I shall report your conduct when we join the army, and shall myself give you a batta of six months' pay.
"Now, we will ride on for a few miles, and then leave the road and take shelter, till morning, in a wood.

The horses have had five hours' rest at the village, and there will be time for them to have as much more, before we mount again.
"It is lucky that you bought some grain for them, this evening, instead of waiting till the morning, so they can have a good feed before starting." Henceforth they avoided the villages as much as possible, and passed unquestioned until they reached the Hustoo river which, at this point, formed the eastern boundary of Berar.

They swam the horses across and, after stopping for a few hours at Dundava, rode on; and continued their journey due north, and crossed the Sone river at Maunpoor, having accomplished a journey of nearly a thousand miles in twenty days.
On arriving there Harry found that General Lake had left, six weeks before, and had encamped at Secundara where, on the 26th of August, despatches had been received from the Governor General, authorizing active operations against Scindia and his allies; and two days later the force halted on the Mahratta frontier, within sight of the mosque at Coel, where Perron was encamped.
Perron, a French officer in Scindia's service, commanded no less than forty-three thousand men, and four hundred and sixty-four guns.

About half of these were with Scindia in the Deccan, and the force encamped at Coel numbered about twenty thousand.
Perron, an active and ambitious man, had assumed an almost independent position.

A large grant of territory had been given him by Scindia, and in this he ruled with absolute authority and, had it not been for the interposition of the British, it is probable that he would, ere long, have assumed the position of an independent prince.