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Water Bastion and the Counter-Scarp, and picking their way across the short stretch of open ground that separated the Kashmir Gate from the dark, friendly thickets of the Kudsia Bagh.
    A final spatter of shots followed but did not harm them, and ten minutes later they were among trees, with Delhi left behind them – a black, uneven fringe of walls and battlements, rooftops and trees, spiked with the slim minarets of mosques and thrown into sharp silhouette by the glow of the fires. To the right lay the river, while ahead and to the left loomed the long dark line of the Ridge, a natural barrier of rock that lay between the cantonments and the city.
    There were always lights in the cantonments, in bungalows, barracks and messes, and the quarters of the camp-followers. The glow they made in the night sky was a familiar sight, but tonight it was much brighter and less constant, waxing and waning as though there were fires there too. The Sahib-log, thought Sita, must have caused bonfires to be lighted around the cantonment area to prevent any attack being launched under cover of darkness, which seemed to her a sensible idea; though it was going to make her own progress more hazardous, for there were armed men on the road that linked the city to the Ridge and the cantonments, hurrying figures on foot and on horseback whom she suspected of being mutineers or looters. The sooner she got the child and herself to the safety of Abuthnot-Sahib's bungalow the better, but it might be wiser to wait here where the trees and thickets offered a hiding place, until there was less activity on the cantonment road.
    The donkey jibbed suddenly, almost unseating her. It stood still, blowing loud snuffing breaths of alarm, and when she urged it forward with her heel, it backed instead, so that she was forced to dismount.
    ‘
Dekho!
’ (Look!) said Ash, whose eyesight in the dark was almost as good as the donkey's. ‘There is someone there in the bushes.’
    His voice was interested rather than alarmed, and if he had not spoken before it was only because he had never been much given to talking, except, on occasions, to Akbar Khan. The shots and the shouting had excited him, but no more than that, for Uncle Akbar had taken him out shooting before he could walk, and the only alarming thing about the present situation was Sita's fear; and the fact that she either would not or could not explain their altered circumstances and why everyone he had known in all his short life, everyone but herself, had suddenly deserted him. But like most children the world over, he was resigned to the curious behaviour of grown-ups and accepted it as part of the scheme of things. He knew now that Sita was once again afraid, and this time of the person in the bushes: the donkey was too, and Ash patted the little animal's quivering back and said consolingly: ‘
Daro mut
,’ (Do not fear), ‘it is only a memsahib who is asleep.’
    The woman in the bushes lay in a curious attitude, as though she had crawled through the tangled undergrowth on hands and knees and had fallen asleep, exhausted. The red light of burning buildings, glinting through the leaves, showed her to be an excessively stout lady wearing a whalebone crinoline and a number of petticoats under a voluminous dress of grey and white striped bombazine which made her appear even stouter. But she was not asleep. She was dead. She must, thought Sita, shrinking back from that vast, silent shape, be one of the Sahib-log who had attempted to escape the massacre in the city and had died of terror or heart-failure, for she bore no sign of any wound. Perhaps she too had been trying to reach the cantonments, and perhaps there were other English fugitives hiding in the shadows – or mutineers, hunting them down.
    The latter thought was an alarming one, but a moment's consideration convinced Sita that any sounds of pursuit would be clearly audible among the thickets of the ruined garden, and that no search would be