The magazine within the walls, on the site of the present post-office, was garrisoned by only nine Europeans under a young artillery lieutenant, named Willoughby. Set on his guard betimes, he took all possible measures for defence, calmly preparing to blow up the magazine, if it came to the worst. The native gunners soon deserted; the reinforcement urgently demanded did not appear; he found himself cut off in a city full of foes raging round his important charge, which presently, in the name of the King of Delhi, he was summoned to surrender. For a time this little band stood in trying suspense, while the insurgents worked up their courage for an attack. It appears that they expected the English troops to be upon them, hour by hour, and awaited the return of a messenger who could report the road from Meerut clear. Then on they came in crowds, storming at the gates, scaling the walls, to be again and again swept back by the fire of cannon in the hands of nine desperate men. Three hours these nine held their post amid a rain of bullets, till Willoughby saw that he must be overwhelmed beneath numbers. One last look he took towards the Meerut road, in vain hope to see a cloud of dust marking the advance of the English troops that still lay idly there. Then he gave the word. In an instant the building was hurled into the air, with hundreds of its assailants, and it is said that five hundred people were killed in the streets by the far-reaching explosion. The man who had fired the train and two others fell victims of their courage; six managed to escape over the ruins in the confusion, poor Willoughby to be obscurely murdered two or three days later. The rest received the Victoria Cross, so often won, and still more often earned, in those stirring days. A son of one of these heroes is author of the well-known novel _Eight Days_, which, under a transparent veil of fiction, gives a minutely faithful description of what went on in and about Delhi at that terrible time.