That confusion ensued amongst the whites goes without saying, for none knew exactly where the danger lay. Firm in his belief in his dark-skinned comrades the white-haired colonel mounted his horse and rode boldly into the midst of his regiment, which was assembled on the plain. He tried to harangue the men, but ere he had spoken many words there was a report, and a bullet shattered his arm. In a few seconds he fell from his horse riddled with bullets. It was the first blood. Then throwing off all reserve the black soldiers seemed to suddenly transform themselves to fiends. With hideous cries and shouts, and followed by a yelling rabble thirsting for the white men’s lives, they rushed towards the town bent on slaughter. And almost at the same moment a young and beautiful woman, mounted on a magnificent horse, her form concealed by a military cloak, crossed the plain, and, urging the animal to its wildest gallop, sped towards Delhi. To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late, And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers And the temples of his gods. When the eighty-five condemned men were consigned to the gaol they were placed under the care of a native guard only, and the prisoners exclaimed to their guard: ‘Are you countrymen of ours that you can calmly see us thus treated and disgraced by these accursed Feringhees?’ And the taunt was taken up and carried from man to man, and it ran like wildfire through the native regiments, and through the bazaars, and through the villages. And it was borne down the rivers and up the rivers, and over the dusty plain to Delhi men sped with the cry on their lips. And when the sinking sun was reddening the rolling waters of the Ganges, native eyes in Delhi were turning anxiously towards Meerut for the flaming signal in the sky, that should announce to them that fire and sword were doing their deadly work on the European residents in the great cantonment.