they!" he muttered. "I saw one such burning, once
before!"

VI.

The most wonderful thing in history, pointing with the surest finger to
the trail of destiny, has been the fact that in every tremendous crisis
there have been leaders on the spot to meet it. It is not so wonderful
that there should be such men, for the world keeps growing better, and
it is more than likely that the men who have left their footprints in
the sands of time would compare to their own disadvantage with their
compeers of today. The wonderful thing is that the right men have been
in the right place at the right time. Scipio met Hannibal; Philip
of Spain was forced to meet Howard of Effingham and Drake; Napoleon
Bonaparte, the "Man of Destiny," found Wellington and Nelson of the Nile
to deal with him; and, in America, men like George Washington and Grant
and Lincoln seem, in the light of history, like timed, calculated,
controlling devices in an intricate machine. It was so when the Indian
Mutiny broke out. The struggle was unexpected. A handful of Europeans,
commissioned and enlisted in the ordinary way, with a view to trade, not
statesmanship, found themselves face to face at a minute's notice with
armed and vengeful millions. Succor was a question of months, not days
or weeks. India was ablaze from end to end with rebel fires that had
been planned in secret through silent watchful years. The British force
was scattered here and there in unconnected details, and each detail
was suddenly cut off from every other one by men who had been trained to
fight by the British themselves and who were not afraid to die.

The suddenness with which the outbreak came was one of the chief assets
of the rebels, for they were able to seize guns and military stores and
ammunition at the very start of things, before the British force could
concentrate. Their hour could scarcely have been better chosen. The
Crimean War was barely over. Practically the whole of England's standing
army was abroad and decimated by battle and disease. At home, politics
had England by the throat; the income-tax was on a Napoleonic scale and
men were more bent on worsting one another than on equipping armies.
They had had enough of war.

India was isolated, at the rebels' mercy, so it seemed. There were no
railway trains to make swift movements of troops possible. Distances
were reckoned by the hundred miles--of sun-baked, thirsty dust in
the hot weather, and of mud in the rai