“That’s rough on you. It must be horribly upsetting to have the matter hanging over so long.”
“It is. I’m glad we’re kept so busy, though, as I haven’t much time to think of it.”
“Never say die! Truth will out, you know, and you’ll be all right. Alec Paterson told me the whole story. That chap Tynan must be a pretty average cad. More guns coming!”
“’Ullo!” exclaimed our friend Bill as the end of the procession came into sight, “where’s the rest of the show? There’s nothing but huttees!”
“No more there isn’t. This is a bloomin’ fine circus, this is!”
“Here, you!” shouted a dragoon to a dignified mahout, “where’s yer giraffes, an’ ’ippopotamusses, an’ ricoconoseroses, an’ kangeroos? Why, there ain’t no clowns nor hacrobats!—this is a fraud! Gimme me money back, I can see a better menagerie than this in Hengland!”
“Ay, give us our money back!” chimed in the others in tones of simulated indignation; and roars of laughter went up, to the astonishment of the staid Sikhs and Punjabis, and to the delight of the jolly little Gurkhas.
But though the whole camp was in such high spirits, the more knowing ones understood that Delhi had not fallen yet, and that these cannon were no bigger, and were greatly inferior in number to those mounted on the city walls. Also that the mutineers’ guns, being sheltered by the solid masonry, were twice as effective as their own unprotected armament.
During the next few days the whole camp helped the Engineers to put into execution the plan of attack which Colonel Baird Smith’s masterly brain had planned. At dead of night the soldiers constructed batteries and shelter-trenches between the English camp and the walls, in positions where it would have meant death to have worked by daylight. Before long thousands of gabions[1] and acres of fascines[2] had been made for the protection of gunners.