The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan
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William Makepeace Thackeray >> The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan
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"'Ho, warder!' shouted I (while the frightened and trembling
Belinda clung closer to my side, and pressed the stalwart arm that
encircled her waist), 'down with the drawbridge! see that your
masolgees' (small tumbrels which are used in place of large
artillery) 'be well loaded: you, sepoys, hasten and man the
ravelin! you, choprasees, put out the lights in the embrasures! we
shall have warm work of it to-night, or my name is not Goliah
Gahagan.'
"The ladies, the guests (to the number of eighty-three), the
sepoys, choprasees, masolgees, and so on, had all crowded on the
platform at the sound of my shouting, and dreadful was the
consternation, shrill the screaming, occasioned by my words. The
men stood irresolute and mute with terror; the women, trembling,
knew scarcely whither to fly for refuge. 'Who are yonder
ruffians?' said I. A hundred voices yelped in reply--some said the
Pindarees, some said the Mahrattas, some vowed it was Scindiah, and
others declared it was Holkar--no one knew.
"'Is there any one here,' said I, 'who will venture to reconnoitre
yonder troops?' There was a dead pause.
"'A thousand tomauns to the man who will bring me news of yonder
army!' again I repeated. Still a dead silence. The fact was that
Scindiah and Holkar both were so notorious for their cruelty, that
no one dared venture to face the danger. 'Oh for fifty of my brave
Ahmednuggarees!' thought I.
"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'I see it--you are cowards--none of you dare
encounter the chance even of death. It is an encouraging prospect:
know you not that the ruffian Holkar, if it be he, will with to-
morrow's dawn beleaguer our little fort, and throw thousands of men
against our walls? know you not that, if we are taken, there is no
quarter, no hope; death for us--and worse than death for these
lovely ones assembled here?' Here the ladies shrieked and raised a
howl as I have heard the jackals on a summer's evening. Belinda,
my dear Belinda! flung both her arms round me, and sobbed on my
shoulder (or in my waistcoat-pocket rather, for the little witch
could reach no higher).
"'Captain Gahagan,' sobbed she, 'Go-Go-Goggle-iah!'
"'My soul's adored!' replied I.
"'Swear to me one thing.'
"'I swear.'
"'That if--that if--the nasty, horrid, odious black Mah-ra-a-a-
attahs take the fort, you will put me out of their power.'
"I clasped the dear girl to my heart, and swore upon my sword that,
rather than she should incur the risk of dishonour, she should
perish by my own hand. This comforted her; and her mother, Mrs.
Major-General Bulcher, and her elder sister, who had not until now
known a word of our attachment, (indeed, but for these
extraordinary circumstances, it is probable that we ourselves
should never have discovered it), were under these painful
circumstances made aware of my beloved Belinda's partiality for me.
Having communicated thus her wish of self-destruction, I thought
her example a touching and excellent one, and proposed to all the
ladies that they should follow it, and that at the entry of the
enemy into the fort, and at a signal given by me, they should one
and all make away with themselves. Fancy my disgust when, after
making this proposition, not one of the ladies chose to accede to
it, and received it with the same chilling denial that my former
proposal to the garrison had met with.
"In the midst of this hurry and confusion, as if purposely to add
to it, a trumpet was heard at the gate of the fort, and one of the
sentinels came running to me, saying that a Mahratta soldier was
before the gate with a flag of truce!
"I went down, rightly conjecturing, as it turned out, that the
party, whoever they might be, had no artillery; and received at the
point of my sword a scroll of which the following is a translation.
"'To Goliah Gahagan Gujputi.
"'LORD OF ELEPHANTS, SIR,--I have the honour to inform you that I
arrived before this place at eight o'clock p.m. with ten thousand
cavalry under my orders. I have burned, since my arrival,
seventeen bungalows in Furruckabad and Futtyghur, and have likewise
been under the painful necessity of putting to death three
clergymen (mollahs) and seven English officers, whom I found in the
village; the women have been transferred to safe keeping in the
harems of my officers and myself.
"'As I know your courage and talents, I shall be very happy if you
will surrender the fortress, and take service as a major-general
(hookahbadar) in my army. Should my proposal not meet with your
assent, I beg leave to state that to-morrow I shall storm the fort,
and on taking it, shall put to death every male in the garrison,
and every female above twenty years of age. For yourself I shall
reserve a punishment, which for novelty and exquisite torture has,
I flatter myself, hardly ever been exceeded. Awaiting the favour
of a reply, I am, Sir,
"'Your very obedient servant,
"'JESWUNT ROW HOLKAR.
"'CAMP BEFORE FUTTYGHUR: September 1, 1804.
