“Why, I don’t exactly know,” said Tom; “there’s a very sweet little girl here, who has made a sad hole in my heart; such a pair of eyes as she has—oh! Frank—but you’ll see. I have made a hundred resolutions against being spliced, but one glance of those death-dealing orbs sends them all to shivers in a minute. I am like a moth flitting about a candle, and shall go plump into the mischief at last, I see that very plainly. Perhaps, though, Frank, as you are not a bad-looking fellow, you may keep down or divert a little of the fire of that terrible artillery.”
“Why, I don’t know,” said I, laughing; “it is not so easy to create a diversion in these cases, and not over safe; besides, who knows, if successful, but that the fire of your love may be changed into that of jealousy, and that you may be opening another sort of battery on me! But seriously, I can feel for you, Tom, for already my poor heart has been amazingly riddled by a charming young lady we left at Madras, and more recently by a widow. ’Pon my life, I begin to think the Orientals do wisely in locking up their women.”
Tom Rattleton receiving the Morning Report of the “Fat Lord” and the “Red Lion.”
“I begin to think so too,” said Tom, with a sigh: “they do a confounded deal of mischief; at all events, those radiant and Mokannah-visaged dames should be closely veiled with good opaque stuff, as you muzzle dangerous dogs.”
“What a simile, Tom! But your plan would be of no avail; a mere masking of the battery, which, upon fit occasions, would open upon us with more deadly effect.”
Whilst we were thus chatting, the blind of the room was drawn aside, and Cherby Khan and Loll Sing (which translated mean “the fat lord” and “the red lion”), the subadar and lance-naick or corporal of my friend’s company, marched in to make their morning’s report.
A native of Hindostan, well off in the world, and with a mind at ease, fattens as regularly and surely as a pig or a stall-fed ox. The subadar was consequently a punchy, adipose little fellow, something of the cut and build of “Mon oncle Gil Perez.” The naick, on the contrary, was tall and spare, and a very proper and handsome man of his inches.
On entering (stiff as a ramrod), the little subadar, who showed a good civic rotundity in front, threw out his right arm horizontally, with a jerk, which might have almost dislocated it from the shoulder-joint, and then bringing up his hand to his cap, saluted in a most military style, and reported that “all was well,” “sub ucha” in the company of the “Gurreeb Purwar,” or “protector of the poor,” for so he designated my friend Tom.
This was the statement in the gross, with which, however, it appeared there was little correspondence in the items; these proved, I afterwards understood from Tom, to be—two men dead, five gone to hospital, three deserted, a musket lost, and sundry other mishaps.