The Rajah's Fortress — page 70: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE RAJAH'S FORTRESS. 61 while the unsuspecting dacoits came onward with the confident determination of utterly exterminat- ing the hated English. Never was there a more dreadful surprise, a more terrible reception. As they arrived within twenty steps of the top, calmly prepared and ready for the rifle fire which they expected asa matter of course, Guy quietly gave the signal, and a great stone cylinder, a veritable Juggernaut, vaulted noise- lessly over the edge. It slipped with a gentle clatter down the first two or three steps, left its im- print on the bodies that lay in the way, and then settled down to a swift velocity that sounded like a peal of distant thunder. It hurled itself on the foe like an enraged monster—a monster that turns on the hand that gave it birth, and the sickening crash was plainly heard above the shrieks of its victims. The awful thud was repeated again and again, as it swept its passageway clear, and then, its momentum checked, it settled down somewhere in the midst of the panic-stricken foe. Guy hesitated. This slaughter was horrible to him, and he would gladly have ended it; but it was their lives, or the lives of his men, and as the dacoits, in their fanatical desperation, made a fresh rush forward, two more stone pillars were rolled off the verge, side by side. The scene that followed defies description. The two monsters filled the passageway, and COLUM 1OOO SS co