“Tell him to order his crowd to cease fire!”

The Beluchi translated, and the fakir howled again.  The flames leaped through the thatch, and in a minute more the countryside was lit for half a mile or more by the glare of the burning guardroom.

The flames betrayed more than a hundred turbaned men, who hugged the shadows.

“Keep that bayonet-point against his ribs.  See?  That comes o’ moving instead o’ sitting still!  If we’d shut ourselves in the guardroom there, we’d have been merrily roasting in there now!  We stole a march on them.  Beauty here was sitting on his throne to see the fun.  Didn’t expect us.  Thought we’d be all hiding under the beds, like Sidiki here!  Goes to prove the worst thing that a soldier can do is to sit still when there’s trouble.  We’re better off than ever.  We’re free and they won’t dare do much to us as long as we’ve got Sacred-Smells-and-Stinks in charge.  Form up round him, men, and keep your eyes skinned till morning!”

VIII.

Of course, discussing matters in the light of history, with full and intimate knowledge of everything that had a bearing on the Mutiny, there are plenty of club-armchair critics who maintain that England could not do otherwise than win in ’57.  They always do say that afterward of the side that won the day.

But then, with history yet to make, things looked very different, and nobody pretended that there was any certainty of anything except a victory for the mutineers.  All that either side recognized as likely to reverse conditions was the notorious ability that a beaten and cornered British army has for upsetting certainties.  So the rebels had more than a little argument as to what steps should be taken next, once the initial butchery and loot had taken place.

For instance, in Jailpore

More than a hundred fakirs and wandering priests and mendicants had sent in word that the province from end to end was ready, and that the British slept.  But there were those in Jailpore who distrusted fakirs and religious votaries of every kind.  They believed them fully capable of rousing the countryside, of working on the religious feelings of the unsophisticated rustics and setting them to murdering and plundering right and left.  But they doubted their ability to judge of the army’s sleepiness.  These doubters were the older men, who had had experience of England’s craft in war.  They knew of the ability of some at least of England’s generals to match guile against guile, and back up guile with swift, unexpected hammer-strokes.

There were men who claimed that what had happened in Jailpore would be repeated in Bholat and elsewhere.  There was no need, these maintained, to march and join hands with other rebels.  Each unit was sufficient to itself.  Each city would be a British funeral pyre.  Why march?

Some said, “The general at Bholat will learn of the massacre, and will learn too, that not quite all were killed.  He will come hotfoot to find the four we could not find.  For these British are as cobras; slay the he cobra and the she one comes to seek revenge.  Slay the she one and beware!  Her husband will track thee down, and strike thee.  They are not ordinary folk!”