,
overseas battalions, batteries and squadrons recalled, or
re-distributed, reverses and "regrettable incidents,"--and outlying
parts of India (her native troops massed in the North or doing
garrison-duty overseas) an archipelago of safety-islands in a sea of
danger; Border parts of India for a time dependent upon their various
volunteer battalions for the maintenance, over certain areas, of their
civil governance, their political organization and public services.

In Gungapur, as in a few other Border cities, the lives of the European
women, children and men, the safety of property, and the continuance of
the local civil government depended for a little while upon the local
volunteer corps.

Gungapur, whose history became an epitome of that of certain other
isolated cities, was for a few short weeks an intermittently besieged
garrison, a mark for wandering predatory bands composed of _budmashes_
outlaws, escaped convicts, deserters, and huge mobs drawn from that
enormous body of men who live on the margin of respectability, peaceful
cultivator today, bloodthirsty dacoit to-morrow, wielders of the spade
and mattock or of the _lathi_ and _tulwar_[63] according to season,
circumstance, and the power of the Government; recruits for a mighty
army, given the leader and the opportunity--the hour of a Government's
danger.

[63] Quarter-staff and sword.

As had been pointed out, time after time, in the happy and
happy-go-lucky past, the practical civilian seditionist and active
civilian rebel is more fortunately situated in India than is his foreign
brother, in that his army exists ready to hand, all round him, in the
thousands of the desperately poor, devoid of the "respectability" that
accompanies property, thousands with nothing to lose and high hopes of
much to gain, heaven-sent material for the agitator.

Thanks to the energy of Colonel John Robin Ross-Ellison, his unusual
organizing ability, his personality, military genius and fore-knowledge
of what was coming, Gungapur suffered less than might have been expected
in view of its position on the edge of a Border State of
always-doubtful friendliness, its large mill-hand element, and the
poverty and turbulence of its general population.

The sudden departure of the troops was the sign for the commencement of
a state of insecurity and anxiety which quickly merged into one of
danger and fear, soon to be replaced by a state of war.

From the moment that it was known