第74章

I restored the lieutenant to his natural erect position: I poured half a bottle of whiskey down the immensely enlarged orifice of his mouth, and when he had been released, he informed me of the circumstances that had taken place.

Fool that I was! idiot!--upon my return to the fort, to have been anxious about my personal appearance, and to have spent a couple of hours in removing the artificial blackening from my beard and complexion, instead of going to examine my prisoner--when his escape would have been prevented. O foppery, foppery!--it was that cursed love of personal appearance which had led me to forget my duty to my general, my country, my monarch, and my own honor!

Thus it was that the escape took place:--My own fellow of the Irregulars, whom I had summoned to dress me, performed the operation to my satisfaction, invested me with the elegant uniform of my corps, and removed the Pitan's disguise, which I had taken from the back of the prostrate Bobbachy Bahawder. What did the rogue do next?--Why, he carried back the dress to the Bobbachy--he put it, once more, on its right owner; he and his infernal black companions (who had been won over by the Bobbachy with promises of enormous reward), gagged Macgillicuddy, who was going the rounds, and then marched with the Indian coolly up to the outer gate, and gave the word. The sentinel, thinking it was myself, who had first come in, and was as likely to go out again,--(indeed my rascally valet said that Gahagan Sahib was about to go out with him and his two companions to reconnoitre,)--opened the gates, and off they went!

This accounted for the confusion of my valet when I entered!--and for the scoundrel's speech, that the lieutenant had JUST BEEN THEROUNDS;--he HAD, poor fellow, and had been seized and bound in this cruel way. The three men, with their liberated prisoner, had just been on the point of escape, when my arrival disconcerted them: Ihad changed the guard at the gate (whom they had won over likewise); and yet, although they had overcome poor Mac, and although they were ready for the start, they had positively no means for effecting their escape, until I was ass enough to put means in their way. Fool! fool! thrice besotted fool that I was, to think of my own silly person when I should have been occupied solely with my public duty.

From Macgillicuddy's incoherent accounts, as he was gasping from the effects of the gag and the whiskey he had taken to revive him, and from my own subsequent observations, I learned this sad story.

A sudden and painful thought struck me--my precious box!--I rushed back, I found that box--I have it still. Opening it, there, where I had left ingots, sacks of bright tomauns, kopeks and rupees, strings of diamonds as big as ducks' eggs, rubies as red as the lips of my Belinda, countless strings of pearls, amethysts, emeralds, piles upon piles of bank-notes--I found--a piece of paper! with a few lines in the Sanscrit language, which are thus, word for word, translated:

"EPIGRAM.

"(On disappointing a certain Major.)

"The conquering Lion return'd with his prey, And safe in his cavern he set it, The sly little fox stole the booty away;And, as he escaped, to the lion did say, 'AHA! don't you wish you may get it?'"Confusion! Oh, how my blood boiled as I read these cutting lines.

I stamped,--I swore,--I don't know to what insane lengths my rage might have carried me, had not at this moment a soldier rushed in, screaming, "The enemy, the enemy!"CHAPTER VIII.

THE CAPTIVE.

It was high time, indeed, that I should make my appearance. Waving my sword with one hand, and seizing my telescope with the other, Iat once frightened and examined the enemy. Well they knew when they saw that flamingo-plume floating in the breeze--that awful figure standing in the breach--that waving war-sword sparkling in the sky--well, I say, they knew the name of the humble individual who owned the sword, the plume, and the figure. The ruffians were mustered in front, the cavalry behind. The flags were flying, the drums, gongs, tambourines, violoncellos, and other instruments of Eastern music, raised in the air a strange, barbaric melody; the officers (yatabals), mounted on white dromedaries, were seen galloping to and fro, carrying to the advancing hosts the orders of Holkar.

You see that two sides of the fort of Futtyghur (rising as it does on a rock that is almost perpendicular) are defended by the Burrumpooter river, two hundred feet deep at this point, and a thousand yards wide, so that I had no fear about them attacking me in THAT quarter. My guns, therefore (with their six-and-thirty miserable charges of shot) were dragged round to the point at which I conceived Holkar would be most likely to attack me. I was in a situation that I did not dare to fire, except at such times as Icould kill a hundred men by a single discharge of a cannon; so the attacking party marched and marched, very strongly, about a mile and a half off, the elephants marching without receiving the slightest damage from us, until they had come to within four hundred yards of our walls (the rogues knew all the secrets of our weakness, through the betrayal of the dastardly Ghorumsaug, or they never would have ventured so near). At that distance--it was about the spot where the Futtyghur hill began gradually to rise--the invading force stopped; the elephants drew up in a line, at right angles with our wall (the fools! they thought they should expose themselves too much by taking a position parallel to it); the cavalry halted too, and--after the deuce's own flourish of trumpets and banging of gongs, to be sure,--somebody, in a flame-colored satin-dress, with an immense jewel blazing in his pugree (that looked through my telescope like a small but very bright planet), got up from the back of one of the very biggest elephants, and began a speech.

The elephants were, as I said, in a line formed with admirable precision, about three hundred of them. The following little diagram will explain matters:--__G