Ted was crestfallen.
“Oh! I’d forgotten them,” he replied. “Still, half the regiment would be enough to defend the town. I’m jolly glad our men are showing such a good spirit, but I’m afraid for Jim and Spencer. I don’t suppose their Guides are likely to remain loyal very long.”
“I’ve been thinking of them all morning,” Alec observed musingly, “and of all Spencer was telling us the night he was here. I don’t think there’s much doubt but that those fellows will sell themselves to the highest bidder, and he will be the emperor at Delhi. They may pull through all right though, if they are within reach of Nicholson. He and Edwardes will be towers of strength along the frontier.”
“Don’t it make you mad to think of the way they bungled it at Meerut? Whoever was responsible for such a fiasco ought to be kicked out of the army.”
“Now, Ted Russell, you know nothing about it,” the cautious Scot reproachfully asserted. “It’s very easy to say afterwards what ought to have been done, but we don’t know all the circumstances. Here’s the colonel. He’s a fine-looking man, and no wonder the sepoys are proud of him.”
The companies were called to attention, numbered, and wheeled into line. Before the wheel was completed a sepoy suddenly levelled his musket and pulled the trigger. Two officers at once rushed towards the would-be assassin, but were met by the fire of some twenty men of the same company, and fell riddled with bullets.
One-half of the sepoys stood irresolute—some fingering their triggers menacingly; others, taken by surprise, screamed, “No, no, we must not slay our officers!”
“Nay, slay them all!” roared a subadar, “whether we love them or not! If we do not kill them they will persuade us against our will!”
And a shrill clamour approved the advice.
Still five hundred men hesitated. Some of the waverers shouted to the Englishmen, urging them to run. It was as though they had been bitten by a mad dog, and, while yet sane, knowing that the poison was working in their veins, they wished to save bloodshed before the madness should overpower them and render them pitiless.