He could give no succour
he said, but he gave orders for Taimus to be detained in a place of
safety. To finish the story of Shahzada Taimus: while confined there a
havildar of the mutineers was brought in with a bullet in his back, and
in his agony he besought Taimus to extract it. This the Shahzada, though
no surgeon, succeeded in doing with a pocket-knife, and so grateful was
the mutineer that when night fell he gave him his uniform and helped him
to escape; and eventually, after many adventures and by the use of many
disguises, the brave fellow reached India in safety.
But to return to the Residency. _Jemadar_[18] Mehtab Sing, one of the two
native officers of the Guides, was now dead, and Kelly's whole time was
occupied in attending as best he could to the wounded, of whom there
were now twenty or thirty. There remained in the fighting line only
Hamilton, Jenkyns, Jemadar Jewand Sing, and some thirty of the Guides.
The whole interior of the building was full of dead and dying, enemies
and friends, the atmosphere made still more oppressive by the smoke of
powder, and by the more deadly peril of creeping incendiarism.
[18] _Jemadar_, a native commissioned officer, next in rank to the
_subadar_.
At this juncture, loud and exulting shouts proclaimed that fresh heart
had been given to the besiegers by the arrival of some new
reinforcement. The cause was self-apparent; two guns were being run by
hand into position at the gateway barely one hundred yards away.
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