Rahmut lost little time in arranging to counter this cunning move of his enemy. He took the messenger back into Delhi, the man believing that he would be handed over to the Kotwal for hanging. But Rahmut made the man take him to his own house, and he set a guard over it, and swore to the wretch that the house and all within it should be destroyed unless he did what was bidden him. And the bidding was, to go to the British lines and give the warning as Minghal had commanded, with one little change: the point of attack was to be, not that which had been assigned to Rahmut, but that which had been assigned to Minghal. Holding the informer's house and family as hostages, Rahmut had no doubt that the man would obey, and he went back to his serai satisfied with his afternoon's work.
During the day the excitement in the city had risen to fever heat. News had come in that Nana Sahib, on the approach of the British to Cawnpore, had massacred the two hundred women and children who had remained in his hands since that fatal day when their fathers and husbands had been shot down on the boats. The wiser residents of Delhi were aghast: they knew the dreadful story of that other tragedy, at Calcutta, a century before, when a hundred of the sahibs perished in the Black Hole. They knew what retribution had fallen on Siraj-uddaula then; what would happen now, after this far more horrible butchery of women and children? But the fanatics rejoiced in the tale of blood. The greater the excesses, the more impossible to draw back. The greater the vengeance to be feared, the more imperative to strain every nerve to crush these obstinate Feringhis on the Ridge. The protraction of the siege was already doing them harm. Risings were taking place in many scattered districts; and even in the Panjab, which Jan Larrens had hitherto kept quiet, there were ominous mutterings. If the English on the Ridge could but be routed, all Northern India would be ablaze.
And so the sepoys at sunset marched in their thousands from the gates. Amid the blare of bugles, the thunder of artillery from the walls, the strident calls of the muezzins from the minarets of the mosques, proclaiming eternal glory for all who bled in the holy cause, the rebels flocked out, maddened with fanatical fury and with bang, aglow with the resolve to conquer or die.