About six months after we had left Dum Dum, he received a
parcel of letters from Benares (whither his wife had retired with her
daughter), and so deeply did they seem to weigh upon his spirits, that
he ordered eleven men of his regiment to be flogged within two days; but
it was against the blacks that he chiefly turned his wrath. Our fellows,
in the heat and hurry of the campaign, were in the habit of dealing
rather roughly with their prisoners, to extract treasure from them: they
used to pull their nails out by the root, to boil them in kedgeree pots,
to flog them and dress their wounds with cayenne pepper, and so on.
Jowler, when he heard of these proceedings, which before had always
justly exasperated him (he was a humane and kind little man), used now
to smile fiercely and say, "D--- the black scoundrels! Serve them right,
serve them right!"
One day, about a couple of miles in advance of the column, I had been
on a foraging-party with a few dragoons, and was returning peaceably
to camp, when of a sudden a troop of Mahrattas burst on us from a
neighboring mango-tope, in which they had been hidden: in an instant
three of my men's saddles were empty, and I was left with but seven more
to make head against at least thirty of these vagabond black horsemen.
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