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.