"'R. S. V. P.'
"The officer who had brought this precious epistle (it is
astonishing how Holkar had aped the forms of English
correspondence), an enormous Pitan soldier, with a shirt of mail,
and a steel cap and cape, round which his turban wound, was leaning
against the gate on his matchlock, and whistling a national melody.
I read the letter, and saw at once there was no time to be lost.
That man, thought I, must never go back to Holkar. Were he to
attack us now before we were prepared, the fort would be his in
half-an-hour.
"Tying my white pocket-handkerchief to a stick, I flung open the
gate and advanced to the officer: he was standing, I said, on the
little bridge across the moat. I made him a low salaam, after the
fashion of the country, and, as he bent forward to return the
compliment, I am sorry to say, I plunged forward, gave him a
violent blow on the head, which deprived him of all sensation, and
then dragged him within the wall, raising the drawbridge after me.
"I bore the body into my own apartment; there, swift as thought, I
stripped him of his turban, cammerbund, peijammahs, and papooshes,
and, putting them on myself, determined to go forth and reconnoitre
the enemy."
* * *
Here I was obliged to stop, for Cabrera, Ros d'Eroles, and the rest
of the staff, were sound asleep! What I did in my reconnaissance,
and how I defended the fort of Futtyghur, I shall have the honour
of telling on another occasion.
CHAPTER IV: THE INDIAN CAMP--THE SORTIE FROM THE FORT
HEADQUARTERS, MORELLA: October 3, 1838
It is a balmy night. I hear the merry jingle of the tambourine,
and the cheery voices of the girls and peasants, as they dance
beneath my casement, under the shadow of the clustering vines. The
laugh and song pass gaily round, and even at this distance I can
distinguish the elegant form of Ramon Cabrera, as he whispers gay
nothings in the ears of the Andalusian girls, or joins in the
thrilling chorus of Riego's hymn, which is ever and anon
vociferated by the enthusiastic soldiery of Carlos Quinto. I am
alone, in the most inaccessible and most bomb-proof tower of our
little fortalice; the large casements are open--the wind, as it
enters, whispers in my ear its odorous recollections of the orange
grove and the myrtle bower. My torch (a branch of the fragrant
cedar-tree) flares and flickers in the midnight breeze, and
disperses its scent and burning splinters on my scroll and the desk
where I write--meet implements for a soldier's authorship!--it is
CARTRIDGE paper over which my pen runs so glibly, and a yawning
barrel of gunpowder forms my rough writing-table. Around me, below
me, above me, all--all is peace! I think, as I sit here so lonely,
on my country, England! and muse over the sweet and bitter
recollections of my early days! Let me resume my narrative, at the
point where (interrupted by the authoritative summons of war) I
paused on the last occasion.
I left off, I think--(for I am a thousand miles away from proof-
sheets as I write, and, were I not writing the simple TRUTH, must
contradict myself a thousand times in the course of my tale)--I
think, I say, that I left off at that period of my story, when,
Holkar being before Futtyghur, and I in command of that fortress, I
had just been compelled to make away with his messenger: and,
dressed in the fallen Indian's accoutrements, went forth to
reconnoitre the force, and, if possible, to learn the intentions of
the enemy. However much my figure might have resembled that of the
Pitan, and, disguised in his armour, might have deceived the lynx-
eyed Mahrattas, into whose camp I was about to plunge, it was
evident that a single glance at my fair face and auburn beard would
have undeceived the dullest blockhead in Holkar's army. Seizing,
then, a bottle of Burgess's walnut catsup, I dyed my face and my
hands, and, with the simple aid of a flask of Warren's jet, I made
my hair and beard as black as ebony. The Indian's helmet and chain
hood covered likewise a great part of my face, and I hoped thus,
with luck, impudence, and a complete command of all the Eastern
dialects and languages, from Burmah to Afghanistan, to pass scot-
free through this somewhat dangerous ordeal.
I had not the word of the night, it is true--but I trusted to good
fortune for that, and passed boldly out of the fortress, bearing
the flag of truce as before; I had scarcely passed on a couple of
hundred yards, when lo! a party of Indian horsemen, armed like him
I had just overcome, trotted towards me. One was leading a noble
white charger, and no sooner did he see me than, dismounting from
his own horse, and giving the rein to a companion, he advanced to
meet me with the charger; a second fellow likewise dismounted and
followed the first: one held the bridle of the horse, while the
other (with a multitude of salaams, aleikums, and other
genuflexions) held the jewelled stirrup, and kneeling, waited until
I should mount.
