I retired to bed rather earlier than usual, oppressed with a most unpleasantly alarmed state of feelings, something akin, probably, to that which a man experiences the night before he is hanged—or has to fight a duel—or to encounter any other disagreeable novelty. I wished the initiatory process fairly over, having somehow or other allowed my anxiety to work on my imagination till I pictured it as something very formidable. I was aroused, next morning, by Rattleton’s singing, with reference to my dormant state, I suppose, “Arise, arise! Britannia’s sons, arise,” and by a rough shake of the shoulder. “Eh! what?—what’s the matter?” said I, starting up, rubbing my eyes, and yawning. “Come, my sub, jump up, jump up! parade! parade! the gun has fired.” “Why, it’s pitch dark, Tom,” said I, still stretching; “you surely don’t go to parade in the middle of the night?” Tom assured me it was the proper hour, and that it would soon be light; his bearer ran in at the same moment, open-mouthed, to say the colonel was on horseback and had just ridden past. This announcement quickened my movements; so I reluctantly jumped out of my warm nest, and, after a miserable cold dabble, dressed myself by the light of a candle, “in the lantern dimly burning,” buckled on my Andrea Ferrara, brushed up my hair, took a peep in the glass, to see how I looked on an average, and then, _grande tenue_, and arm-in-arm, marched off to parade with my friend. “The day, you see, is beginning to break,” said he. “I wish, with all my heart, it would make haste about it,” I returned (“and I think I do see a few ruddy streaks in the east), for this is a heathenish hour, a most Cimmerian gloom to manœuvre in. For my part, I am sure I could not distinguish a rank of soldiers from a brick wall.” “You will soon become accustomed to it,” answered my commandant, “and find the reasonableness of this and other Indian customs, which now appear singular to you; better to be comfortable in darkness than to grill in broad day.” “Tom,” said I, “you must tell me where I am to stand, and what I am to do, for I know no more than the man in the moon.” “You’ll have merely to march in the rear of the company,” said my commander; “keep step, and salute in passing in review; all that, I think you understand.” As we passed through the sepoy lines, and approached the parade, the men were just in the act of falling in, and my ears were saluted by a strange and confused hubbub, loud shouts, and words of command in odd voices. There was the “_Hall dreez_” (halt dress), “_Lupt buccas wheel_” (left backwards wheel), and “_Qeeck marruch_” (quick march), of the native officers (by whom one-half of the platoons, at least, were commanded), and the same, though in more intelligible English, in the sharper tones of the Europeans.