No serious trouble had been anticipated. A certain tract of country
had been reported unquiet, and General Roscoe had been ordered to
proceed thither on a tour of inspection and also, to a very mild
degree, of intimidation. Marching through the district from fort to
fort, he had encountered no shadow of opposition. All had gone well.
And then, his work over, and all he set out to do satisfactorily
accomplished, his face towards India and his back to the mountains,
the unexpected had come upon him like a thunderbolt.
Hordes of tribesmen, gathered Heaven knew how or whence, had suddenly
burst upon him from the south, had cut off his advance by sheer
immensity of numbers, and, hemming him in, had forced him gradually
back into the mountain fastnesses through which he had just passed
unmolested.
It was a stroke so wholly new, so subtly executed, that it had won
success almost before the General had realised the weight of the
disaster that had come upon him. He had believed himself at first to
be involved in a mere fray with border thieves. But before he reached
the fort upon which he found himself obliged to fall back, he knew
that he had to cope with a general rising of the tribes, and that the
means at his disposal were as inadequate to stem the rising flood of
rebellion as a pebble thrown into a mountain stream to check its flow.
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