But to Tantia, Barode was a mortal blow. The pursuing columns were now, so to speak, running for blood. General Michel shortly after the action formed a column wherein the whole of the Seventeenth was united, and pressed the chase with greater rapidity than ever, covering fifty-four miles and forty miles in two marches, and two hundred and fifty-six miles in eight days. On the 16th January, Tantia, flying northward, was caught and defeated by Brigadier Showers at Dewassa; on the 21st he was again caught and beaten by Colonel Holmes at Sikur. The Rao Sahib now abandoned Tantia in a rage, and Feroz Shah deserted him likewise. The former fled southward and was overtaken and defeated by Brigadier Honner’s column near Koshani on the 10th February. On the 13th Brigadier Somerset took up the chase with three and a half squadrons of the Seventeenth in his column, and achieved a march which threw even his previous efforts into the shade. In six days and a half the Seventeenth covered no less than two hundred and thirty miles; [Sidenote: 1859.] they had their enemy dead-beat before them, and they knew it. Ghastly tokens met them on the march--hoof-tracks filled with blood, helpless innocent horses with their feet worn down to the quick, and, at the last, three hundred rebels who gave themselves up without a blow, being literally unable to run away any farther. The leaders alone escaped; but from that time the Rao Sahib’s following ceased to exist; and he himself fled into the Banswarra jungle to be heard of no more. Tantia Topee, deserted, and since Sikur almost alone, hid in the Paron jungle until April, when he was betrayed by Rajah Man Singh to the English. He was tried by court-martial and hanged. So ended this extraordinary chase, whereby the dying embers of the Mutiny were finally trampled out. In following the track of Tantia on the map, in and out and round about Malwa, one is reminded of nothing so much as the hunting of a rat in a barn. Though unendowed with the qualities that win success in a pitched battle, the man possessed a positive genius for guerilla warfare; and as he carried neither tents nor supplies, but satisfied his army’s wants by the simple process of looting and stealing, he enjoyed always an advantage over his pursuers. His methods, in fact, differed little from those of the Pindaris, with whom the Seventeenth had to do in 1816–19; and but for the treachery of Rajah Man Singh he might have disappeared for ever into the jungle like his comrades the Rao Sahib and Feroz Shah, or met his fate at the jaws of a tiger like the Pindari chief Cheettoo. Of the part played by the Seventeenth Lancers much has already been said in the course of the narrative. It now remains to add a few details which, lest the thread of the story should be unduly broken, have been reserved to the last.