And Juggut Khan was never
known to discuss the matter. But the fact remains that every man
of them was killed by the blade or point of a cavalry-saber, and
that Juggut Khan broke out of the place untouched.
And another fact worthy of record is, that underneath a stone floor,
in a building that was partly powder-magazine-surrounded at every
end and side by mutineers who searched for them, and very nearly
stifled by the dust of decaying ages--there lay three women and a
child, with a jar of water close beside them and a sack of hastily
collected things to eat. They lay there in all but furnace-heat,
close-huddled in the darkness, and they shuddered and sobbed and
blessed Juggut Khan alternately. Below them the whispering echoes
sighed mysteriously through a maze of tunnels. Around them, and
around their sack of food, the rats scampered. Above them, where a
ten-ton stone trapdoor lay closed over their heads, black powder stood
in heaps and sacks and barrels. Closing the trapdoor had been easy.
One pushed it and it fell. Not all the mutineers in Jailpore nor
Juggut Khan nor any one could open it again without the secret.
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