This idea of leaving Jailpore to its fate is nonsense! The rebels
are in strength there, and they have perpetrated an abominable outrage.
There we will punish them, or else we'll all die in the attempt!
If we have to raze Jailpore to the ground, and put every man in it
to the sword before we find the four Europeans supposed to be left
alive there, our duty is none the less obvious! Here comes my column.
Tell the men to be ready to march in ten minutes."
He turned his horse, to look through the dust at the approaching column,
but the man who had been superseded touched him on the sleeve.
"What's that? Better have a rest? Tired out, you say? Oh! Form
them all up in hollow square, then, and I'll say a few words to them.
There are other ways of reviving a leg-weary column than by letting
it lie down."
Ten minutes later a dull roar rose up through a steel-shot dust-cloud,
and three thousand helmets whirled upward, flashing in the sun.
Three thousand weary men had given him his answer! There was no kind
of handle to it; no reserve--nothing but generous and unconditional
allegiance unto hunger, thirst, pain, weariness, disease or death.
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