Despite the warning, a very keen ear might have detected a double sound, as if the seal had needed a second pressure. That was all.
So it came about that, half an hour or so afterward, the Head-of-the-nine at the magazine was looking contemptuously at a paper brought by the Palace Guards, and passed under the door, ordering its instant opening. George Willoughby laughed; but some of the eight dashed people's impudence and cursed their cheek! Yet, after the laugh, the Head-of-the-nine walked over, yet another time, to that river bastion to look down at that white streak of road. How many times he had looked already, Heaven knows; but his grave face had grown graver, though it brightened again after a glance at the lemon bush. The black streak there would not fail them.
"In the King's name open!" The demand came from Mirza Moghul himself this time, for the Palace was without arms, without ammunition; and if they were to defend it, according to the Queen's idea, against all corners, till there was time for other regiments to rebel, this matter of the magazine was important. Abool-Bukr was with him, half-drunk, wholly incapable, but full of valor; for a scout sent by the Queen had returned with the news that no English soldier was within ten miles of Delhi, and within the last half hour an ominous word had begun to pass from lip to lip in the city.
Helpless!
The masters were helpless. Past two o'clock and not a blow in revenge. Helpless! The word made cowards brave, and brave folk cowards. And many who had spent the long hours in peeping from their closed doors at each fresh clatter in the street, hoping it was the master, looked at each other with startled eyes.
Helpless! Helpless!
The echo of the thought reached the main-guard, still in touch with the outside world, whence, as the day dragged by, fresh tidings of danger drifted down from the Ridge, where men, women, and children lay huddled helplessly in the Flagstaff Tower, watching the white streak of road. It seems like a bad dream, that hopeless, paralyzing strain of the eyes for a cloud of dust.
But the echo won no way into the magazine, for the simple reason that it knew it was not hopeless. It could hold its own.
"Shoot that man Kureem Buksh, please, Forrest, if he comes bothering round the gate again. He is really very annoying. I have told him several times to keep back; so it is no use his trying to give information to the people outside."
For the Head-of-the-nine was very courteous. "Scaling ladders?" he echoed, when a native superintendent told him that the princes, finding him obdurate, had gone to send some down from the Palace. "Oh! by all means let them scale if they like."