they saw that flamingo-plume floating in the breeze--that awful
figure standing in the breach--that waving war-sword sparkling in
the sky--well, I say, they knew the name of the humble individual
who owned the sword, the plume, and the figure. The ruffians were
mustered in front, the cavalry behind. The flags were flying, the
drums, gongs, tambourines, violoncellos, and other instruments of
Eastern music, raised in the air a strange barbaric melody; the
officers (yatabals), mounted on white dromedaries, were seen
galloping to and fro, carrying to the advancing hosts the orders of
Holkar.

You see that two sides of the fort of Futtyghur (rising as it does
on a rock that is almost perpendicular) are defended by the
Burrumpooter river, two hundred feet deep at this point, and a
thousand yards wide, so that I had no fear about them attacking me
in that quarter. My guns, therefore (with their six-and-thirty
miserable charges of shot), were dragged round to the point at
which I conceived Holkar would be most likely to attack me. I was
in a situation that I did not dare to fire, except at such times as
I could kill a hundred men by a single discharge of a cannon; so
the attacking party marched and marched, very strongly, about a
mile and a half off, the elephants marching without receiving the
slightest damage from us, until they had come to within four
hundred yards of our walls (the rogues knew all the secrets of our
weakness, through the betrayal of the dastardly Ghorumsaug, or they
never would have ventured so near). At that distance--it was about
the spot where the Futtyghur hill began gradually to rise--the
invading force stopped; the elephants drew up in a line, at right
angles with our wall (the fools! they thought they should expose
themselves too much by taking a position parallel to it); the