amels began to
cry, the horses to prance and neigh, the eight hundred elephants set up
a scream, the trumpeters and drummers clanged away at their instruments.
I never heard such a din before or after. How I trembled for my little
garrison when I heard the enthusiastic cries of this innumerable host!

* The Major has put the most approved language into the
mouths of his Indian characters. Bismillah, Barikallah, and
so on, according to the novelists, form the very essence of
Eastern conversation.

There was but one way for it. "Sir," said I, addressing Holkar, "go out
to-night and you go to certain death. Loll Mahommed has not seen the
fort as I have. Pass the gate if you please, and for what? to fall
before the fire of a hundred pieces of artillery; to storm another gate,
and then another, and then to be blown up, with Gahagan's garrison in
the citadel. Who talks of courage? Were I not in your august presence,
O star of the faithful, I would crop Loll Mahommed's nose from his face,
and wear his ears as an ornament in my own pugree! Who is there here
that knows not the difference between yonder yellow-skinned coward and
Gahagan Khan Guj--I mean Bobbachy Bahawder? I am ready to fight
one, two, three, or twenty of them, at broad-sword, small-sword,
single-stick, with fists if you please. By the holy piper, fighting is
like mate and dthrink to Ga--to Bobbachy, I mane--whoop! come on, you
divvle, and I'll bate the skin off your ugly bones."

This speech had very nearly proved fatal to me, for when I am agitated,
I involuntarily adopt some of the phraseology peculiar to my own
country; which is so un-eastern, that, had there been any suspicion as
to my real character, detection must indubitably have ensued. As it was,
Holkar perceived nothing, but instantaneously stopped the dispute. Loll
Mahommed, however, evidently suspected something, for, as Holkar, with a
voice of thunder, shouted out, "Tomasha (silence)," Loll sprang forward
and gasped out--

"My lord! my lord I this is not Bob--"

But he could say no more. "Gag the slave!" screamed out Holkar, stamping
with fury: and a turban was instantly twisted round the poor devil's
jaws. "Ho, furoshes! carry out Loll Mahommed Khan, give him a hundred
dozen on the soles of his feet, set him upon a white donkey, and carry
him round the camp, with an inscription before him: 'This is the way
that Holkar rewards the talkative.'"

I breathed again; and ever a