Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/54

 must be overwhelmed beneath numbers. One last look he took towards the Meerut road, in vain hope to see a cloud of dust marking the advance of the English troops that still lay idly there. Then he gave the word. In an instant the building was hurled into the air, with hundreds of its assailants, and it is said that five hundred people were killed in the streets by the far-reaching explosion. The man who had fired the train and two others fell victims of their courage; six managed to escape over the ruins in the confusion, poor Willoughby to be obscurely murdered two or three days later. The rest received the Victoria Cross, so often won, and still more often earned, in those stirring days. A son of one of these heroes is author of the well-known novel Eight Days, which, under a transparent veil of fiction, gives a minutely faithful description of what went on in and about Delhi at that terrible time.

Meanwhile, at the Cantonments, the officers' families and other fugitives had gathered in the Flagstaff Tower, a small circular building on the ridge, where, huddled stiflingly together, they suffered torments almost equal to those of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Their only sure guard consisted of the drummer boys, who, in Sepoy regiments, are usually half-caste Christians. These,