"Bah! we have a couple of ninety-six pounders, quite sufficient to
blow the gates open; and then, hey for a charge!" said Loll Mahommed,
a general of cavalry, who was a rival of Bobbachy's, and contradicted,
therefore, every word I said. "In the name of Juggernaut, why wait for
the heavy artillery? Have we not swords? Have we not hearts? Mashallah!
Let cravens stay with Bobbachy, all true men will follow Loll Mahommed!
Allahhumdillah, Bismillah, Barikallah?"* and drawing his scimitar,
he waved it over his head, and shouted out his cry of battle. It was
repeated by many of the other omrahs; the sound of their cheers was
carried into the camp, and caught up by the men; the camels began to
cry, the horses to prance and neigh, the eight hundred elephants set up
a scream, the trumpeters and drummers clanged away at their instruments.
I never heard such a din before or after. How I trembled for my little
garrison when I heard the enthusiastic cries of this innumerable host!
* The Major has put the most approved language into the
mouths of his Indian characters. Bismillah, Barikallah, and
so on, according to the novelists, form the very essence of
Eastern conversation.
There was but one way for it. "Sir," said I, addressing Holkar, "go out
to-night and you go to certain death.
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