I took the hint at once: the Indian who had come up to the fort
was a great man--that was evident; I walked on with a majestic air,
gathered up the velvet reins, and sprung into the magnificent high-
peaked saddle. "Buk, buk," said I. "It is good. In the name of
the forty-nine Imaums, let us ride on." And the whole party set
off at a brisk trot, I keeping silence, and thinking with no little
trepidation of what I was about to encounter.
As we rode along, I heard two of the men commenting upon my unusual
silence (for I suppose, I--that is the Indian--was a talkative
officer). "The lips of the Bahawder are closed," said one. "Where
are those birds of Paradise, his long-tailed words? they are
imprisoned between the golden bars of his teeth!"
"Kush," said his companion, "be quiet! Bobbachy Bahawder has seen
the dreadful Feringhee, Gahagan Khan Gujputi, the elephant-lord,
whose sword reaps the harvest of death; there is but one champion
who can wear the papooshes of the elephant-slayer--it is Bobbachy
Bahawder!"
"You speak truly, Puneeree Muckun, the Bahawder ruminates on the
words of the unbeliever: he is an ostrich, and hatches the eggs of
his thoughts."
"Bekhusm! on my nose be it! May the young birds, his actions, be
strong and swift in flight."
"May they DIGEST IRON!" said Puneeree Muckun, who was evidently a
wag in his way.
"O--ho!" thought I, as suddenly the light flashed upon me. "It
was, then, the famous Bobbachy Bahawder whom I overcame just now!
and he is the man destined to stand in my slippers, is he?" and I
was at that very moment standing in his own! Such are the chances
and changes that fall to the lot of the soldier!
I suppose everybody--everybody who has been in India, at least--has
heard the name of Bobbachy Bahawder: it is derived from the two
Hindustanee words--bobbachy, general; bahawder, artilleryman. He
had entered into Holkar's service in the latter capacity, and had,
by his merit and his undaunted bravery in action, attained the
dignity of the peacock's feather, which is only granted to noblemen
of the first class; he was married, moreover, to one of Holkar's
innumerable daughters; a match which, according to the Chronique
Scandaleuse, brought more of honour than of pleasure to the poor
Bobbachy. Gallant as he was in the field, it was said that in the
harem he was the veriest craven alive, completely subjugated by his
ugly and odious wife. In all matters of importance the late
Bahawder had been consulted by his prince, who had, as it appears
(knowing my character, and not caring to do anything rash in his
attack upon so formidable an enemy), sent forward the unfortunate
Pitan to reconnoitre the fort; he was to have done yet more, as I
learned from the attendant Puneeree Muckun, who was, I soon found
out, an old favourite with the Bobbachy--doubtless on account of
his honesty and love of repartee.
"The Bahawder's lips are closed," said he, at last, trotting up to
me; "has he not a word for old Puneeree Muckun?"
"Bismillah, mashallah, barikallah," said I; which means, "My good
friend, what I have seen is not worth the trouble of relation, and
fills my bosom with the darkest forebodings."
"You could not then see the Gujputi alone, and stab him with your
dagger?"
[Here was a pretty conspiracy!] "No, I saw him, but not alone; his
people were always with him."
"Hurrumzadeh! it is a pity; we waited but the sound of your jogree
(whistle), and straightway would have galloped up and seized upon
every man, woman, and child in the fort: however, there are but a
dozen men in the garrison, and they have not provision for two
days--they must yield; and then hurrah for the moon-faces!
Mashallah! I am told the soldiers who first get in are to have
their pick. How my old woman, Rotee Muckun, will be surprised when
I bring home a couple of Feringhee wives,--ha! ha!"
"Fool!" said I, "be still!--twelve men in the garrison there are
twelve hundred! Gahagan himself is as good as a thousand men; and
as for food, I saw with my own eyes five hundred bullocks grazing
in the courtyard as I entered." This WAS a bouncer, I confess; but
my object was to deceive Puneeree Muckun, and give him as high a
notion as possible of the capabilities of defence which the
besieged had.
"Pooch, pooch," murmured the men; "it is a wonder of a fortress:
we shall never be able to take it until our guns come up."
There was hope then! they had no battering-train. Ere this arrived
I trusted that Lord Lake would hear of our plight, and march down
to rescue us. Thus occupied in thought and conversation, we rode
on until the advanced sentinel challenged us, when old Puneeree
gave the word, and we passed on into the centre of Holkar's camp.
