In the morning the servants were all to have the choice given them of remaining with their masters or leaving.
Captain Forster was the only dissentient.

He was in favor of the whole party mounting, placing the women and children in carriages, and making off in a body, fighting their way if necessary down to Allahabad.

He admitted that, in addition to the hundred troopers of his own squadron, they might be cut off by the mutinous cavalry from Cawnpore, fall in with bodies of rebels or be attacked by villagers, but he maintained that there was at least some chance of cutting their way through, while, once shut up in the courthouse, escape would be well nigh impossible.
"But you all along agreed to our holding the courthouse, Forster," the Major said.
"Yes; but then I reckoned upon Cawnpore holding out with the assistance of Nana Sahib, and upon the country remaining quiet.

Now the whole thing is changed.

I am quite ready to fight in the open, and to take my chance of being killed there, but I protest against being shut up like a rat in a hole." To the rest, however, the proposal appeared desperate.