As I said this, and as the long ringlets of red hair fell over my shoulders (contrasting strangely with my dyed face and beard), I formed one of the finest pictures that can possibly be conceived, and I recommend it as a subject to Mr. Heath, for the next “Book of Beauty.”

“Wretch!” said she, “what wouldst thou?”

“You black-faced fiend,” said I, “raise but your voice, and you are dead!”

“And afterwards,” said she, “do you suppose that you can escape?  The torments of hell are not so terrible as the tortures that Holkar will invent for thee.”

“Tortures, madam?” answered I, coolly.  “Fiddlesticks!  You will neither betray me, nor will I be put to the torture:  on the contrary, you will give me your best jewels and facilitate my escape to the fort.  Don’t grind your teeth and swear at me.  Listen, madam :  you know this dress and these arms;—­they are the arms of your husband, Bobbachy Bahawder—­my prisoner.  He now lies in yonder fort, and if I do not return before daylight, at sunrise he dies:  and then, when they send his corpse back to Holkar, what will you, his widow, do?”

“Oh!” said she, shuddering, “spare me, spare me!”

“I’ll tell you what you will do.  You will have the pleasure of dying along with him—­of being roasted, madam:  an agonizing death, from which your father cannot save you, to which he will be the first man to condemn and conduct you.  Ha!  I see we understand each other, and you will give me over the cash-box and jewels.”  And so saying I threw myself back with the calmest air imaginable, flinging the pistols over to her.  “Light me a pipe, my love,” said I, “and then go and hand me over the dollars; do you hear?” You see I had her in my power—­up a tree, as the Americans say, and she very humbly lighted my pipe for me, and then departed for the goods I spoke about.

What a thing is luck!  If Loll Mahommed had not been made to take that ride round the camp, I should infallibly have been lost.

My supper, my quarrel with the princess, and my pipe afterwards, had occupied a couple of hours of my time.  The princess returned from her quest, and brought with her the box, containing valuables to the amount of about three millions sterling. (I was cheated of them afterwards, but have the box still, a plain deal one.) I was just about to take my departure, when a tremendous knocking, shouting, and screaming was heard at the entrance of the tent.  It was Holkar himself, accompanied by that cursed Loll Mahommed, who, after his punishment, found his master restored to good humor, and had communicated to him his firm conviction that I was an impostor.

“Ho, Begum,” shouted he, in the ante-room (for he and his people could not enter the women’s apartments), “speak, O my daughter! is your husband returned?”

“Speak, madam,” said I, “or remember the roasting.”