Our suspicions may have been unjust; and the fact may have been only a coincidence. Nevertheless it _was_ a fact that no more unpleasant symptoms attacked any of us after our meals. On the whole, we thought it fair to give the cook the benefit of the doubt; and we seized the first opportunity of dispensing with his services.
We were beginning to flatter ourselves that the watch on the Ganges kept by our police auxiliaries was altogether too stringent for the enterprise of the rebels; but we were mistaken. It so happened that one morning Sandeman and I rode round the picquets together. For some distance all was apparently quiet on the river; and no report of anything unusual was made by any of the police posts. We had just arrived close to one of them, when to our astonishment we suddenly came upon the broad and fresh track of a considerable number of horses and camels, clearly marked on the soft wet soil, and leading inland from the river straight past and immediately under the high ground on which the picquet was posted. We could hardly believe our eyes. It was quite clear that within a few hours a crossing had been effected by some two or three hundred mounted men, right under the noses of the police, upon whose fidelity I had been instructed to rely, and who had carefully concealed the fact from me, if they had not actively aided the rebels. As soon as we struck the trail we followed it across the sand to the point where it emerged from the river, which at that point was not very wide. We were immediately greeted by a musket shot from a man half-concealed among the rushes on the opposite shore, and who must have been a very indifferent marksman, for he missed us. As he repeated his performance in less time than he could possibly have reloaded, we judged that another musket must have been handed to him by a confederate more effectually hidden than himself; and as we could not tell how many more might be skulking in the thick cover, we considered it expedient to retire from his neighbourhood, after having replied to his civilities with our revolvers, of course ineffectually. We then went up to the police post, and my first step was to disarm and make prisoners of the whole eleven men composing it; for their treachery was self-evident, and demanded no further enquiry.