Seldom in the annals of warfare has there been a more stubborn, more heroic, defence made by a handful of men against a host of trained soldiers than was made by Willoughby and his comrades; for, be it remembered that they were fighting regiments of soldiers who had been trained and drilled in the art of warfare by the English themselves, and, as often proved before and since, the Sepoy makes almost as good a fighting-man as his white brother, although he perhaps lacks in that stubbornness and unconquerable determination which are peculiarly characteristic of the Englishman. But in the case we are dealing with the Sepoys were stubborn enough. They knew, indeed, that it was death or victory with them. And they quite believed that if they could but obtain the immense accumulation of ammunition stored in the Delhi arsenal, not only could they hold the city of the Moghuls against all the armies of England, but that they could actually conquer India. For it was big guns and shot and shell they wanted, and from nowhere else could they obtain them save Delhi. It was, therefore, their only hope, and it may safely be asserted that not one amongst them deemed it possible that the stores would not fall into their hands, as it was well known that only nine men held the fort. But what they did not know was that those nine men were unconquerable. It is no disparagement of the rest to say that Willoughby, by his magnificent example, inspired the others to greater deeds of valour. When on the evening of the 1st of May, as he sat on the verandah of the colonel’s bungalow at Meerut, he had stated that he would blow the magazine up rather than surrender it, he made no idle boast. But his belief was, as he and his noble companions worked the guns and kept the howling foe at bay, that the necessity to destroy the magazine would not arise, since they would be able to hold out till succour reached them from Meerut. For not knowing the extent of the disaster which had overwhelmed that station, he naturally expected some portion of its strong garrison would immediately be despatched to Delhi’s relief. But, alas! when the hoofs of the mutinous troopers’ horses rung upon the bridge that spanned the Jumna before Delhi, they sounded the death-knell of every British resident in the city, with some three or four exceptions.