The mutineers in Jailpore had learned that Kendrick sahib was coming
down on them from the north by forced marches with thirty-five hundred
men or more. They were putting the place into a state of siege,
and getting ready by all means in their power to oppose him.
Little attention was being paid to small parties of arrivals from
no man knew or cared where. And, in a final effort to find the four
who were the lure that was bringing Kendrick down on them, the city
was once more being turned upside down and inside out, and men were
even being tortured who were thought to know of hiding-places.
With purely Eastern logic, the leaders of the rebels had decided that
the sight of the bodies of the four, writhing in their last agony
on the sun-scorched outer wall, would mightily discourage the British
when they came. So no efforts were being spared and no stones left
unturned to find them. The hooks on the wall were sharp and ready,
so that they might be impaled without loss of time in full view of
their would-be rescuers.
Almost every secret passage of the thousand odd had been explored.
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