Reinvigorated by the excellent meal, the travelers found that their horses had benefited as greatly as they themselves by the food and brief rest.
They had no more adventures on the way. Winifred did not object to riding astride while it was dark, but she did not like the experience in broad daylight, and when they met a Eurasian in a tikka-gharry, or hired conveyance, in the environs of Lucknow, she was almost as delighted to secure the vehicle as to learn that the city, though disturbed, was “quite safe from mutiny.”
That was the man’s phrase, and it was eloquent of faith in the genius of Henry Lawrence.
“Quite safe!” he assured them, though they had only escaped capture by a detachment of rebel cavalry by the merest fluke three hours earlier.
They were standing opposite the gate of a great walled enclosure known as the Alumbagh, a summer retreat built by an old nawab for a favorite wife. And that was in June! In six short months Havelock would be lying there in his grave, and men would be talking from pole to pole of the wondrous things done at Lucknow, both by those who held it and those who twice relieved it.
“Quite safe!”
It was high time men ceased to use that phrase in India.