Surji Rao had bought the cartridges at a very large discount, which did not appear in the bill, and he knew that not even Chitan valour could make more than one in ten of them go off.
Therefore, when the Maharajah congratulated Surji Rao upon his foresight in urging the replenishment of the arsenal at this particular time, Surji Rao found it very difficult to congratulate himself.
It all came out the day before the one fixed for the expedition.
His Highness, being in great spirits, had ordered a shooting competition, and the men were served from the new stores supplied to the State of Chita by Petroff Gortschakin of St.Petersburg.
The Maharajah drove out to the ranges to look on, and all his Ministers with him.

All, that is, except the Minister of the Treasury, who begged to be excused; he was so very unwell.
Some of the men knelt and clicked and reloaded half a dozen times before they could fire; some were luckier, and fired the first time or the third without reloading.

They glanced suspiciously at one another and hesitated, while there grew a shining heap of unexploded cartridges, a foot high, under the Maharajah's very nose.

His Highness looked on stupefied for ten minutes, then burst into blazing wrath.

Maun Rao rode madly about examining, inquiring, threatening.
'Our cartridges are filled with powdered charcoal,' he cried, smiting one of them between two stones to prove his words.