It is difficult, however, to make any adequate picture of what the state of India actually was in that disastrous year. We who were in the midst of it have forgotten, our impressions have grown dim. Those who were not lack the sense which would enable them to grasp it. For security is the watchword of our modern life. To be robbed of this--to live consciously, day and night, on the brink of an abyss--to see the earth open, and the subversive forces which are for ever underlying it, break upwards in ravage and desolating fury--to have all our softnesses and superiorities swept away, and, in their place, terror, nakedness and an aching sense of our own insignificance--who of us all can fitly image it? I cannot, I know, although I took part in it all long ago. Yet sometimes, even now, a nightmare vision will flash it all back again. I will hide, breathless, in the jungle; I will listen to the shouts of infuriated mobs that seem to be always at my heels; I will plunge into a river, and strike out for dear life; I will crawl on shore at dead of night to rest my aching limbs, and measure sadly the distance that divides me from my friends; I will listen to tales that make the hair of my flesh stand up with horror, and try feebly to understand that they were our very own--the dear women and fair children that made the rapture of our lives--who have been hacked and hewn, and torn limb from limb, by fiends in human form. I will feel the blood in my body like fire, and the strength of a hundred will rush into my limbs, and I will grasp my weapon and slay--slay--till my heart is sick and my head faint; and still there will be the same awful, insatiable thirst that nothing can slake. And then, trembling, I will awake, and fall down on my knees and thank the Father of Mercies that the terror is over, and that the greater number of those who took part in it--Indians as well as English--are at rest. CHAPTER XXVII THE BREAKING OF THE MONSOON