His sanctimoniousness never failed him.
So on the night of the 23d of August there was an unwonted stillness in the city, and the coming of day did not break it. The rain, it is true, fell in torrents, but many an attack had been made in rain before. There was none now. The bugles and fifes had ended, and folk were waiting for the drum ecclesiastic to begin. What they thought meanwhile, who knows? Delhi held a hundred and fifty thousand souls, swelled to nigh two hundred thousand by soldiers. Only this, therefore, is certain, the thoughts must have been diverse.
But on the Ridge, when, after a few days, the tidings reached it with certainty, there was but one. It found expression in a letter which the General wrote on the last day of July. "It is my firm intention to hold my present position and resist attack to the last. The enemy are very numerous, and may possibly break through our intrenchments and overwhelm us, but the force will die at its post."
No talk of retirement now! The millions of peasants plowing their land peaceably in firm faith of a just master who would take no more than his due, the thousands even in the bloody city itself waiting for this tyranny to pass, were not to be deserted. The fight would go on. The fight for law and order.
So the sanctimonious old King had said sooth, "Whatever happens, happens by the will of God."
Those two hundred had not died in vain.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE DRUM ECCLESIASTIC.
The silence of the city had lasted for seven days. And now, on the 1st of August, the dawn was at hand, and the rain which had been falling all night had ceased, leaving pools of water about the city walls. Still, smooth pools like plates of steel, dimly reflecting the gray misty sky against which the minarets of the mosque showed as darker streaks, its dome like a faint cloud.
And suddenly the silence ended. The first shuddering beat of a royal salute vibrated through the heavy dewy air, the first chord of "God save the Queen," played by every band in Delhi, floated Ridgeward.