16 for a Nose

Near the storied river Ganges, at flourishing Allahabad, Central India, stands a jail. Last week 100 Indians, incarcerated at hard labor, revolted, pinioned their native overseer and vengefully cut off his nose. Then, arming themselves with edged tools, they climbed to the roof of the jail and bade fanatical defiance to the British Empire as personified by additional warders who appeared armed with revolvers, dragging a machine gun.

Came British Jail Superintendent Major Dhondy, pompous. Three times, in the name of the British Raj, he called on the revolted prisoners to surrender. Their reply was a tile, deftly hurled, which bruised painfully Jail Superintendent Major Dhondy. "Fire!" he commanded, and before the machine gun ceased to rattle, 16 prisoners had been wounded. Cowed, the desperate nose-nippers surrendered.