VI.
FROM A HILL TOP.
December 17.
IT was really a ridge that bisects the Grand Trunk Road a good seventeen miles south of the Imperial City, and it had taken several weary hours to get there by a circuitous route around the flanks of both Armies. This was the position. Delhi had been captured by the invaders, and the Government had fled to the town of Gurgaon, twenty miles or so to the south-west. A weakened Division of the triumphant foe was entrenched six miles south of Delhi. The imaginary main army of the invaders was far away at Meerut. The Southern Army had been reinforced by a whole Infantry Division, a Cavalry Brigade, and a 30-pounder battery. They were now about to endeavour to push back the weakened enemy, and cut them off from the fords and bridges across the Jumna that led to Meerut. On this day they were four or five miles north of Gurgaon, and were in contact with their adversaries. Sitting at noontide on the crest of the ridge, the whole scene of the operations lay outspread in one vast panorama. It was, for once, a perfectly clear and almost windless day. To the south, the rich fertile well-wooded plain seemed to stretch out for an illimitable
