One of the ensigns on the terrace jumped down into the road, took his hat off his head, whirled it round, and hooted loudly, to make his friends’ horses bolt or shy. The doctor, too, seizing a sort of long besom which stood in an angle of the bungalow wall, darted forward with it to aid in putting the detachment to the rout. “Doctor, what the deuce are you about, man?” shouted the immediate object of his attack; “don’t be so infernally ridiculous.” “Stir him oop with the lang pole,” roared the doctor, nothing daunted; “stir oop the bombardier’s wonderful animal.” And so saying, he poked the besom under the tail of the tattoo, who resented this rear attack by launching out his heels, jerked off the Lieut. Fireworker’s cap, and finally bolted, with his rider half-unseated, across the compound, amidst the shouts and laughter of his comrades, the doctor, with his wild red locks flying, and his feet in slippers, pursuing him with his besom at the _pas de charge_. McScreechum soon returned, puffing and blowing, and flourishing his besom, and the Lieut. Fireworker shortly after joined the group, having disposed of his runaway Bucephalus, but with a countenance darkly portentous of mischief. “Dr. McScreechum,” said he, “I’ll thank you, sir, not to take such liberties with me in future, for I will not put up with them.” “Stir him oop with the lang pole,” said the doctor, still flourishing his besom. “Others may submit to them, but I will not.” “Stir him oop with the lang pole,” again replied McScreechum. All joined the medico in rallying the indignant lieutenant out of his wrath. The good-humoured Scotchman brewed and presented him a glass of grog, to allay the fury of “the black dog,” as he termed it. “A soft answer turneth away wrath,” saith the proverb, and on the same principle, even a practical joke, though ever to be avoided, may be so softened by a little tact as to allay the anger which, in nine cases out of ten, it is sure to excite. All these wild doings at an end, and matters properly composed, we adjourned to the dining-room, being summoned by a rather dingy-looking butler, or khanseman, very much resembling the worthy who has been recorded in these pages as having so suddenly decamped with my plate-chest. Six wall-shades with oil glasses, a long table occupying the centre of the room, and about as many chairs as guests, constituted the sum total of the furniture. In accordance with the almost universal custom of the military circles in India, camp fashion was the order of the day—that is, each gentleman had his own plates, knives and forks, and glasses, with a brace of muffineers, containing pepper and salt, flanking the same; these last, of every variety of size and shape, of glass, silver, or pewter, with a corresponding variety of patterns in the cutlery and plates, constituted as motley a show as can well be imagined.