The very idiocy
of marching eleven strong through a country infested by their enemies
was in their favor. Nobody could believe that there were no more
than eleven of them. Even the English could not be such lunatics!
That night, they rested for a while, and then went on again. During
the day following they lay in a hollow between some trees and rested,
and slept by turns. They suffered agonies from the heat, and not
a little from hunger, and once or twice they were hard put to it to
stop the Rajput's charger from neighing when a native pony passed
along the nearby road. But night came again, and with it the screen
of darkness for their strange, almost defenseless caravan. Once or
twice the fakir tried to shout an alarm to passing villagers, but
the quick and energetic application of a cleaning-rod by Brown stopped
him always in the nick of time, and they came within sight of the
battlements of Jailpore without an accident.
Then, though, their problem became really serious, and it was a series
of circumstances altogether out of their control and not connected
with them that made their entry possible.
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