The Rajputs on the bastions that flanked the main gate began to fire wildly as the rebels approached within range.
“Steady, men, steady!” the commandant ordered. “Each cover his man before he fires! That’s the way! Well aimed, Ambar Singh!”
The loyal sepoys had pulled themselves together, and there was no further waste of ammunition. Rebel after rebel rolled over in the dust or limped into cover, and the rush was checked. The assailants slowly backed away from the walls, each man trying to dodge behind his neighbour to keep a shield before him as he took aim. Ted looked for Pir Baksh, but that astute pandy, having no intention of exposing himself so prominently on horseback, had dismounted, and was lost amid the mob.
At last the ensign marked his quarry. For a second’s space the ringleader had come into view to urge his reluctant hordes to the assault. Hastily covering him, Ted pulled the trigger. A rebel fell, but it was not Pir Baksh. Like the coward he was, he had skipped into safety behind a group of sepoys, and now the front ranks of the mutineers had pressed back upon the rearmost until all were beyond effective range. Brown Bess could not be trusted to carry far.
“If there is one of the curs I should like to kill it’s that traitor Pir Baksh!” Tynan declared with an oath. “I hope I’ll live to see him hanged! It was he who shot the colonel; I saw him.”
“Are you sure of that?” Lowthian and Ted both asked.
“As sure as that I am here.——What are they up to now?”
Baffled for a moment, the subadar had abandoned the idea of a direct assault, and was seen to be exhorting the men to some new method of attack, for the pandies presently dispersed right and left. A hot fire was still kept up through the windows of Fletcher’s house. Lowthian quietly gave an order.
“Tynan, take eight men to the southern bastion, and don’t show yourselves until you can strike home. Dal Singh, you keep watch from the north-west tower, and give the alarm if they gather in that direction.”
A number of the sepoys were reassembling at the top of the main street where it debouched into the open space facing the main gate. Ted and Lowthian exchanged a meaning look as they perceived that some had brought short ladders and were busily lashing them together.