and assisted from without.  The last outpost which Colonel Ross-Ellison withdrew was the one from the railway-station, and that was maintained until it was known that large bridges had been blown up on either side and the railway rendered useless.  In the Jail gate-house he established a strong guard under the Superintendent, and urged him to use it ruthlessly, to kill on the barest suspicion of mutiny, and to welcome the first opportunity of giving the sharpest of lessons.

In this matter he set a personal example and behaved, to actual rioters, with what some of his followers considered unnecessary severity, and what others viewed as wise war-ending firmness.

When remonstrated with by Mr. Cornelius Gosling-Green (caught, alas! with his admirable wife in this sudden and terrible maelstrom), for shooting, against the Prison wall, a squad of armed men caught by night and under more than suspicious circumstances, within Cantonment limits, he replied curtly and rudely:—­

“My good little Gosling, I’d shoot you with my own hand if you failed me in the least particular—­so stick to your drill and hope to become a Corporal before the war is over”.

The world-famous Mr. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P., hoping to become a Corporal!  Meanwhile he was less—­a private soldier, doing four hard drills a day—­not to mention sentry-go and fatigues.  Like Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble, he grumbled bitterly—­but he obeyed, having been offered the hard choice of enrolment or exclusion.

“I’ll have no useless male mouths here,” had said Colonel Ross-Ellison.  “Enroll or clear out and take your chance.  I’ll look after your wife.”

“But, my dear Sir....”

“‘Sir’ without the ‘my dear,’ please.”

“I was about to say that I could—­ah—­assist, advise, sit upon your councils, give you the benefit of my—­er—­experience, ...” the Publicist had expostulated.

“Experience of war?”

“No—­er—­I——­”

“Enroll or clear out—­and when you have enrolled remember that you are under martial law and in time of war.”

A swift, fierce, masterful man, harsh and ruthless making war without kid gloves—­that it might end the sooner and be the longer remembered by the survivors.  The flag was to be kept flying in Gungapur, the women and children were to be saved, all possible damage was to be inflicted on the rebels and rioters, more particularly upon those who led and incited them.  The Gosling-Greens and Grobbles who could not materially assist to this end could go, those who could thwart or hinder this end could die.