I turned away from the window with a feeling of depression that was terrible, and, try how I would, to keep from thinking, I kept on seeing the fierce-looking lancers of Ny Deen making furious charges at perhaps a mere skeleton of a regiment of foot, which grew gradually less and less, till the men scattered, and were ridden down. Oh how vivid that all seemed, till I saw that which was real, and not imaginary. Salaman and the two attendants patiently watching me, as I began once more to walk up and down. CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN. I passed the whole of the day in misery, thirsting for news with a very great thirst, but none came. The servants about the palace evidently knew nothing though, if they had, they would not have dared to speak. It was quite plain, from the noise, that the town was crowded, and in a state of excitement, but the sounds were at a distance, and they kept on. Had the noise gradually died out, I should have been hopeful, for I should have thought that they were leaving the place because the English were advancing. But though I sat at the window and strained my ears, there was no distant sound of firing, and I was getting into a very despairing mood, when my spirits revived again just before sunset, for all at once there was the sound of a gun; faint, distant, but unmistakably the report of a field-piece; and as I held my breath and listened, there was another and then another. I knew the sound at once as coming from a troop of horse artillery, for the firing was regular; and I was so sanguine that I immediately set it down to Brace's troop. "Oh, if I could only escape!" I thought; and my ideas went at once to the disguise and the hangings to be used as a rope. If I could only get down into the court, I trusted to my good fortune to find a way through some other window, and thence to an unwatched opening. How to manage it? I was so conspicuous a figure in the uniform I wore that I felt that I dared not go like that, while to obtain the dress of one of the servants was impossible. "I shall have to escape as I am," I thought, and I went down into the sleeping-room, and laid the sword ready. It was the magnificent tulwar the rajah had given me, and as I looked at the flashing jewels upon the hilt, I felt some compunction in taking it; but making up my mind to return it after I had escaped, feeling, as I did, the necessity for possessing a weapon, I laid it behind a purdah, where I could quickly catch it up. The next thing was to select one of the silken curtains, which I could divide longwise, and tie the ends together. They would be quite enough to enable me to reach the ground; and there was a ring on one side of the window strong enough to bear my weight, I felt.