Opening it, there, where I had left ingots, sacks
of bright tomauns, kopeks and rupees, strings of diamonds as big as
ducks' eggs, rubies as red as the lips of my Belinda, countless strings
of pearls, amethysts, emeralds, piles upon piles of bank-notes--I
found--a piece of paper! with a few lines in the Sanscrit language,
which are thus, word for word, translated:
"EPIGRAM.
"(On disappointing a certain Major.)
"The conquering Lion return'd with his prey,
And safe in his cavern he set it,
The sly little fox stole the booty away;
And, as he escaped, to the lion did say,
'AHA! don't you wish you may get it?'"
Confusion! Oh, how my blood boiled as I read these cutting lines. I
stamped,--I swore,--I don't know to what insane lengths my rage might
have carried me, had not at this moment a soldier rushed in, screaming,
"The enemy, the enemy!"
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CAPTIVE.
It was high time, indeed, that I should make my appearance. Waving my
sword with one hand, and seizing my telescope with the other, I at once
frightened and examined the enemy. Well they knew when 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.
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