Page:Volunteering in India.djvu/143

Rh In other respects, too, luck seemed to be turning in our favour; for Bazār rumours — which in India are borne from mouth to mouth with almost inconceivable rapidity, and, though gathering impetus as they fly, generally are substantially correct — floated in the air, and predicted the approach of calmer times.

So that what with our being overshadowed by cool foliage, the delightful change in the temperature, and the remorseless burning winds subsiding, we could well afford to patiently wait for the absorption of the surface water round about the position taken up by the rebels, before striking them the fatal blow that shattered the last remaining hope — whatever that might have been — in the hopelessness of their “cause,” — a blow that struck them down to the ground, and from which they only rose again as armed fugitives in full cry, with their tails between their legs, like a pack of whelping curs flying before the wrath of superior dogs.

Moreover that stronghold at Belwa, having been evacuated by the enemy, was in the ravenous claws and paws of vultures and jackals. Hostile guns were now seldom heard; and incendiary fires for the best of reasons had long since ceased, there being nothing more left to bum. The villages lay in ruins and ashes; desolation and the gloom of death reigned supreme everywhere; and, wherever we went, the whole country looked as if a wave of fire — quenched with torrents of blood — had passed over it, and left nothing but human and animal skeletons strewn over its ghastly and disfigured face. 