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What shall I call it? A gun or a serpent? This gun is most heavy, and makes victory certain. There is none like it in India or Kabul. Made by Ghulam Rasul.
"After an exceedingly arduous pursuit, as you may judge from our dusty and exhausted condition," replied Rasul Khan, "we have managed to capture three most important prisoners, on whose heads a high price has been placed by the Sikh Durbar. They are the most desperate ruffians, full of the wiles of Satan, and we greatly fear lest they should escape us.
When the exchange of polite banalities came to a pause, he expressed a wish to learn the courtly visitor's opinion of the National Congress. Orde reluctantly interpreted, and with a smile which even Mohammedan politeness could not save from bitter scorn, Rasul Ah Khan intimated that he knew nothing about it and cared still less.
During the course of the day the utmost cordiality was maintained, the Sikhs coming out and freely fraternising with the Guides, who, in their casual wanderings round, had at any rate got hold of a fairly shrewd notion of what the outside of the fort was like. But this was not enough for Rasul Khan, and he laid his further plans accordingly.
And from hundreds of barbarous throats arose the killing-cry to Allah the battle-cry of Beni Harb, the murder-lusting Sons of War. "La Illaha illa Allah! M'hámed rasul Allah!" Raw, ragged, exultant, a scream of passion, joy, and hate, it rose like the voice of the desert itself, vibrant with wild fanaticism, pitiless and wild.
To accomplish this, a considerable force was despatched from Lahore, and in advance of it was sent a party to reconnoitre and gain intelligence. This party consisted of Subadar Rasul Khan, and one hundred and forty of all ranks of the Guides' infantry, with orders to get along as fast as they could.
It is not always that the best laid plans succeed without a hitch, but the fortune of war was on this occasion entirely kind to the British cause, and the bold game played by subadar Rasul Khan and his men reaped a splendid reward; the capture of a formidable fortress, seventy guns, and a regiment of infantry, with little or no loss.
In November of the same year, Ismail Adil's attention being called off by internal dissension at Bijapur, Albuquerque attacked Rasul Khan, Ismail's deputy at Goa, and the eight thousand men under his command, defeated them, retook the place on December 1, and slew six thousand men, women, and children of the Muhammadans.
The night slowly descended, the glow of the southern sky grew ever paler on the half-moons of the minarets, till they grew gradually quite dark and the cry of the muezzin resounded from the towers of the mosques. "Allah Kerim! Allah Akbar! La illah il Allah, Mohammed rasul Allah! God is sublime. God is mighty. There is one God and Mohammed is his Prophet."
Firishtah states that the young Adil Shah's minister, Kummal Khan, after this made peace with the Europeans, and left them securely established at Goa. This, however, is not quite correct, for Rasul Khan made a desperate attempt in 1512 to retake the place, but failed after severe fighting.
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