In a large and elegant tent on the cantonment plain, the fiend and tiger, Nana Sahib, paced uneasily. He heard the booming of the guns, the rattle of the musketry, and occasionally the dying shriek of an unhappy woman was borne upon his ear. He knew that Shiva the Destroyer was doing his hellish work. Perhaps as he paced up and down, there came into his black heart a pang of remorse, or, more probably, a thrill of fear; for in his solitude he might have seen a vision of the Great White Hand that was to smite him into the dust. Or perhaps there stole over him a sense that there was a destroyer mightier even than Shiva--even the Supreme God of the Christians, who would exact a terrible retribution for his unutterable crimes. It is certain that as Dundoo Pant paced his tent, he was ill at ease. He was haunted by the ghosts of his victims, even as was that bloody tyrant of infamous memory, Richard the Third, the night before Bosworth. “Ah! What do you want?” cried the guilty Nana, as a messenger suddenly entered the tent--so suddenly that the conscience of Dundoo caused his heart to leap into his mouth. “The work speeds well, your Highness,” said the man, kneeling before his master; “but these Feringhees are fighting to the death.” “Go back with all haste to Tantia Topee, and say that, as he values his own life, not another woman or child is to be slaughtered; but let every man with a white face be hacked to pieces. Mark me well. _Not an Englishman is to be spared!_ Tell Azimoolah to see to all this.” The messenger withdrew, and the tiger ground his teeth and resumed his walk. Down at the Ghaut the work was truly speeding well, but when the Nana’s message arrived it stopped as far as the women were concerned; and about one hundred and thirty women and children--some fearfully wounded, others half drowned and dripping with the slime of the Ganges--were carried back in captivity to Cawnpore.