CHAPTER XXII.
A GREAT PERIL AND A GREAT SALVATION I must now take up some of the ragged ends which I have left behind me.
It is not my task, as I have said, to write the history of the great Rising.

That has been done by abler men, who were at the centre of the business, and had some knowledge of strategy and tactics; whereas I was only a raw lad who was privileged by fate to see the start.

If I could, I would fain make an epic of it, and show how the Plains found at all points the Plateau guarded, how wits overcame numbers, and at every pass which the natives tried the great guns spoke and the tide rolled back.

Yet I fear it would be an epic without a hero.

There was no leader left when Laputa had gone.