The Beluchi and the fakir and Juggut Khan moved in the van, with two men to hold the fakir.  Next marched, or rather tiptoed, Sergeant Brown, followed by the other men in single file.  In that order they hastened after Juggut Khan, through the darkness, across a dried-out moat and round the corner of a huge stone buttress.  There they disappeared inside the wall, and a stone swung round and closed the gap behind the last of them.  There was no alarm given, and not a sign or a sound of any kind to betoken that any one had seen them.  Inside the walls the city roared like a flood-fed maelstrom, and outside all was darkness and the silence of the dead.

XIII.

There was some smart work done inside the powder-magazine.  To be able to appreciate it properly one would be obliged to do what they did—­wander through a maze of tunnels in a city-wall, blinded by darkness, oppressed by the stored-up stuffiness and heat of ages and deafened by the stillness—­then emerge unexpectedly in the lamp-lit magazine, among mutineers who sprawled, and laughed; and chewed betel-nut at their ease upon the powder-kegs.

Both sides were taken by surprise, but the mutineers had the nominal advantage, for their eyes were accustomed to the light.  They had the advantage in numbers, too, by almost two to one.  But they dared not fire, for fear of setting off the magazine, whereas Brown and his little force dared anything.  They fully expected to die, and might as well die that way as any other.  And a quick death for the women down below would be better than anything the rebels had in store for them.  Brown yelled an order, and the rest was too quick, nearly, for the eye to follow.

Three rebels died with bullets in them, and the rest stampeded for the teak-and-metal door, to find it locked on them, and Brown and the Rajput standing in front of it on guard.  The mutineers attacked fiercely.  They flung themselves all together on the two.  But they had yet to learn that they were tackling, or endeavoring to tackle, the two finest swordsmen in that part of India.  And when they turned, to find more room to fight in, or to draw their breath, they had to face nine bayonets that hemmed them in, and drove them closer and even closer to the swords again.  They shouted, but no sound could pierce the walls or escape through that tremendous door.  Even the sound of firing merely echoed upward until it reached the dome, and then filtered out and upward through the opening above.  They might as well have shouted to their friends in Bholat!

For ten minutes, perhaps, the battle surged and swayed on the stone floor first one side rushing, then the other.  But man after man of the mutineers went down—­appalled by the amazing swordsmanship, disheartened by the grim determination of their adversaries, bewildered to feebleness by the suddenness of the attack.

Soon there were but eight of them facing the blood-wet steel, and then Brown shouted for a fresh formation, swung his contingent into line and led them with a rush across the floor that swept the remaining mutineers off their feet.