For yourself I shall reserve a
punishment, which for novelty and exquisite torture has, I flatter
myself, hardly ever been exceeded. Awaiting the favor of a reply, I am,
Sir,
"'Your very obedient servant,
"'JESWUNT ROW HOLKAR.
"'CAMP BEFORE FUTTYGHUR, Sept. 1, 1804.
"'R. S. V. P.'
"The officer who had brought this precious epistle (it is astonishing
how Holkar had aped the forms of English correspondence), an enormous
Pitan soldier, with a shirt of mail, and a steel cap and cape, round
which his turban wound, was leaning against the gate on his matchlock,
and whistling a national melody. I read the letter, and saw at once
there was no time to be lost. That man, thought I, must never go back to
Holkar. Were he to attack us now before we were prepared, the fort would
be his in half an hour.
"Tying my white pocket-handkerchief to a stick, I flung open the gate
and advanced to the officer; he was standing, I said, on the little
bridge across the moat. I made him a low salaam, after the fashion of
the country, and, as he bent forward to return the compliment, I am
sorry to say, I plunged forward, gave him a violent blow on the head,
which deprived him of all sensation, and then dragged him within the
wall, raising the drawbridge after me.
"I bore the body into my own apartment: there, swift as thought, I
stripped him of his turban, cammerbund, peijammahs, and papooshes,
and, putting them on myself, determined to go forth and reconnoitre the
enemy.
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