It was a strange--a stirring sight! The camp-fires were lighted;
and round them--eating, reposing, talking, looking at the merry
steps of the dancing-girls, or listening to the stories of some
Dhol Baut (or Indian improvisatore)--were thousands of dusky
soldiery. The camels and horses were picketed under the banyan-
trees, on which the ripe mango fruit was growing, and offered them
an excellent food. Towards the spot which the golden fish and
royal purdahs, floating in the wind, designated as the tent of
Holkar, led an immense avenue--of elephants! the finest street,
indeed, I ever saw. Each of the monstrous animals had a castle on
its back, armed with Mauritanian archers and the celebrated Persian
matchlock-men: it was the feeding time of these royal brutes, and
the grooms were observed bringing immense toffungs, or baskets,
filled with pine-apples, plantains, bananas, Indian corn, and
cocoa-nuts, which grow luxuriantly at all seasons of the year. We
passed down this extraordinary avenue--no less than three hundred
and eighty-eight tails did I count on each side--each tail
appertaining to an elephant twenty-five feet high--each elephant
having a two-storied castle on its back--each castle containing
sleeping and eating rooms for the twelve men that formed its
garrison, and were keeping watch on the roof--each roof bearing a
flagstaff twenty feet long on its top, the crescent glittering with
a thousand gems, and round it the imperial standard,--each standard
of silk velvet and cloth-of-gold, bearing the well-known device of
Holkar, argent an or gules, between a sinople of the first, a
chevron truncated, wavy. I took nine of these myself in the course
of a very short time after, and shall be happy, when I come to
England, to show them to any gentleman who has a curiosity that
way. Through this gorgeous scene our little cavalcade passed, and
at last we arrived at the quarters occupied by Holkar.
That celebrated chieftain's tents and followers were gathered round
one of the British bungalows which had escaped the flames, and
which he occupied during the siege. When I entered the large room
where he sat, I found him in the midst of a council of war; his
chief generals and viziers seated round him, each smoking his
hookah, as is the common way with these black fellows, before, at,
and after breakfast, dinner, supper, and bedtime. There was such a
cloud raised by their smoke you could hardly see a yard before you-
-another piece of good-luck for me--as it diminished the chances of
my detection. When, with the ordinary ceremonies, the kitmatgars
and consomahs had explained to the prince that Bobbachy Bahawder,
the right eye of the Sun of the Universe (as the ignorant heathens
called me), had arrived from his mission, Holkar immediately
summoned me to the maidaun, or elevated platform, on which he was
seated in a luxurious easy-chair, and I, instantly taking off my
slippers, falling on my knees, and beating my head against the
ground ninety-nine times, proceeded, still on my knees, a hundred
and twenty feet through the room, and then up the twenty steps
which led to his maidaun--a silly, painful, and disgusting
ceremony, which can only be considered as a relic of barbarian
darkness, which tears the knees and shins to pieces, let alone the
pantaloons. I recommend anybody who goes to India, with the
prospect of entering the service of the native rajahs, to recollect
my advice, and have them WELL WADDED.
Well, the right eye of the Sun of the Universe scrambled as well as
he could up the steps of the maidaun (on which, in rows, smoking,
as I have said, the musnuds or general officers were seated), and I
arrived within speaking distance of Holkar, who instantly asked me
the success of my mission. The impetuous old man thereon poured
out a multitude of questions: "How many men are there in the
fort?" said he; "how many women? Is it victualled? have they
ammunition? Did you see Gahagan Sahib, the commander? did you kill
him?"
All these questions Jeswunt Row Holkar puffed out with so many
whiffs of tobacco.
Taking a chillum myself, and raising about me such a cloud that,
upon my honour as a gentleman, no man at three yards' distance
could perceive anything of me except the pillar of smoke in which I
was encompassed, I told Holkar, in Oriental language of course, the
best tale I could with regard to the fort.
"Sir," said I, "to answer your last question first--that dreadful
Gujputi I have seen--and he is alive: he is eight feet, nearly, in
height; he can eat a bullock daily (of which he has seven hundred
at present in the compound, and swears that during the siege he
will content himself with only three a week): he has lost, in
battle, his left eye; and what is the consequence? O Ram Gunge" (O
thou-with-the-eye-as-bright-as-morning and-with-beard-as-black-as-
night), "Goliah Gujputi--NEVER SLEEPS!"
"Ah, you Ghorumsaug (you thief of the world)," said the Prince
Vizier, Saadut Alee Beg Bimbukchee--"it's joking you are;"--and
there was a universal buzz through the room at the announcement of
this bouncer.
"By the hundred and eleven incarnations of Vishnu," said I,
solemnly (an oath which no Indian was ever known to break), "I
swear that so it is: so at least he told me, and I have good cause
to know his power. Gujputi is an enchanter: he is leagued with
devils; he is invulnerable. Look," said I, unsheathing my dagger--
and every eye turned instantly towards me--"thrice did I stab him
with this steel--in the back, once--twice right through the heart;
but he only laughed me to scorn, and bade me tell Holkar that the
steel was not yet forged which was to inflict an injury upon him."
