Some of the men in charge went mad, and were relieved.  Some threw up their commands.  Some of the worst incompetents were killed by the mutineers, and more than one man who could have changed the course of history for the worse were taken sick and died.  Instead of finding themselves faced by spineless nincompoops, the rebels reeled before the sudden, well-timed tactics of real officers with eyes and ears and brains.  The mask was off on both sides, and the sudden, stripped efficiency of one was no less disconcerting than the unexpected rebellion of the other.

Byng-bahadur—­“Byng the Brigadier”—­was in command of a force again within three days of the news of the first massacre; and because he was Byng, with Byng’s record, and Byng’s ability to handle loyal natives, the men who succeeded to the reins packed him off at once with a free hand, and with no other orders than to hit, hit hard, and keep on hitting.

“Go for them, Byng, old man.  Live off the country, keep moving, and don’t let ’em guess once what your next move’s going to be!”

So Byng recruited as he went, and struck like a brain-controlled tornado at whatever crossed his path.  But irreparable damage had been done before the old school was relieved, and Byng—­like others—­was terribly short of men.  Many of his own irregulars were so enraged at having been disbanded at a moment’s notice that they refused to return to him.  Their honor, as they saw it, had been outraged.  Only two British regiments could be spared him, and they were both thinned by sickness from the first.  They were Sikhs, who formed the bulk of his headquarterless brigade, and many of them were last-minute friends, who came to him unorganized and almost utterly undrilled.

But Byng was a man of genius, and his bare reputation was enough to offset much in the way of unpreparedness.  He coaxed and licked and praised his new men into shape as he went along; within a week he had stormed Deeseera, blowing up their greatest reserve of ammunition and momentarily stunning the rebellion’s leaders.  But cholera took charge in the city, and two days later found him hurrying out again, to camp where there was uncontaminated water, on rising ground that gave him the command of three main roads.  It was there that the rebels cornered him.

They blew up a hundred-yard-long bridge behind him at the one point where a swiftly running river could be crossed, and from two other sides at once mutinied native regiments and thousands from the countryside flocked, hurrying to take a hand in what seemed destined to be Byng’s last action.  The fact that so many swaggering soldier Sikhs were cornered with him was sufficient in itself to bring out Hindoo and Mohammedan alike.

The mutinous regiments had all been drilled and taught by British officers until they were as nearly perfect as the military knowledge of the day could make them; the fact that they had killed their officers only served to make them savage without detracting much from their efficiency.  They had native officers quite capable of taking charge, and sense enough to retain their discipline.