"Follow me," said the native, without deigning a reply.
He conducted them in the direction of the cantonments, where General Graves's soldiers were posted, from which Avery judged that he had decided to trust to their protection.
Before going far, they came upon the missionary and his wife, who were in an agony of fear because of the prolonged absence of their daughter. Their joy was that of those whose beloved was dead and is alive again.
"We shall take refuge in the Flagstaff Tower," said Luchman; "the Ghoojurs are swarming into the city."
The Ghoojurs are a numerous people in the villages around Delhi, and belong to the nomadic tribes which originally occupied India. They profess agriculture, but are brigands and murderers.
CHAPTER XII.
PROCLAMATION OF THE MOGUL EMPIRE.
On the forenoon of Monday, May 11, 1857, the horde of mutineers, fresh from the massacres of the evening before at Meerut, were discerned by the crowds that were swarming on the walls and outlooks of Delhi.
The great city at this time was garrisoned entirely by native troops, consisting of the Thirty Eighth, Fifty Fourth and Seventy Fourth Regiments of infantry, and a battery of artillery. The arsenal within the city contained nearly a million cartridges, ten million muskets, two complete siege trains and a great many field guns. The powder magazine, removed a short time before at the request of the inhabitants, was filled with ten thousand barrels of powder.
The mutineers crossed the suspension bridge over the Hindun torrent, a dozen miles out, and came turbulently toward Delhi, confident of a royal reception from the sepoys stationed there.