f any kind
to betoken that any one had seen them. Inside the walls the city roared
like a flood-fed maelstrom, and outside all was darkness and the silence
of the dead.

XIII.

There was some smart work done inside the powder-magazine. To be able to
appreciate it properly one would be obliged to do what they did--wander
through a maze of tunnels in a city-wall, blinded by darkness, oppressed
by the stored-up stuffiness and heat of ages and deafened by the
stillness--then emerge unexpectedly in the lamp-lit magazine, among
mutineers who sprawled, and laughed; and chewed betel-nut at their ease
upon the powder-kegs.

Both sides were taken by surprise, but the mutineers had the nominal
advantage, for their eyes were accustomed to the light. They had the
advantage in numbers, too, by almost two to one. But they dared not
fire, for fear of setting off the magazine, whereas Brown and his little
force dared anything. They fully expected to die, and might as well die
that way as any other. And a quick death for the women down below would
be better than anything the rebels had in store for them. Brown yelled
an order, and the rest was too quick, nearly, for the eye to follow.

Three rebels died with bullets in them, and the rest stampeded for the
teak-and-metal door, to find it locked on them, and Brown and the Rajput
standing in front of it on guard. The mutineers attacked fiercely. They
flung themselves all together on the two. But they had yet to learn that
they were tackling, or endeavoring to tackle, the two finest swordsmen
in that part of India. And when they turned, to find more room to fight
in, or to draw their breath, they had to face nine bayonets that hemmed
them in, and drove them closer and even closer to the swords again.
They shouted, but no sound could pierce the walls or escape through that
tremendous door. Even the sound of firing merely echoed upward until it
reached the dome, and then filtered out and upward through the opening
above. They might as well have shouted to their friends in Bholat!

For ten minutes, perhaps, the battle surged and swayed on the stone
floor first one side rushing, then the other. But man after man of the
mutineers went down--appalled by the amazing swordsmanship, disheartened
by the grim determination of their adversaries, bewildered to feebleness
by the suddenness of the attack.

Soon there were but eight of them facing the blood-wet steel, and then
Brown shouted for