So, dispatching a few dozen cases of port and sherry to augment the large supply they installed themselves in their little fortress

From The Great Mutiny by Christopher Hibbert. Page 133. Amazing sense of duty.

The successful defection of these three native regiments at Dinapore encouraged a Rajput noble, the generous and well-liked Kunwar Singh, to join them with his retainers. And, hearing this, Lloyd persuaded himself that Dinapore would soon be under heavy attack. He consequently declined to listen to any pleas for help from other threatened places beyond its walls.

One of these places was Arrah, a small town not far from Dinapore, where six officials, subsequently joined by three railway engineers, had determined to remain at their posts, having sent their wives and children to the protection of the 10th Queen's Regiment at Dinapore. These six, the Judge, the Collector, the Magistrate, the Assistant Magistrate, the Civil Surgeon, and the Sub-Deputy Opium Agent, all moved into the Judge's house which they left by day to carry on their public business as usual, and by night to patrol the town in turn, accompanied by an increased force ofnative police and watchmen. Towards the middle of June, it was suggested that for greater security the whole party should move to a two-storeyed building, originally destined for a billiard-room, which one of the railway engineers, Vicars Boyle, defying the sarcastic comments of his colleagues, had fortified by bricking up the veranda arches and placing numerous sandbags against the walls. Objections were made to this move on the grounds that a retreat from the Judge's house would 'probably have led to panic in the town' and that the proposed fortress was 'singularly uncalculated for defence against superior numbers', being overlooked by the engineer's large house and hemmed in by trees, outhouses and garden walls. But when the native troops at Dinapore mutinied and made for Arrah, the British there realized that they had no alternative now but to defend themselves in the building in which Vicars Boyle had one day hoped to play billiards. So, dispatching a few dozen cases of port and sherry to augment the large supply of rice, grain, biscuits, water, brandy and beer already stored there, they installed themselves in their little fortress where they were joined by the Muslim Deputy-Collector, his young servant, another native servant, six Eurasian volunteers, and, thanks to the foresight of William Tayler, fifty Sikhs whose loyalty the others were obliged to take on trust.