‘Ah! could I but meet the villain Jaffar!’ cried Kasim, as they gave up further search, for it was now dark; ‘if indeed he be alive, then would we wring from him the fate of your poor friend. Inshalla! he may be found: I know his haunts, and will watch them all night; I will come to thee in the morning.’
‘I shall be here with my regiment,’ Dalton said sadly; ‘but I have no hope, for that cowardly villain will have fled long ere now with his ill-gotten wealth.’
The morning broke gloomily after that fearful day and night; for during the latter there had been appalling alarms, shots, screams from terrified, plundered, and often violated women; there were many dreadful excesses, but they were checked. As the day advanced, order was restored once more, and the moderation of the English in their victory, their justice, and protection of all, is yet sung and said through the country by wandering minstrels.
The Sultaun’s body had been discovered where he had fallen; his faithful attendant lay beside him, with others who had fought with him to the last. They were brought into the palace, and recognised by the women with unfeigned and bitter grief. Of all that host of secluded women, two only truly mourned his fate. The one was his mother, the other Fureeda, who could with difficulty be torn from his body, as they took it away for burial. Her love had grown with misfortune; for in her society he had found rest from care and from his own restless mind; of late he had visited no other, and, despite of his vices, she had felt security with him, whom no one else looked on without fear; and as his fate approached, she foresaw it, pitied, and loved him.
The last rites of the faith had been performed upon the body. The grave clothes, which, brought from Mekha, had been for years in his possession, were put on with the requisite ceremonies, ablutions, and fumigations; the sheet, filled with flowers, was laid over the body; the attendant Moolas chanted thrice those parts of the Koran, the ‘Soora e fateeha,’ and the ‘Qool hoo Alla!’ They were about to raise it, to place it in the coffin, when two women again rushed in; the one was old, wrinkled, and grey—it was his nurse; she beat her bare and withered breasts, and, kneeling beside the corpse, showed them to it with passionate exclamations. ‘Thou hast sucked them,’ she cried, ‘when I was young, and they were full of milk! Alas! alas! that I should have lived to say I bestow it on thee.’
The other was Fureeda; she spoke not, but sobbed bitterly, as she looked on the pinched and sharpened features, and livid face of him who had till the last clung to her with affection.
They were removed with difficulty, and the procession passed out slowly, the Moolas chanting the funeral service with slow and melancholy cadences. The conquerers of the dead awaited his coming, and, in silent homage to their illustrious enemy, lifted their plumed hats from their brows, as the body passed on to its last resting-place beside the noble Hyder. The troops, which had the day before been arrayed in arms against him, now paid the last honours to his death; and through a street of British soldiers, resting upon their firearms reversed, while their bands played the dead march in Saul, the procession wound its way. Without in the street were thousands of men, who, frantic in their grief, cried aloud to Alla; and women, who beat their breasts, and wailed, or else uttered piercing shrieks of woe, flung dust into the air, and, casting loose their hair, strove to prostrate themselves before the body of the dead. The solemn chant proceeded; each verse sung by the Moolas, who in their flowing robes preceded the coffin, was repeated by all around. The body was surrounded by all the officers of Tippoo’s late army who had survived, and those of the Nizam’s force, on foot; and there was one of his sons on horseback, who sat in a kind of stupor at the overwhelming affliction.
The day had been gloomy, and was close and hot; not a breath of wind stirred the trees, and heavy lurid masses of clouds hung over the city, from whence at times a low muttering growl of thunder would break, and seemingly rattle all over the heavens. Men felt heavily the weight of the atmosphere, and every now and then looked up at the threatening mass which hung above them.
Through the plain, which extends to the mausoleum of Hyder, the multitude poured; and as the procession gradually approached its goal, the frantic cries of the people increased, almost drowning the melancholy dead march and the chant which arose, now one, now the other, and sometimes both blended into a wild harmony upon the still air. Then there was a momentary silence, only to be succeeded by bursts of grief even more violent than before. The thunder appeared to increase in loudness every moment, while flashes of lightning darted across the heavens from side to side.
The procession reached the burial-place; the grenadiers formed a street, rested upon their firearms reversed, and the body passed on. The band now ceased, and the bier being laid down, the body was taken from it, preparatory to being laid in the grave. The Moola (for one alone now officiated) raised his voice in the chant of the first creed; it was a powerful one, but now sounded thin and small among that vast assembly; he had said only a few words, when a flash of lightning burst from above, nearly blinding them, and a peal of thunder followed, so crashing, so stunning, that the stoutest hearts quailed under it. It died away, and as it receded far into the east, the melancholy tone of the Moola’s voice, which had been drowned in it, again arose clear and distinct, like the distant wail of a trumpet.