barely escaped
with his life. A bullet grazed his cheek, ploughing a red furrow through
it, and carrying away the lobe of his ear; a spent bullet struck his
brow, and he staggered half-unconscious to the ground. And when he
regained the city, and learnt that his enemy, Rahmut, had come unscathed
through the battle, and, moreover, that the men he had left to raid
Rahmut's serai during his absence had been beaten off with great loss by
a guard posted there, for some incomprehensible reason, by Bakht Khan
himself, he boiled with insensate fury, heaping curses on the heads of
those who had betrayed him.

Nor was his rage abated when he was summoned to the palace to answer the
charge of instigating the attack on Rahmut's quarters. The king was
seated in the hall of public audience, surrounded by a glittering
company. The total failure of the night's operations had not yet been
fully reported; Bakht Khan was not in attendance; and when the king
recited the verses he had composed the day before, the courtiers
acclaimed him as the Pearl of Poets and declared that nothing more was
wanted to ensure success. But then the commander-in-chief came with his
pitiful tale, and the king, with the petulance of dotage, flew into a
rage and cried, "You will never take the Ridge; all my treasure is
expended; the Royal Treasury is without a pice. And men tell me now that
the soldiers are day by day departing to their homes. I have no hope of
victory. My desire is that you all leave the city and make some other
place the heart of the struggle. If you do not, then will I take such
steps as may seem to me advisable."

And while the officers were trying to cheer the miserable old man,
declaring that by Allah's help they would yet take the Ridge, Minghal
Khan came in answer to the summons. Upon him the king poured out the
vials of his wrath, demanding that he should instantly restore to the
treasury the money he had been granted two days before, and ordering
Bakht Khan once more to proclaim that heavy penalties should be
inflicted on any who broke the peace of the city. And when Minghal began
to protest, Mirza Akbar Sultan, the prince who was party to the scheme,
plucked him by the sleeve and in a whisper bade him be silent. The king
was beside himself with rage, he said, and it was not a propitious
moment for appeals. The prince accompanied him home, and, over a bottle
of spirits sent for in haste from one of the merchants, they laid their
hea