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shattered. A savage tremor swept across the plain like an invisible wave, shuddering through the grass and rocking the very earth beneath her, and on its heels came an appalling crash of sound that split the murmurous silence of the hot afternoon as a thunderbolt will split a pine tree.
    The violence of that sound jerked Ash from sleep and brought Sita to her feet, rigid with shock, and peering through the shivering grasses they saw a vast column of smoke rising up above the distant walls of Delhi: an awesome, writhing pillar, mushroom-topped and terrifying in the blaze of the afternoon sunlight. They had no idea what it meant, and never knew that what they had seen was the explosion of the Delhi magazine, blown up by a handful of defenders to prevent it falling into the hands of a rioting mob.
    Hours later the smoke still hung there, rose-coloured now in the golden sunset; and when at last Sita and the child ventured out of their hiding place the first rays of the low moon had touched its fading outline with silver.
    To turn back now, when they were almost within reach of their goal, was out of the question; though had there been any other way of reaching the cantonments, Sita would have taken it. But she did not dare attempt to ford the Jumna, and there was no other bridge for many miles. They would have to cross by the bridge of boats, and they had done so, hurrying across it in the grey starlight in the wake of a wedding party, to be challenged and halted by armed men on the far side. A lone woman and child being of little account, they had been allowed to pass while the sentries interrogated the wedding guests; and it was from the babble of questions and answers that Sita gained her first information as to the events of the day.
    Hilary had been right. And so had Akbar Khan. There had been too many grievances that had been disregarded, too many injustices that had not been recognized and put right, and men would not endure such things for ever. The breaking point had been a petty one: a matter of greased cartridges that had been issued to the Bengal Army for use in the new rifles, of which the grease was suspected of being a mixture of cow and pig fat – the touch of the first destroying the caste of a Hindu and the latter defiling a Mohammedan. But it was an excuse only.
    Ever since the day, half a century earlier, when mutiny and bloodshed had followed the Company's attempt to enforce the wearing of a leather stock and a new form of headdress on the troops at Vellore in Madras, the sepoys had suspected a plot aimed at depriving them of caste – that most cherished of all Hindu institutions. The mutiny of Vellore had been put down with swiftness and ferocity, as had other and similar insurrections in the years that followed. But the Company had failed to read the writing on the wall, and were indignant at the outcry against the greased cartridges.
    In Barrackpore an angry sepoy, Mangal Pandy of the 34th Native Infantry, having urged his comrades to revolt, had fired at and wounded the British Adjutant. He had subsequently been hanged, while his fellow sepoys who had watched in silence had been deprived of their arms. The regiment itself had been disbanded, and faced with further dissatisfaction the Governor-General had at last issued an order withdrawing the new cartridge. But by that time it was too late, for the sepoys looked upon the order as proof that their suspicions had been correct, and far from easing the tension, it increased it to danger-point. Outbreaks of arson were reported from all over India, but in spite of the explosiveness of the situation and the fact that knowledgeable men were only too well aware of impending disaster, the Commanding Officer of the 3rd Cavalry, stationed at Meerut, had elected to teach his regiment a lesson by insisting that they use the disputed cartridges. Eighty-five of his sowars * having firmly, though courteously, refused to do so, they had been arrested, court-martialled