'uscio
(take a chair)."

I did so, and then for the first time was aware that there was some
foreign substance in the tail of my coat, which prevented my sitting
at ease. I drew out the Magazine which I had seized, and there, to my
wonder, DISCOVERED THE CHRISTINO LANCE twisted up like a fish-hook, or a
pastoral crook.

"Ha! ha! ha!" said Cabrera (who is a notorious wag).

"Valdepenas madrilenos," growled out Tristany.

"By my cachuca di caballero (upon my honor as a gentleman)," shrieked
out Ros d'Eroles, convulsed with laughter, "I will send it to the Bishop
of Leon for a crozier."

"Gahagan has CONSECRATED it," giggled out Ramon Cabrera; and so they
went on with their muchacas for an hour or more. But, when they heard
that the means of my salvation from the lance of the scoundrelly
Christino had been the Magazine containing my own history, their laugh
was changed into wonder. I read them (speaking Spanish more fluently
than English) every word of my story. "But how is this?" said Cabrera.
"You surely have other adventures to relate?"

"Excellent Sir," said I, "I have;" and that very evening, as we sat over
our cups of tertullia (sangaree), I continued my narrative in nearly the
following words:--

"I left off in the very middle of the battle of Delhi, which ended, as
everybody knows, in the complete triumph of the British arms. But
who gained the battle? Lord Lake is called Viscount Lake of Delhi and
Laswaree, while Major Gaha--nonsense, never mind HIM, never mind the
charge he executed when, sabre in hand, he leaped the six-foot wall in
the mouth of the roaring cannon, over the heads of the gleaming pikes;
when, with one hand seizing the sacred peishcush, or fish--which was the
banner always borne before Scindiah,--he, with his good sword, cut off
the trunk of the famous white elephant, which, shrieking with agony,
plunged madly into the Mahratta ranks, followed by his giant brethren,
tossing, like chaff before the wind, the affrighted kitmatgars. He,
meanwhile, now plunging into the midst of a battalion of consomahs, now
cleaving to the chine a screaming and ferocious bobbachee,* rushed on,
like the simoom across the red Zaharan plain, killing with his own hand,
a hundred and forty-thr--but never mind--'ALONE HE DID IT;' sufficient
be it for him, however, that the victory was won: he cares not for the
empty honors which were awarded to more fortunate men!

* The double-jointed camel of Bactria, which