Then, like arrows driven by the bows of death, three squadrons took them on the flank as Cunningham changed direction suddenly and loosed his full weight at the guns.  Instead of standing and serving grape, the rebel gunners tried to get their ordnance away—­facing about again too late, when the squadrons were almost on them.  Then they died gamely, when gameness served no further purpose.  The Rangars rode them down and butchered them, capturing every single gun, and leaving them while they charged again at the rallying hordes ahead.

The strange assortment of horsed wagons and the lumbering six-horse coach took full advantage of the momentary confusion to make at a gallop for the British rear, where they drew up in line behind the Sikhs, who were volleying at short range in the centre.

Byng detached two companies of British soldiers to do their amateur damnedest with the guns, and, for infantry, they did good service with them; fifteen or twenty minutes after the first onslaught the enemy was writhing under the withering attention of his own abandoned ordnance.  But the odds were still tremendous, and the weight of numbers made the ultimate outcome of the battle seem a foregone conclusion.

From the British rear heads appeared above the rising ground; the deserted camp was rushed and set alight.  The tents blazed like a beacon light, and a moment later the Ghoorkas retaliated by setting fire to such of the rebel camp as had fallen into British hands.

It was those two fires that saved the day.  From the sky-line to the rebel rear came the thunder of a salvo of artillery.  It was the short bark of twelve-pounders loaded up with blank—­a signal—­and the rebels did not wait to see whether this was friend or foe.  Help from one unexpected source had reached the British; this, they argued, was probably another column moving to the relief, and they drew off in reasonably decent order—­harried, pestered, stung, as they attempted to recover camp-equipment or get away with stores and wagons, by Cunningham, Alwa, and Mahommed Gunga.

In another hour the rebel army was a black swarm spreading on the eastern sky-line, and on the far horizon to the north there shone the glint of bayonets and helmet spikes, the dancing gleam of lance-tips, and the dazzle from the long, polished bodies of a dozen guns.  A galloper spurred up with a message for Byng.

“You are to join my command,” it ran, “for a raid in force on Howrah, where the rebels are supposed to have been concentrating for months past.  The idea is to paralyze the vitals of the movement before concentrating somewhere on the road to Delhi, where the rebels are sure to make a most determined stand.”

As he read it Mahommed Gunga galloped up to him, grinning like a boy.

“Cunnigan-sahib’s respects, General-sahib!  He asks leave to call his men off, saying that he has done all the damage possible with only fifteen hundred.”