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.

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.