'The bugles are sounding, and there go the trumpets of the Hussars and Lancers blowing "boot and saddle."'
Disdaining the use of a regulation sword, which he stigmatised as an 'army tailor's blunt knife,' Colonel Spatterdash rode with an enormous tulwar by his side—a weapon once wielded by the great rebel Tantia Topee—one literally for slicing, and having such an edge that he might have shaved with it. He was in high spirits, and being still practically under the influence of his potations overnight, was humming the song of 'The Sepoy Grenadiers'—
'The spirits of our sires,
Who gathered such renown
From clouds of battle fires,
With stern delight look down,
'To Delhi and to Deeg they point,
Those stars of other years;
And bid us still uphold the fame
Of the Sepoy Grenadiers!'
'I'm not likely to die from "waste of nervous tissue," as the doctors call it, whatever the devil it may be,' he added, as he unsheathed his tulwar, that flashed in the paling starlight; 'we'll have a burra khana' (i.e., big dinner) 'when we come back, after polishing off these Mohmund fellows.'
'At least all who are able to partake of it.'
'Don't be gloomy, Colville; d—n it, I never am.'
The force for this expedition was made up of detachments from the column; there were some of the Rifles, with some of the Ghoorkas, 1st Sikhs, and 20th Punjaub Infantry, one hundred of the 10th Hussars under Captain St. Quintin, and one hundred of the 11th Bengal Lancers, in blue uniforms faced with red, under Major Princep. De Latour's Hazara Mountain Battery came clattering up, and two Royal Horse Artillery guns, which latter, with a small force, proceeded at once on observation down the right bank of the Cabul river, in case any of the Mohmunds might have taken post in that direction.
At half-past four in the morning the whole force—not much over a thousand men—after forming in silence and as quickly as possible, without further sound of drum or bugle, moved off, and, with St. Quintin's hussars in the van, crossed the river by the new bridge erected by our Royal Engineers, and advanced into the dark country beyond, where the only sounds heard were the wails of an occasional jackal, replied to by those of a pack of his fourfooted brethren.
In galloping from point to point, when the troops were forming under arms and then in columns of march, giving the general's last orders or directions, Colville had not much time for abstract reflection, yet a certain idea did occur to him, and he muttered, with a glow of the purest satisfaction,