Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/102

 coming battles. Everywhere regiments, believed faithful, were going off like the guns of a burning ship.

The leaven of agitation naturally spread into the two other Presidencies, where the English officials could have no quiet rest till the danger in Bengal should be over. But the organization of the Madras and Bombay armies was not so dangerous for their rulers. Here men of various creeds and castes were more thoroughly mixed together in the ranks, which in Bengal had been allowed to consist too much of fellow-believers, and of cliques of the same family, caste or locality, turning every company into a clan animated by a common feeling apart from that of soldierly duty; nor, outside of Bengal, were the regiments permitted to be accompanied by squalid fakirs, to keep alive their superstitious zeal.

When Patna and Dinapore gave signs of commotion, not four hundred miles from Calcutta, the people of the capital might well look to see peril at their doors. They loudly accused Lord Canning as wanting to the exigency. He certainly seemed to go too far in trying to allay alarm by putting a calm face upon his inward anxiety. He forbore, as long as possible, to show distrust of the Sepoys in Eastern Bengal; he hesitated about accepting a contingent of Goorkhas