But it suited them very well
indeed to have the white men killed elsewhere. It was not likely,
but there might be a column on its way from Bholat now; and if that
column came, and found the bones of British soldiers as well as a
burned-out guard-house, vengeance would be dire and prompt. Between
where they were and Jailpore, the white men could not possibly escape.
And at Jailpore, if not sooner, they must surely die. So they believed
the fakir, and retired to the seclusion of their houses.
It was wonderful, of course, but no more wonderful than a thousand
other happenings in '57. All laws of probability and general average
were upset that year, when sixty thousand men held down an armed
continent. Even stranger things were happening than that two bullock-
carts should dawdle through a rebel-seething district in the direction
of a plundered, blood-soaked rebel stronghold; stranger even than
that on the foremost bullock-cart a lean and louse-infested fakir
should be squatting, guarded by British soldiers, who marched on
either hand; or that a Rajput, who could trace his birth from a
thousand-year-long line of royal chieftains, should be sleeping in
the bullock-cart behind, followed closely by a black charger with
a British saddle on its back, which ate corn from the tail-board
of the wagon; stranger things, even, than that a British sergeant
should be marching last of all, with his stern eyes roving a little
wildly but his jaw set firm and his tread as rigid and authoritative
and abrupt as though he were marching to inspect accouterments.
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