‘At Sosillay! Who has been the traitor? Is any one missing?’
‘May I be your sacrifice!’ said an officer, ‘it must be Kasim Ali Patél. He was seen hewing down the true believers at Malvilly.’
‘Kasim Ali!’ gasped the Sultaun; ‘Alla help me! then all is lost.’ And he sank down on his musnud in stupor.
Long he remained so, only at times repeating ‘Kasim Ali’ and ‘Sosillay!’
Hardly any one spoke except in whispers. After some delay, sherbet was brought to him, and he seemed to revive. He sat up, passed his hand across his forehead, as though his brain was bewildered; then he arose, and looked around him; his face was wan and careworn; those few minutes appeared to have done the work of years. Many burst into tears.
‘Ye weep,’ he said, ‘ye weep; why should ye weep for one abandoned of Alla? I have no hope now. Why stay ye with a man who is doomed? why link your fate to a drowning wretch, who hath not even a straw upon the whirlpool of his fate to clutch at? Go! ye have served me well—ye have fought for me, bled for me. Go—may Alla keep ye! Ye have been my friends, my companions. I have been harsh, often cruel. Will ye pardon me? will ye pardon a poor slave of Alla? Go! I—I—have ever loved ye, and now—’
He was interrupted: an officer, with streaming eyes, rushed from a side of the tent, and throwing himself at the Sultaun’s feet, clasped his knees and sobbed passionately aloud.
Tippoo could endure no more. He who had been by turns bitter in sarcasm, brutal in mirth, cruel, proud, exacting, unfeeling, tyrannical, overbearing among his subjects, was now humbled. He appeared to struggle for a moment; but, unable to quell the wild tumult within him, he burst into tears—the first he had ever been seen to shed.
Then ensued a scene which words cannot paint—a scene of passionate raving, of tears, of oaths, of fidelity to death. Men embraced one another, and swore to die side by side. Those who had cherished animosities for years, cast themselves on each other’s breasts, and forgot enmity in the bond of general affliction. All swore before Alla and the Prophet, by the Sultaun’s head and the salt they ate, that they would die as martyrs; they determined to retreat upon the city, and to fight under its walls to death.
The army retired, and awaited the onset, but they were disappointed; the English army passed three miles to the left, in glittering array, and encamped at the opposite side of the Fort to that on which the former attack had been made, and for the time the Sultaun exulted in his safety.