Down long corridors, along numerous passages, through stately apartments, Harper went, led by his guide. At length an open court-yard was reached. On one side was a guard-room, at the door of which several Sepoys were lounging. The orderly led the Englishman close to the door, and as he did so he raised his hand and muttered something in Hindoostanee. Then, quick as thought, two tall, powerful Sepoys sprang upon Harper, and seized him in a grip of iron.
“Scum, cowards,” he cried, as he realised in an instant that he was the victim of a plot, and making a desperate struggle to free his hand and draw his sword. But other Sepoys came to the assistance of their comrades; the sword was taken away, his accoutrements and jacket were torn from him; then he was raised up, carried for some little distance, and forcibly thrown into a large apartment. Bewildered by the suddenness of the movement, and half-stunned by the fall—for his head had come in violent contact with the floor—Harper lay for some time unable to move.
When his senses fully returned, he stood up to examine the place in which he had been suddenly imprisoned. It was a large, square apartment, with walls of solid masonry, and a massive iron door, that seemed to render all chance of escape hopeless. The only light came from a narrow slit on one side of the room, near the roof. When his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, he made a more minute inspection of the place. It was evidently a dungeon, for the walls were damp and slimy, and the most repulsive reptiles were crawling about the floor; while in the corners, and on every projecting angle, huge tarantula spiders sat waiting for prey.
In one corner of the room Harper noticed that there was a recess, and in this recess was a small arched doorway. He tried the door. It was made of iron, and as firm as the solid masonry in which it seemed to be built.
He was a brave man. He could have faced death unflinchingly in open fight, but he sank into the apathy of despair as he realised that he had been trapped into this place, from which escape seemed impossible, to be murdered in cold blood when the rising took place; for he had no doubt now that the appearance of the Meerut mutineers would be the signal for a revolt in Delhi, and that when the time arrived every European would be ruthlessly butchered. As he remembered the words Haidee had uttered as he left the audience chamber, he reproached himself for not having been more on the alert.
“Fool that I was,” he cried, “to be thus taken off my guard! That woman gave me warning, and yet I have failed to profit by it.”
There was a small stone bench near where he was standing, and on to this he sank, and pressing his hands to his head, he murmured—
“My poor wife, God bless her; we shall never meet again.”
In a little time he grew calmer, and, rising from his seat, he once more made an inspection of his prison. But the slimy stone walls and the solid iron door seemed to mock all thought of escape, as they certainly shut out every sound—at least no sound reached his ear. The silence of death was around him. The awful suspense was almost unendurable. He felt as if he should go mad, and he was half-tempted, in those first moments of despair and chagrin, to dash his brains out against the dripping wall. He paced the chamber in the agony of despair. He threw himself on the stone seat again. And as the thought of those he loved, and that he might never see them any more, flashed through his brain, he felt as if he were really going mad.
Suddenly, out of his confused ideas, out of the mental chaos to which he had been well-nigh reduced, a question suggested itself to him, and an image rose up before his view.