“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, bandannas, 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 flag-staff 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,