It all came out the day before the one fixed for the expedition.  His Highness, being in great spirits, had ordered a shooting competition, and the men were served from the new stores supplied to the State of Chita by Petroff Gortschakin of St. Petersburg.  The Maharajah drove out to the ranges to look on, and all his Ministers with him.  All, that is, except the Minister of the Treasury, who begged to be excused; he was so very unwell.

Some of the men knelt and clicked and reloaded half a dozen times before they could fire; some were luckier, and fired the first time or the third without reloading.  They glanced suspiciously at one another and hesitated, while there grew a shining heap of unexploded cartridges, a foot high, under the Maharajah’s very nose.  His Highness looked on stupefied for ten minutes, then burst into blazing wrath.  Maun Rao rode madly about examining, inquiring, threatening.

‘Our cartridges are filled with powdered charcoal,’ he cried, smiting one of them between two stones to prove his words.  There was an unexpected noise, and the noble General jumped into the air, bereft of the largest half of his curled moustache.  That one was not.  Then they all went furiously back to the palace.  The only other incident of that day which it is worth our while to chronicle is connected with Surji Rao and the big shoe.  The big shoe was administered to Surji Rao by a man of low caste, in presence of the entire court and as many of the people of Lalpore as chose to come and look on.  It was very thoroughly administered, and afterwards Surji Rao was put formally outside the city gates, and told that the king desired never to look upon his black face again.  Which was rubbing it in rather unfairly, as His Highness’s own complexion was precisely the same shade.  With great promptitude Surji Rao took the road to meet the English and sell his information, but this possibility occurred to the Maharajah soon enough to send men after him to frustrate it.

’There shall be at least enough sound cartridges in his bargain for that,’ said His Highness grimly.

The Chitan spirit did not flourish quite so vaingloriously at the council that night, and there was no more talk about the sky falling upon dauntless Chitan heads.  The sky had fallen, and the effect was rather quenching than otherwise.  The previous stores were counted over, and it was found that the men could not be served with three rounds apiece out of them.  When this was announced, nobody thought of doubting the wisdom of the Maharajah’s decision to shut up the gates of the city, and trust to the improbability of the English venturing to attack him in such small numbers, not knowing his resources.  So that very night, lest any word should go abroad of the strait of the warriors of Chita, the gates were shut.  But all the city knew.  Moti knew.  Sunni knew.