Page:Volunteering in India.djvu/94

80 From our point of view, this body of mutineers seemed so small that, notwithstanding they were supported by a grim eighteen-pounder gun, a squadron of the Corps was deemed sufficient to dislodge, if not literally to annihilate them. Accordingly one hundred and twenty-two sabres, with the Colonel at their head, prepared to charge. The words March, Trot, Gallop, in rapid succession, had scarcely passed the lips of the leader, when on dashed the Yeomanry like greyhounds slipped for the chase. They sweep over the plain, they plunge into an intercepting ravine half full of water that momentarily checks their race into the jaws of death, they tear through the stream in the teeth of a shower of grape from the eighteen-pounder. Still on flew the squadron, with every nerve braced, every sabre gripped; knee to knee the onrushing wave of steel roared, as it were, “Now for the gun! Now for the gun!” as the scowling black monster from its gaping muzzle vomits for the last time another discharge of deadly grape into our faces; but with free rein, neck and neck, and outstretched strides the maddened and gallant horses fly, like the irresistible shower of the iron hail that had just flown over their heads. Yet the mutineers, with muskets levelled from the shoulder, stand like posts, and draw not a trigger — a few strides more and bayonet and sabre would have crossed each other — when lo! in an instant up sprang hundreds of Sepoys on every side as if out of the very ground itself. They had been crouching, in fact, like tigers prepared to spring from