Note 6 — Chapter XVII

At length, the garrison wearied out, entered into negotiations, and agreed to surrender the stockade, if allowed a free passage to Samagudting. This fatal arrangement would have been carried into effect within an hour or two, had not my letter arrived assuring them of help. What the result would have been no one who knows the Nagas can doubt; 545 headless and naked bodies would have been lying outside the blockade. Five hundred stands of arms, and 250,000 rounds of ammunition would have been in possession of the enemy, enough to keep the hills in a blaze for three years, and to give employment to half-a-dozen regiments during all that time, and to oblige an expenditure of a million sterling, to say nothing of valuable lives.6