Then, when I looked at the head of your party I saw that, though he had changed his dress, and stained his face to the colour of ours, it was the same man who came as an envoy to our rajah, and whose house we attacked.
"'We shall hear what the rajah says to him when we take him to Nagpore.'" "I understand now, Abdool.

I have thought of my own disguise, and that of the troopers; but as you always, except when riding behind me, dress in your native clothes, it seemed to me a matter of course that you would pass without difficulty; and it never occurred to me that you must, during our three months' stay at Nagpore, have become known by sight to most of the people there.

It is a bad blunder, and it will be a lesson to me, in future." Then he turned, and spoke to the troopers.
"You have done well, indeed, tonight," he said, "and I owe it to you that I have escaped, if not death, an imprisonment of months.
If I had been taken to Nagpore, and handed over to the rajah, he would doubtless have imprisoned me; but would not have ventured to take my life, for he would have known that the part that he had taken against us would be more readily forgiven, than the murder of a British officer.

But I do not think I should have reached the palace.

Furious as the people must be at their crushing defeat at Assaye, they would have torn me to pieces, the moment they heard from my captors that I was an Englishman; therefore I feel that you have saved my life.
"How was it that you were not also surprised ?" When he heard how the alarm had been given, and how they had at once mounted and ridden out, just as a party were about to enter the hut, he said: "It was well done, and shows that you are quick fellows, as well as brave.