In more than a dozen places, about a dozen men were holding a fort
against an army. They were using every wile and trick and dodge that
ingenuity or inspiration could provide them with, and they were mostly
contriving to hold out. But there were none who did anything more
daring or more unusual than to march to the attack of a city, with
a hostile fakir in the van, and nothing else but their eleven selves
and their rifles to assist them. There is a tremendous difference
between defending when you have to, and attacking when you might retire.
XII.
There were many more causes than one that worked together to make
possible the entry of Brown and his little force into Jailpore.
They were brave men; they were more than brave and they held the
ace of trumps, as Brown had stated, in the person of the fakir known
as "He." But luck favored them as well, and but for luck they must
have perished half a dozen times.
They marched the whole of the first afternoon, and met no one. They
only overtook little straggling parties of rebels, making one and
all for Jailpore, who bolted at the sight of them, imagining them
probably to be the advance-guard of a larger force.
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