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).
Pages:
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318