The Rājā stared, and said that certainly they had abundance of crows in Darbhanga; but he thought they were equally abundant in all parts of India.
'Quite the contrary, Rājā Sāhib, I assure you,' said the colonel; 'there is not such a thing as a crow to be found in any part of the Company's dominions that I have seen, and I have been all over them.'
'Very strange!' said the Rājā, turning round to his followers.
'Yes,' replied they,' it is very strange, Rājā Sāhib; but such is your 'ikbāl' (good fortune), that everything thrives under it; and, if the colonel should wish to have a few crows, we could easily collect them for him.'
'If', said the colonel, greatly delighted, 'you could provide us with a few of these crows, we should really feel very much obliged to you; for we have a long and cold campaign before us among the bleak hills of Nepal; and we are all fond of crows.'
'Indeed,' returned the Rājā, 'I shall be happy to send you as many as you wish.' ('Much' and 'many' are expressed by the same term.)
'Then we should be glad to have two or three bags full, if it would not be robbing you.'
'Not in the least,' said the Rājā; 'I will go home and order them to be collected immediately.'
In the evening, as the officers, with the colonel at their head, were sitting down to dinner, a man came up to announce the Rājā's present. Three fine large bags were brought in, and the colonel requested that one might be opened immediately. It was opened accordingly, and the mess butler ('khansāmān') drew out by the legs a fine old crow. The colonel immediately saw the mistake, and laughed as heartily as the rest at the result. A polite message was sent to the Rājā, requesting that he would excuse his having made it—for he had had half a dozen men out shooting crows all day with their matchlocks. Few Europeans spoke the language better than General ———, and I do not believe that one European in a thousand, at this very moment, makes any difference, or knows any difference, in the sound of the two terms.
Kām Baksh had one sister married to the King of Oudh, and another to Mirzā Salīm, the younger son of the Emperor. Mirzā Salīm and his wife could not agree, and a separation took place, and she went to reside with her sister, the Queen of Oudh. The King saw her frequently; and, finding her more beautiful than his wife, he demanded her also in marriage from her father, who resided at Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, on a pension of five thousand rupees a month from the King. He would not consent, and demanded his daughter; the King, finding her willing to share his bed and board with her sister, would not give her up.[17] The father got his old friend, Colonel Gardiner, who had married a Muhammadan woman of rank, to come down and plead his cause. The King gave up the young woman, but at the same time stopped the father's pension, and ordered him and all his family out of his dominions. He set out with Colonel Gardiner and his daughter, on his road to Delhi, through Kāsganj, the residence of the colonel, who was one day recommending the prince to seek consolation for the loss of his pension in the proud recollection of having saved the honour of the house of Tamerlane, when news was brought to them that the daughter had run off from camp with his (Colonel Gardiner's) son James, who had accompanied him to Lucknow. The prince and the colonel mounted their horses, and rode after him; but they were so much heavier and older than the young ones, that they soon gave up the chase in despair. Sulaimān Shikoh insisted upon the colonel immediately fighting him, after the fashion of the English, with swords or pistols, but was soon persuaded that the honour of the house of Tīmūr would be much better preserved by allowing the offending parties to marry ![18] The King of Oudh was delighted to find that the old man had been so punished; and the Queen no less so to find herself so suddenly and unexpectedly relieved from all dread of her sister's return. All parties wrote to my friend Kām Baksh, who was then at Jubbulpore;[19] and he came off with their letters to me to ask whether I thought the incident might not be turned to account in getting the pension for his father restored.[20]