Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Their elephant was descending into the river-bed, and the walls and towers of Adamkot were dominating in dusky red the landscape to their right, when Gerrard uttered an exclamation, and pointed out a small body of mounted men surrounding an elephant, who were approaching their camp from the opposite side. "From Agpur!" he said. "Who can be coming? A woman's howdah, too!
That this might be necessary he gathered from the latest instructions he had received written, as he guessed, just before the arrival of his detailed report, and containing stringent warnings against committing the British Government on his own responsibility to any particular plan in dealing with Agpur.
A tall man much muffled in a large cloak was ushered in, and at Gerrard's invitation, sat down on the floor. When Badan Hazari was gone, he lowered the cloak a little, and looked at Gerrard as though he expected recognition, but there was none. "I place my life in your hands, sahib. I am Sher Singh." "There are many of that name," said Gerrard, puzzled. "Not many who are also princes of Agpur."
His servant and the orderly sleeping close at hand protested in injured tones when he called to them that he had been dreaming, and so did the sentries supposed to be keeping watch on the outskirts of the camp, to whom he sent an inquiry without much hope of success. "If any messenger arrives from Agpur, wake me and bring him here at once," he said as he lay down again. "Why, what a fool I am!
Gerrard set his teeth. It was Charteris, then. He answered the question fully, and also the others by which it was followed. Honour's curiosity on the subject of the unauthorised operations in Agpur seemed insatiable, and bit by bit she drew from him the whole history of the campaign.
"Ah, but that's just what you don't do!" cried Marian, roused to recollection of a grievance of her own. "How could you all but promise Charley that if a peaceful mission was sent to Agpur, he should command the escort?" "But surely, my dear, I was sacrificing my own comfort in promising to spare him?" "No, you were sacrificing me!" pouted his daughter.
The city of Agpur he was not to enter without an express invitation from its ruler, nor in any way to force himself upon his attention; but should accident, or any faint glimmerings of a conciliatory spirit on the part of Partab Singh, bring them together, he was to leave no means untried to win the Rajah's friendship.
This miniature palace, sheltered within the fort walls, yet standing by itself in its own garden, remote from the rambling pile of buildings occupied by Partab Singh and his court, would make an ideal Residency. Not for a solitary man, of course, but the Resident at Agpur could well afford to marry. Gazing down into the inner courtyard he saw it in the light of a shrine for Honour.
For innocent blood shall the doom come, though my eyes shall not behold it, and through these two Feringhees" she indicated Gerrard and Charteris "who shall execute justice on the murderer in the day when they shall make a road for a corpse through the great wall of Agpur."
On the evening of the battle, the long-delayed despatches from Ranjitgarh caught up Charteris at last, ordering him to retire forthwith into Darwan, since it would be impossible during the hot weather to move reinforcements sufficient to ensure the capture of Agpur. Before they slept that night, he and Gerrard had deliberately made up their minds to put the telescope to the blind eye.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking