'These beggars quote their Koran as glibly as Cromwell's Puritans did the Bible, and with the same view to blood and slaughter.' Led by Mahmoud chiefly, the mutineers rushed away to procure their arms and ammunition, with which they returned in a few minutes, inflamed by all the hate and rancour of race and religion, and pitilessly resolved to massacre all. The time of their absence has been given as about fifteen minutes, and, with horses at hand, it is said that all in the Residency might have made their escape, had they chosen to attempt it, but either they trusted to the sacred character of the embassy, underrated the actual amount of peril, or, like bold Britons, were determined to face it, and show fight. The roof of the Residency was an untenable place, being commanded by the flat roofs and windows of loftier houses, yet there Sir Louis Cavagnari and his little band were gathered, and there, making a kind of rampart or shelter-trench with what they could collect, they resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible in conflict with the savage hordes--the sea of human beings that surged around them. The mutineers, all well-armed with rifles and bayonets, and supplied with excellent ammunition, were now joined by the fanatical multitudes of the city, by robbers intent on plunder, budmashes, and villains of every kind, seeking blood and outrage, brandishing long juzails, sabres, and charahs, or deadly native knives, with points like needles and edges like razors--blades that flashed and glanced in the sunshine like their bloodshot and malevolent eyes; their strange garments, wide-sleeved camises, sheepskin cloaks, and bright-coloured loonghees or caps, adding to the picturesqueness of the savage and bewildering scene, overlooked by the pillared arcades, with horse-shoe arches, and the carved balconies on ponderous marble brackets projecting from the palace walls, and all half revealed and half hidden amid the eddying smoke of pistols and musketry. All were yelling, till their yells ended in a death-shriek, as a shot struck them down; many were quoting the inevitable Koran, or hurling offensive and abusive epithets, as they crushed upon and jostled each other, while seething and surging around their victims. Hope of victory--even of successful defence--the latter could have none. For them nothing was left now but to struggle to the last of their blood and breath, and until the last man perished in his agony! Colville, while handling the carbine of a Guide who had fallen near him, even in that desperate time, thought how hideous looked the sea of human faces into which he was sending shot after shot, as fast as he could drop them into the block of the breechloader.