ny season. There were no
telegraph-wires, and the British had to cope with the mysterious,
and even yet unsolved, native means of sending news--the so-called
"underground route," by which news and instructions travel faster than
a pigeon flies. There was never a greater certainty or a more one-sided
struggle, at the start. The only question seemed to be how many days,
or possibly weeks, would pass before jackals crunched the bones of every
Englishman in India.

But at the British helm was Nicholson, and under him were a hundred
other men whose courage and resource had been an unknown quantity until
the outbreak came. Nicholson's was the guiding spirit, but it needed
only his generalship to fire all the others with that grim enthusiasm
that has pulled Great Britain out of so many other scrapes. Instead of
wasting time in marching and countermarching to relieve the scattered
posts, a swift, sudden swoop was made on Delhi, where the eggs of the
rebellion had hatched.

As many of the outposts as could be reached were told to fight their
own way in, and those that could not be reached were left to defend
themselves until the big blow had been struck at the heart of things.
If Delhi could be taken, the rebels would be paralyzed and the rescue of
beleaguered details would be easier; so, although odds of one hundred
or more to one are usually considered overlarge in wartime--when the
hundred hold the fort and the one must storm the gate--there was no time
lost in hesitation. Delhi was the goal; and from north and south and
east and west the men who could march marched, and those who could not
entrenched themselves, and made ready to die in the last ditch.

Some of the natives were loyal still. There were men like Risaldar
Mahommed Khan, who would have died ten deaths ten times over rather than
be false in one particular to the British Government. It was these men
who helped to make intercommunication possible, for they could carry
messages and sometimes get through unsuspected where a British soldier
would have been shot before he had ridden half a mile. Their loyalty was
put to the utmost test in that hour, for they can not have believed
that the British force could win. They knew the extent of what was out
against them and knew, too, what their fate would be in the event of
capture or defeat. There would be direr, slower vengeance wreaked on
them than on the alien British. But they had eaten British salt and
pledged their