The Essential William Makepeace Thackeray Collection. William Makepeace Thackeray

      [Here was a pretty conspiracy!] "No, I saw him, but not alone; his people were always with him."

      "Hurrumzadeh! it is a pity; we waited but the sound of your jogree (whistle), and straightway would have galloped up and seized upon every man, woman, and child in the fort: however, there are but a dozen men in the garrison, and they have not provision for two days--they must yield; and then hurrah for the moon-faces! Mashallah! I am told the soldiers who first get in are to have their pick. How my old woman, Rotee Muckun, will be surprised when I bring home a couple of Feringhee wives,--ha! ha!"

      "Fool!" said I, "be still!--twelve men in the garrison there are twelve hundred! Gahagan himself is as good as a thousand men; and as for food, I saw with my own eyes five hundred bullocks grazing in the courtyard as I entered." This WAS a bouncer, I confess; but my object was to deceive Puneeree Muckun, and give him as high a notion as possible of the capabilities of defence which the besieged had.

      "Pooch, pooch," murmured the men; "it is a wonder of a fortress: we shall never be able to take it until our guns come up."

      There was hope then! they had no battering-train. Ere this arrived I trusted that Lord Lake would hear of our plight, and march down to rescue us. Thus occupied in thought and conversation, we rode on until the advanced sentinel challenged us, when old Puneeree gave the word, and we passed on into the centre of Holkar's camp.

      It was a strange--a stirring sight! The camp-fires were lighted; and round them--eating, reposing, talking, looking at the merry steps of the dancing-girls, or listening to the stories of some Dhol Baut (or Indian improvisatore)--were thousands of dusky soldiery. The camels and horses were picketed under the banyan- trees, on which the ripe mango fruit was growing, and offered them an excellent food. Towards the spot which the golden fish and royal purdahs, floating in the wind, designated as the tent of Holkar, led an immense avenue--of elephants! the finest street, indeed, I ever saw. Each of the monstrous animals had a castle on its back, armed with Mauritanian archers and the celebrated Persian matchlock-men: it was the feeding time of these royal brutes, and the grooms were observed bringing immense toffungs, or baskets, filled with pine-apples, plantains, bananas, Indian corn, and cocoa-nuts, which grow luxuriantly at all seasons of the year. We passed down this extraordinary avenue--no less than three hundred and eighty-eight tails did I count on each side--each tail appertaining to an elephant twenty-five feet high--each elephant having a two-storied castle on its back--each castle containing sleeping and eating rooms for the twelve men that formed its garrison, and were keeping watch on the roof--each roof bearing a flagstaff twenty feet long on its top, the crescent glittering with a thousand gems, and round it the imperial standard,--each standard of silk velvet and cloth-of-gold, bearing the well-known device of Holkar, argent an or gules, between a sinople of the first, a chevron truncated, wavy. I took nine of these myself in the course of a very short time after, and shall be happy, when I come to England, to show them to any gentleman who has a curiosity that way. Through this gorgeous scene our little cavalcade passed, and at last we arrived at the quarters occupied by Holkar.

      That celebrated chieftain's tents and followers were gathered round one of the British bungalows which had escaped the flames, and which he occupied during the siege. When I entered the large room where he sat, I found him in the midst of a council of war; his chief generals and viziers seated round him, each smoking his hookah, as is the common way with these black fellows, before, at, and after breakfast, dinner, supper, and bedtime. There was such a cloud raised by their smoke you could hardly see a yard before you- -another piece of good-luck for me--as it diminished the chances of my detection. When, with the ordinary ceremonies, the kitmatgars and consomahs had explained to the prince that Bobbachy Bahawder, the right eye of the Sun of the Universe (as the ignorant heathens called me), had arrived from his mission, Holkar immediately summoned me to the maidaun, or elevated platform, on which he was seated in a luxurious easy-chair, and I, instantly taking off my slippers, falling on my knees, and beating my head against the ground ninety-nine times, proceeded, still on my knees, a hundred and twenty feet through the room, and then up the twenty steps which led to his maidaun--a silly, painful, and disgusting ceremony, which can only be considered as a relic of barbarian darkness, which tears the knees and shins to pieces, let alone the pantaloons. I recommend anybody who goes to India, with the prospect of entering the service of the native rajahs, to recollect my advice, and have them WELL WADDED.

