Officers and men ate a slight meal, growled a bit, and swung off in the new direction. At four o'clock in the afternoon they found the sepoy army drawn up behind a canal, with its right protected by another canal, and the center and left posted in fortified villages. Evidently, too, a stout serai, or inn, a square building surrounding a quadrangle set apart for the lodgment of camels and merchandise was regarded as a stronghold. Here were placed six guns and the walls were loopholed for musketry. In a word, had the mutineers been equal in courage and _morale_ to the British troops, the resultant attack must have ended in disastrous failure. But Nicholson was a leader who took the measure of his adversaries. Above all, he did not shirk a battle because it was risky. The 61st made a flank march, forded the branch canal under fire and were ordered to lie down. Nicholson rode up to them, a commanding figure on a seventeen-hands English hunter. "Now, 61st," he said, "I want you to take that serai and the guns. You all know what Sir Colin Campbell told you at Chillianwallah, and you have heard that he said the same thing at the battle of the Alma. 'Hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes,' he said, 'and then, my boys, we will make short work of it.' Come on! Let us follow his advice here!" Swinging his horse around, he rode straight at serai and battery. Grape-shot and bullets sang the death-song of many a brave fellow, but Nicholson was untouched. The 61st leaped to their feet with a yell, rushed after him, and did not fire a shot until they were within twenty yards of the enemy. A volley and the bayonet did the rest. They captured the guns, carried the serai, and pelted the flying rebels with their own artillery. The 1st Punjabis had a stiff fight before they killed every man in the village of Nujufgarh on the left, but the battle was won, practically in defiance of every tenet of military tactics, when the 61st forced their way into the serai. Utterly exhausted, the soldiers slept on the soddened ground. That night, smoking a cigar with his staff, Nicholson commented on the skill shown in the enemy's disposition. "I asked a wounded havildar who it was that led the column, and he told me the commander was a new arrival, a subadar of the 8th Irregular Cavalry, named Akhab Khan," he said. Malcolm started. Akhab Khan was the young sowar whose life he had spared at Cawnpore when Winifred and her uncle and himself were escaping from Bithoor. "I knew him well, sir," he could not help saying. "He was not a subadar, but a lance-corporal. He was one of a small escort that accompanied me from Agra to the south, but he is a smart soldier, and not at all of the cut-throat type." Nicholson looked at him fixedly. He seemed to be considering some point suggested by Malcolm's words.