"(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, I at 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 I could 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,