“Are you hurt?” Tynan asked.
“I’m not quite sure. I don’t think so.”
“Let me see. Oh, it’s only a scratch.”
The sepoys in the room above, less hampered by the rebel fire, were answering back to some purpose until they too were silenced, one of their number being mortally wounded. A crash against the stout door seemed to shake the house, and before the vibration ceased another bang was heard. Englishmen and Rajputs were firing hastily whenever an opportunity occurred, but the pandies now held the upper hand. A splintering noise followed the next crash.
“What can we do, Russell? What can we do?” Tynan cried. “They’ll be in in a moment!”
Backed by the strength of half a dozen men the logs crashed once more against the barrier, and the hearts of the garrison were heavy as lead.
“We’re not done for yet,” Ted stoutly replied. “We must wait for them in the passage. We may yet hold the passage, Ambar Singh; and should we die, men will speak of your deeds from generation to generation.”
“We can hold them back for a time, sahib. Come, my children, and thou, Bisesar Rai, and thou, Dwarika Rai, load and pass us the muskets as we lie in the doorway.”
Of the twenty-two Rajputs ten were still able to fight, and three others remained alive though sorely wounded. They were now all together, and Ted, Ambar Singh the havildar, and as many others as could crowd in, were lying full length before the wide-arched entrance to the room. From the slowly-yielding door the passage ran straight for a few paces before curving to the right, and an enemy coming round the bend would be at a great disadvantage, for the best marksmen of the garrison waited with ready muskets, their elbows on the threshold, their bodies within the room. Behind them two comrades stood, a loaded musket in each hand, to exchange for the emptied weapons, and beside them knelt Bisesar Rai and Dwarika Rai busily loading the firearms. The pandies could not take aim without coming into full view, but the defenders could fire with a minimum of exposure, and could draw back their heads into safety whenever they saw a musket-barrel pointing at random towards them.
A louder crash, a shrill yell, and a mob of maddened sepoys swept inside and round the bend. Six muskets cracked at once, and the yells changed to howls of dismay. A second volley—not in unison this time, but no less effective—and the sepoys turned and fled. The victory was not to be so easy as they had imagined. Had the garrison been armed as were they, with one Brown Bess apiece and a limited supply of ammunition, it would all have been over long ago they told themselves, but when volley followed volley with such rapidity, it was like facing a regiment. The sepoys were not cowards as a rule, but they knew they were playing a traitor’s part. In a good cause, well led, they would have risked the danger, even as the handful of loyal Rajputs were devoting their lives to their duty.