      Well, the right eye of the Sun of the Universe scrambled as well as he could up the steps of the maidaun (on which, in rows, smoking, as I have said, the musnuds or general officers were seated), and I arrived within speaking distance of Holkar, who instantly asked me the success of my mission. The impetuous old man thereon poured out a multitude of questions: "How many men are there in the fort?" said he; "how many women? Is it victualled? have they ammunition? Did you see Gahagan Sahib, the commander? did you kill him?"

      All these questions Jeswunt Row Holkar puffed out with so many whiffs of tobacco.

      Taking a chillum myself, and raising about me such a cloud that, upon my honour as a gentleman, no man at three yards' distance could perceive anything of me except the pillar of smoke in which I was encompassed, I told Holkar, in Oriental language of course, the best tale I could with regard to the fort.

      "Sir," said I, "to answer your last question first--that dreadful Gujputi I have seen--and he is alive: he is eight feet, nearly, in height; he can eat a bullock daily (of which he has seven hundred at present in the compound, and swears that during the siege he will content himself with only three a week): he has lost, in battle, his left eye; and what is the consequence? O Ram Gunge" (O thou-with-the-eye-as-bright-as-morning and-with-beard-as-black-as- night), "Goliah Gujputi--NEVER SLEEPS!"

      "Ah, you Ghorumsaug (you thief of the world)," said the Prince Vizier, Saadut Alee Beg Bimbukchee--"it's joking you are;"--and there was a universal buzz through the room at the announcement of this bouncer.

      "By the hundred and eleven incarnations of Vishnu," said I, solemnly (an oath which no Indian was ever known to break), "I swear that so it is: so at least he told me, and I have good cause to know his power. Gujputi is an enchanter: he is leagued with devils; he is invulnerable. Look," said I, unsheathing my dagger-- and every eye turned instantly towards me--"thrice did I stab him with this steel--in the back, once--twice right through the heart; but he only laughed me to scorn, and bade me tell Holkar that the steel was not yet forged which was to inflict an injury upon him."

      I never saw a man in such a rage as Holkar was when I gave him this somewhat imprudent message.

      "Ah, lily-livered rogue!" shouted he out to me, "milk-blooded unbeliever! pale-faced miscreant! lives he after insulting thy master in thy presence? In the name of the Prophet, I spit on thee, defy thee, abhor thee, degrade thee! Take that, thou liar of the universe! and that--and that--and that!"

      Such are the frightful excesses of barbaric minds! every time this old man said, "Take that," he flung some article near him at the head of the undaunted Gahagan--his dagger, his sword, his carbine, his richly ornamented pistols, his turban covered with jewels, worth a hundred thousand crores of rupees--finally, his hookah, snake mouthpiece, silver-bell, chillum and all--which went hissing over my head, and flattening into a jelly the nose of the Grand Vizier.

      "Yock muzzee! my nose is off," said the old man, mildly. "Will you have my life, O Holkar? it is thine likewise!" and no other word of complaint escaped his lips.

      Of all these missiles, though a pistol and carbine had gone off as the ferocious Indian flung them at my head, and the naked scimitar, fiercely but unadroitly thrown, had lopped off the limbs of one or two of the musnuds as they sat trembling on their omrahs, yet, strange to say, not a single weapon had hurt me. When the hubbub ceased, and the unlucky wretches who had been the victims of this fit of rage had been removed, Holkar's good-humour somewhat returned, and he allowed me to continue my account of the fort; which I did, not taking the slightest notice of his burst of impatience: as indeed it would have been the height of impoliteness to have done, for such accidents happened many times in the day.

      "It is well that the Bobbachy has returned," snuffled out the poor Grand Vizier, after