wonder that a battery where the service was conducted on so open-handed
a system soon became the popular resort. The lovely Azeezun made
this spot her head-quarters. She appears to have exercised a strange
fascination over our good friend Nanukchund, so frequently does she
appear in the course of his narrative. Whether he cherished towards her
a sneaking kindness; or a grudge for some past incivility; or, as is
most probable, both the one and the other, he certainly never leaves
her alone for many pages together. In his quaint way he writes:--"It
shows great daring in Azeezun, that she is always armed and present in
the batteries, owing to her attachment to the cavalry; and she takes
her favourites among them aside, and entertains them with milk, &c. on
the public road."
The Meer Nawab planted the cannon, which he had brought with him across
the river, on the south-east of our position, near the Artillery Mess
House. This manoeuvre forthwith debarred the garrison from obtaining
occasional and perilous access to the tank; a privation the more
severely felt, because the Oude men, bent on avenging their repulse,
worked their pieces with a will, and kept up at point-blank range so
hot a fire upon the mouth of our well that the drawing of water was a
deed of heroism by night, and in daylight an act of insanity. In the
west, Bakur Ali, who had shared with the Nunhey Nawab his disgrace
and his restoration to favour, bombarded our outposts from among the
stables of the Second Cavalry; while in and about the lines of the
First Native Infantry stood a number of heavy guns, known by the
collective appellation of "the Sepoy Battery," under cover of which
a Jemmadar, who fancied himself gifted with a turn for engineering,
was sinking a mine by the aid of some invalid sappers and miners,
whom he had persuaded to place themselves at his disposal. In the
south-west direction was a stately mansion, which formerly held rank
as a charitable institution, under the title of the "Salvador," a name
which the effeminate articulation of the native had long before this
converted into the "Savada." As the Mahomedan faction mustered strong
in the vicinity of the Racket-court, so the Savada soon became the
centre of Hindoo influence. It was the special haunt of the Nana. Here
were his ministers, his diviners, his courtiers, and the prisoners
from whom he purposed to extort something besides their breath. Here
was the battery which went by his name. Here was the tent of his most
able and ardent partizan, Teeka Sing, the generalissimo. Here too, in
an agreeable corner of the grounds, under the shade of a conspicuous
grove, conveniently remote alike from the camp of the Moslem and the
muzzles of the English artillery, was pitched his own pavilion; for he
seems to have inherited the Mahratta preference for canvas over brick
and mortar. The chiefs of that hardy and unquiet race seldom had a
tight roof over their heads until they were laid beneath some mausoleum
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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