Then there
will be no attempt at rescue, and we shall hold Jailpore unmolested
as headquarters."
That piece of logic won the day for a while, and parties were made
up to explore the place, and search in every nook and cranny for the
three women. and a child who surely had not passed out through any
of the gates, and who were therefore just as surely in the city.
A reward was offered by the committee of rebel-leaders and, although
nobody believed that the reward would actually be paid, the opportunities
for looting privately while searching were so great that the search
was thorough.
It failed, though, for the very simple reason that nobody suspected
that the huge stone trap-door in the floor of the powder-magazine
had ever been opened, or ever could be opened. The magazine had
been a white man's watch. White men had kept guard over it for more
than a hundred years, and the natives had forgotten that a maze of
tunnels and caverns lay beneath it.
So, while bayonet-points and swords were pushed into crevices, while
smoke was sent down passages and tunnels and great, loose-limbed,
slobbering hounds were led on the leash and cast to find a trail,
the three women and the child lay still beneath the piled-up powder,
and doled out water, and biscuit in siege-time measures.
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