“I have heard rats run that way!” growled the Risaldar.
They climbed up a narrow stairway leading to a sort of battlement and peered over the top, Suliman laying Ruth Bellairs down in the darkest shadow he could find. She was beginning to recover consciousness, and apparently Mahommed Khan judged it best to take no notice of her.
Down below them they could see the city gate, wide open, with a blazing torch on either side of it, and through the gate, swarming like ants before the rains, there poured an endless stream of humans that marched—and marched—and marched; four, ten, fifteen abreast; all heights and sizes, jumbled in and out among one another, anyhow, without formation, but armed, every one of them, and all intent on marching to the southward, where Jundhra and Doonha lay. Some muttered to one another and some laughed, but the greater number marched in silence.
“That for thy English!” grinned the priest. “Can the English troops overcome that horde?”
“Hey-ee! For a troop or two of Rajputs!” sighed the Risaldar. “Or English Lancers! They would ride through that as an ax does through the brush-wood!”
“Bah!” said the priest. “All soldiers boast! There will be a houghing shortly after dawn. The days of thy English are now numbered.”
“By those—there?”
“Ay, by those, there! Come!”
They climbed down the steps again, the Rajput humming to himself and smiling grimly into his mustache.
“Ay! There will be a houghing shortly after dawn!” he muttered. “Would only that I were there to see!... Where are the sepoys?” he demanded.