“Bah! we have a couple of ninety-six pounders, quite sufficient to
blow the gates open; and then, hey for a charge!” said Loll Mahommed,
a general of cavalry, who was a rival of Bobbachy's, and contradicted,
therefore, every word I said. “In the name of Juggernaut, why wait for
the heavy artillery? Have we not swords? Have we not hearts? Mashallah!
Let cravens stay with Bobbachy, all true men will follow Loll Mahommed!
Allahhumdillah, Bismillah, Barikallah?” * and drawing his scimitar,
he waved it over his head, and shouted out his cry of battle. It was
repeated by many of the other omrahs; the sound of their cheers was
carried into the camp, and caught up by the men; the camels 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--”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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