I never saw a man in such a rage as Holkar was when I gave him this
somewhat imprudent message.
"Ah, lily-livered rogue!" shouted he out to me, "milk-blooded
unbeliever! pale-faced miscreant! lives he after insulting thy
master in thy presence? In the name of the Prophet, I spit on
thee, defy thee, abhor thee, degrade thee! Take that, thou liar of
the universe! and that--and that--and that!"
Such are the frightful excesses of barbaric minds! every time this
old man said, "Take that," he flung some article near him at the
head of the undaunted Gahagan--his dagger, his sword, his carbine,
his richly ornamented pistols, his turban covered with jewels,
worth a hundred thousand crores of rupees--finally, his hookah,
snake mouthpiece, silver-bell, chillum and all--which went hissing
over my head, and flattening into a jelly the nose of the Grand
Vizier.
"Yock muzzee! my nose is off," said the old man, mildly. "Will you
have my life, O Holkar? it is thine likewise!" and no other word of
complaint escaped his lips.
Of all these missiles, though a pistol and carbine had gone off as
the ferocious Indian flung them at my head, and the naked scimitar,
fiercely but unadroitly thrown, had lopped off the limbs of one or
two of the musnuds as they sat trembling on their omrahs, yet,
strange to say, not a single weapon had hurt me. When the hubbub
ceased, and the unlucky wretches who had been the victims of this
fit of rage had been removed, Holkar's good-humour somewhat
returned, and he allowed me to continue my account of the fort;
which I did, not taking the slightest notice of his burst of
impatience: as indeed it would have been the height of
impoliteness to have done, for such accidents happened many times
in the day.
"It is well that the Bobbachy has returned," snuffled out the poor
Grand Vizier, after I had explained to the Council the
extraordinary means of defence possessed by the garrison.
"Your star is bright, O Bahawder! for this very night we had
resolved upon an escalade of the fort, and we had sworn to put
every one of the infidel garrison to the edge of the sword."
"But you have no battering train," said I.
"Bah! we have a couple of ninety-six pounders, quite sufficient to
blow the gates open; and then, hey for a charge!" said Loll
Mahommed, a general of cavalry, who was a rival of Bobbachy's, and
contradicted, therefore, every word I said. "In the name of
Juggernaut, why wait for the heavy artillery? Have we not swords?
Have we not hearts? Mashallah! Let cravens stay with Bobbachy,
all true men will follow Loll Mahommed! Allahhumdillah, Bismillah,
Barikallah?" {7} and drawing his scimitar, he waved it over his
head, and shouted out his cry of battle. It was repeated by many
of the other omrahs; the sound of their cheers was carried into the
camp, and caught up by the men; the camels began to cry, the horses
to prance and neigh, the eight hundred elephants set up a scream,
the trumpeters and drummers clanged away at their instruments. I
never heard such a din before or after. How I trembled for my
little garrison when I heard the enthusiastic cries of this
innumerable host!
There was but one way for it. "Sir," said I, addressing Holkar,
"go out to-night, and you go to certain death. Loll Mahommed has
not seen the fort as I have. Pass the gate if you please, and for
what? to fall before the fire of a hundred pieces of artillery; to
storm another gate, and then another, and then to be blown up, with
Gahagan's garrison in the citadel. Who talks of courage? Were I
not in your august presence, O star of the faithful, I would crop
Loll Mahommed's nose from his face, and wear his ears as an
ornament in my own pugree! Who is there here that knows not the
difference between yonder yellow-skinned coward and Gahagan Khan
Guj--I mean Bobbachy Bahawder? I am ready to fight one, two,
three, or twenty of them, at broad-sword, small-sword, single-
stick, with fists if you please. By the holy piper, fighting is
like mate and dthrink to Ga---to Bobbachy, I mane--whoop! come on,
you divvle, and I'll bate the skin off your ugly bones."
This speech had very nearly proved fatal to me, for, when I am
agitated, I involuntarily adopt some of the phraseology peculiar to
my own country; which is so un-eastern, that, had there been any
suspicion as to my real character, detection must indubitably have
ensued. As it was, Holkar perceived nothing, but instantaneously
stopped the dispute. Loll Mahommed, however, evidently suspected
something; for, as Holkar, with a voice of thunder, shouted out;
"Tomasha (silence)," Loll sprang forward and gasped out -
"My lord! my lord! this is not Bob--"
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