Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/103

 offered him from Nepaul; he delayed in letting the inhabitants arm for their own defence. Not for a month did he allow them to form volunteer corps, and at the same time was forced to disarm the Sepoys at the neighbouring stations of Dum-Dum and Barrackpore. But rumours of what the Sepoys there had intended were already at work, producing a panic through Calcutta, where one Sunday in the middle of June a great part of the Europeans and Eurasians hastened to barricade themselves in their houses, or fled to the fort and the shipping for refuge from an imaginary foe, while the poor natives lay hid, trembling on their own account, expecting quite as groundlessly to be massacred by the white soldiers. The ludicrous terror of this "Panic Sunday" will long be remembered as a joke against the Calcutta people, who only towards evening began to see they had nothing to fear. Next day their restored confidence was strengthened by the arrest of the King of Oudh, who held a quasi-state in his palace near the city, and whose retainers were believed to have been plotting, with the now harmless Sepoys at the neighbouring stations, for a great Christian massacre.

A day or two later, Sir Patrick Grant, Commander of the Madras army, arrived to assume command in Bengal. He did not feel himself