Night had fallen, but the moon, which rose early at this season, was flooding all the plain with silver light, and when the Englishmen emerged from the wood they saw the fugitives—grey figures in the ghostly light—only a short distance in front of them. 'Halt!' cried the General, 'and fire!'
They obeyed with alacrity. Every shot took effect. Some who had not been touched fell prone with fright and weariness, and over the plain the bodies of dead and dying lay scattered.
'Quick march!' cried the General.
It was like the loosing of an arrow from a bow. In skirmishing order, but keeping well in line, they cantered madly across the plain. Passionate wrath and the wild thirst for vengeance made demons of them all. There was no quarter given. The black-hearted wretches they were pursuing had laid a net for the feet of their open-hearted General, and had nearly succeeded in entrapping him. For their treachery they should die. Group after group was overtaken. Some were speared, some were shot. Not one of them all turned to bay, or lifted up his hand against the avengers. For, lying heavy as lead at the heart of each one and making him a coward, was the consciousness that he had played the part of traitor.
A short half-hour, and it was all over. Some few, who were the first to fly, and were particularly fleet of foot, escaped into the country. The others lay dead on the plain outside Meerut. One of them only, Soubahdar Sufder Jung, who had been wounded, but not mortally, remained behind in the wood. All that night and the following day he kept in hiding. Then, having stripped off his uniform, and clothed himself in the garments of a peasant, whom he slew in the fields, he took to the road.
Their work done, the English soldiers halted, and discovering that the General, who up to the moment when they emerged from the wood had been foremost in the advance, was not with them, they rode back to seek him. Loss of blood from his wound, with the exhaustion which followed hard upon his excitement, had been too much for the old man, who, for the first time in all his life, had swooned away. Fortunately his English servant was by his side. He saw him reel in his saddle and caught him in his arms. By this time, however, the General's senses had returned. When his men rode back for him, he was sitting on the ground under a tree, Kullum Khan supporting him on one side, and his soldier-servant on the other.
[CHAPTER XXI]
WITHIN THE WALLS OF MEERUT
Within the walls of Meerut, meanwhile, all was confusion and despair. Those of the English and Eurasian residents who had escaped from the massacre of the 10th of May were gathered together, in much closer quarters than they had ever occupied before, tremulously expecting the worst. The British soldiers, burning to be led against the mutineers, were kept day and night upon guard, for the rebels' return with reinforcements, to finish the deadly work they had begun, was hourly expected; but they did not come, and at last it dawned upon the minds of those in authority that, seeing they were within entrenchments, a smaller number of soldiers might serve to guard them. It took some time for this idea to work in the official mind; but, at last, to the intense satisfaction of the soldiers and regimental officers, five hundred men were told off to join the English force which was supposed to be marching on Delhi.