The Sikhs picked that up and followed us into the street.
The mechanism of the Administration's net was a thing to wonder at.

As we emerged through the door the "peasants" who were loafing with their backs against the wall got up and formed a cordon across the street.

Simultaneously, although I neither saw nor heard any signal, a dozen Sikhs under a British officer came down the street from the other direction at the double and formed up in line on our lefthand.

A moment later, our men were battering the door down with their baulk of timber, working all together as if they had practised the stunt thoroughly.
It was a stout door, three inches thick, of ancient olivewood and reinforced with forged iron bands.

The hinges, too, had been made by hand in the days when, if a man's house was not his fortress, he might just as well own nothing; they were cemented deep into the wall, and fastened to the door itself with half- inch iron rivets.