All this while the Fort at Allahabad was in imminent danger. There were 200 Europeans within the walls, but many were invalids, and nearly all the others were volunteers. They had to deal with 400 doubtful Sikhs and 100 Bengal sepoys. They heard the sound of firing, and thought that the rebels had arrived from Benares; but the blazing bungalows in the cantonment soon told a very different story. The Bengal sepoys were promptly disarmed and turned out of the fortress. The Sikhs were left to do as they pleased. They soon began to plunder the European stores, which private merchants had deposited in the Fort for safety; and they sold the liquors to the European soldiers for small sums, so that drunkenness soon added to the general terror and confusion. The result was most lamentable. When British soldiers can buy excellent wines and spirits at a few pence a bottle, they soon become drunk and incapable and such was the state of affairs inside the fortress of Allahabad after the mutiny of the 6th of June. [Sidenote: Devilry.] Meanwhile the horrible devilry outside the fortress was as murderous and destructive as at Meerut. The whole station was mad with excitement and riot. Houses were plundered and burnt. Women and children were tortured and butchered. The jail was broken open and every prisoner released. The sepoys plundered the treasury and divided the money amongst themselves, and then dispersed to their several homes to place the silver in a place of safety. But many suffered from their own folly. They were pursued by the very miscreants who had been let out of the jail, and many were savagely murdered and stripped of their ill-gotten treasures. [Sidenote: Neill restores order.] Three days afterwards Colonel Neill reached Allahabad with a detachment of Europeans from Benares. He recovered the bridge, entered the fortress, took over the command of the station, and soon put an end to the drunkenness and disorder. He could not punish the Sikhs, for they were the only Asiatic soldiery who were likely to prove faithful, whilst the Bengal regiments were breaking out in mutiny on all sides. Accordingly he stopped the drunkenness of the European soldiers by buying up all the remaining liquors from the Sikhs, and making them over to his commissariat officers. He then turned the Sikhs out of the Fort, and encamped them without the walls but within range of the guns. [Sidenote: Cawnpore advance stopped.]