Armed men? That might mean much or nothing. Yet scarcely anything really serious, or warning would have been sent. The Commissioner, anyhow, must be told. So the Collector flung himself on his horse, which, in Indian fashion, was waiting under a tree outside the Court House, and galloped toward Ludlow Castle. No need for that warning, however, for just by the Cashmere gate he met the man he sought driving furiously down with a mounted escort to close the city gates. He had already heard the news.[[3]]
Gathering graver apprehensions from this hasty meeting, the Collector was off again to warn the Resident, then still further to beg help from cantonments. No delay here, no hesitation. Simply a man on a horse doing his best for the future, leaving the present for those on the spot.
Nor was there delay anywhere. The Commissioner, calling by the way for the Captain of the Guard, the nearest man with men under him, was at the gate, giving on the bridge of boats, by half-past seven. The Resident, calling on his way at the magazine for two guns to sweep the bridge, joined him there soon after. Too late. The enemy had crossed, and were in possession of the only ground commanding the bridge. Nothing remained but to close the gate and keep the city quiet till the columns of pursuit from Meerut should arrive; for that there was one upon the road no one doubted. The very rebels clamoring at the gate were listening for the sound of those following footsteps. The very fanatics, longing for another blow or two at an infidel to gain Paradise withal ere martyrdom was theirs, listened too; for during that moonlit night the certainty of failure had been as myrrh and hyssop deadening them to the sacrifice of life.
So the little knot of Englishmen, looking hopefully down the road, looked anxiously at each other, and closed the river gate; kept it closed, too, even when the 20th claimed admittance from their friends the guard within. For the 38th regiment, whose turn it was for city work, was also rotten to the core.
But they could not close that way through Selimgarh, though it, in truth, brought no trouble to the town. The men who chose it being intriguers, fanatics, the better class of patriots more anxious to intrench themselves for the struggle within walls, than to swarm into a town they could not hope to hold. But there were others of different mettle, longing for loot and license. The 3d Cavalry had many friends in Delhi, especially in the Thunbi Bazaar; so they made for it by braving the shallow streams and shifting sandbanks below the eastern wall, and so gaining the Raj-ghât gate. Here, after compact with vile friends in that vile quarter, they found admittance and help. For what?
Between the bazaar and the Palace lay Duryagunj, full of helpless Christian women and children; and so, "Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed," the convenient Cry of Faith, was ready as, followed by the rabble and refuse once more, the troopers raced through the peaceful gardens, pausing only to kill the infidels they met. But like a furious wind gathering up all vile things in the street and carrying them along for a space, then dropping them again, the band left a legacy of license and sheer murder behind it, while it sped on to loot.
But now the cry of "Close the gates" rose once more, this time from the shopkeepers, the respectable quarters, the secluded alleys, and courtyards. And many a door was closed on the confusion and never opened again, except to pass in bare bread, for four long months.
"Close the gates! Close the gates! Close the gates!" The cry rose from the Palace, the city, the little knot of Englishmen looking down the Meerut road. Yet no one could compass that closing. Recruits swarmed in through Selimgarh to the Palace. Robbers swarmed in through the Raj-ghât gate to harry the bazaars. Only through the Cashmere gate, held by English officers and a guard of the 38th, no help came. The Collector arriving therein, hot from his gallop to cantonments, found more wonder than alarm; for death was dealt in Delhi by noiseless cold steel; and the main-guard having to be kept, in order to secure retreat and safety to the European houses around it, no one had been able to leave it. And all around was still peaceful utterly; even the roar of growing tumult in the city had not reached it. Sonny Seymour was playing with his parrot in the veranda, Alice Gissing packing boxes methodically. The Collector galloping past--as, scorning the suggestion that it was needless risk to go further, he replied briefly, that he was the magistrate of the town, and struck spurs to his horse--made some folk look up--that was all.
But he could scarcely make his way through the growing crowd, which, led by troopers, was beginning to close in behind the knot of waiting Englishmen. And once more they looked down the Meerut road as they heard that some time must elapse ere they could hope for reinforcement. The guns could not be got ready at a moment's notice; nor could the Cashmere gate guard leave the post. But the 54th regiment should be down in about---- In about what? No one asked; but those waiting faces listened as for a verdict of life and death.
In about an hour.