“This is no woman’s work,” he protested. “Where are my sons? Where is the Shahzada, Mirza Mogul?”
She knew. The heir apparent and his brothers were cowering in fear, afraid to strike, yet hoping that others would strike for them. She almost dragged her father to the front of the balcony. The troopers recognized him with a fierce shout. A hundred sabers were waved frantically.
“Help us, O King!” they cried. “We pray your help in our fight for the faith!”
Captain Douglas, commandant of the palace guards, hearing the uproar ran to the King. He did not notice the girl Roshinara, who stood there like a caged tigress.
“How dare you intrude on the King’s privacy?” he cried, striving to overawe the rebels by his cool demeanor. “You must lay down your arms if you wish His Majesty’s clemency. He is here in person and that is his command.”
A yell of defiance greeted his bold words. The Begum made a signal with her hand which was promptly understood. Away clattered the troopers towards the Raj Ghât Gate. There they were admitted without parley. The city hell hounds sprang to meet them and the slaughter of inoffensive Europeans began in Darya Gunj.
It was soon in full swing. The vile deeds of the night at Meerut were re-enacted in the vivid sunlight at Delhi. Leaving their willing allies to carry sword and torch through the small community in that quarter the sowars rode to the Lahore Gate of the palace. It was thrown open by the King’s guards and dependents. Captain Douglas, and the Commissioner, Mr. Fraser, made vain appeals to men whose knees would have trembled at their frown a few minutes earlier. Thinking to escape and summon assistance from the cantonment, Douglas mounted the wall and leaped into the moat. He broke one, if not both, of his legs. Some scared coolies lifted him and carried him back to the interior of the palace. Fraser tried to protect him while he was being taken to his apartments over the Lahore Gate, but a jeweler from the bazaar stabbed the Commissioner and he was killed by the guards. Then the mob rushed up-stairs and massacred the collector, the chaplain, the chaplain’s daughter, a lady who was their guest, and the injured Douglas.
Another dreadful scene was enacted in the Delhi Bank. The manager and his brave wife, assisted by a few friends who happened to be in the building at the moment, made a stubborn resistance, but they were all cut down. The masters in the Government colleges were surprised and murdered in their class-rooms. The missionaries, whether European or native, were slaughtered in their houses and schools. The editorial staff and compositors of the Delhi Gazette, having just produced a special edition of the paper announcing the crisis, were all stabbed or bludgeoned to death. In the telegraph office a young signaler was sending a thrilling message to Umballa, Lahore and the north.
“The sepoys have come in from Meerut,” he announced with the slow tick of the earliest form of apparatus. “They are burning everything. Mr. Todd is dead, and, we hear, several Europeans. We must shut up.”