The sahibs do not tell us when we are to launch the big hamla. They git mit with each other. If any one of us blacks comes near them, they use bad words like belady or daym or foken and stop talking. They are getting very short tempered.

It is the first week in the month of Assu (September). Early one morning our batteries open up: puttack, puttack. Stones fly like fluffs of cotton from a carder’s bow. It goes on all day and continues till midnight. At midnight we are roused and told that the big hamla is to take place before sunrise.

Our army is divided into five columns which will start the attack at the same time all along the city wall stretching from the river to Sabzi Mandi. We get a double ration of rum. We are promised six months’ additional wage if we take Dilli.

The night is as black as a Negro’s face. When I stretch my arm, I cannot see my hand. No one is allowed to speak. We take off our shoes and stealthily move to our positions. We are facing Kashmiri Gate. As the grey dawn appears, cannon begin to roar. The rebels seem to have sensed our moves. They let go at us. It is like the end of a tamasha with both sides firing away with everything they have. This goes on for about one hour. Then the guns fall silent. What an awful silence! Sweat pours down my forehead. I gulp down my rum. Then a huge explosion. Stones fly into the air. A pillar of dust and smoke rises from Kashmiri Gate. The gate has been blown up. Our subedar, Man Singh, draws his kirpan and yells: ‘Boley so Nihal.’ We draw our kirpans and yell back: ‘Sat Sri Akal.’ We rush forward into Dilli city.

Rebel drums begin to beat—dug-a-dug-dug, dug-a-dug-dug. They let loose a hail of bullets at us and meet us boldly shouting: ‘Ali, Ali, Ali’ or ‘Har Har Mahadev.’ Who said they had no fight left in them! But we have more guns, more carbines, more men. So we press on over the bodies of the dead and dying. We leap over the earthworks. That one-eyed bastard Rajab Ali had lied about the rebels when he said they would lay down their arms. They come on us like a swarm of hornets without any care for their lives. Their women and children yell filthy abuse at us. They call us the firangi’s bootlickers and hurl rocks on our heads. (If that whore—what was her name?—is caught again it will be the end of my life).