Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 19, 2025
His head is shaved to the bone; his face, of the Semitic type, is most sinister, truculent, and ferocious; his filthy Afghan rags bristle with knives and tulwars. He carries five or six matchlocks under one arm, and a hymn book, or Koran, under the other. He is in holy orders a Ghazi!
Then he turned to Bootea: "Now, woman, speak what is in thy mind, for this is an affair of action." "Commander Sahib," Bootea began, "yonder man," and she pointed a slim hand toward Barlow "is not an Afghan, he is a Sahib." This startling announcement filled the room with cries of astonishment and anger; tulwars flashed.
But the ribbons were of steel steel blades, sharp, bright, gleaming: a countless array of curved tulwars and crescent scimetars, broad jataghans, short and ugly kukurees, long kutars with straight ends, slender deadly patas, snake-like bichwas; swords with jewelled hilts and engraved and damascened blades; sabres with channels cut from point to guard wherein small pearls ran singing; khands built for service and for parade; swords of every style and period in all the history of India.
Nearly all were well armed with tulwars, knives, and pistols. Some carried rifles and matchlocks, while a few and those must have been resolute fanatics indeed had simply pikes made of bayonets, or pieces of sharpened iron fastened on long shafts. Their attack broke with greatest violence on our flanks.
As the dust settled it was apparent that the charge had merely encouraged the enemy, who as they steadily pressed on in good order, were waving their banners in triumph and brandishing their tulwars and knives. The fire from the Sniders and Enfields of their marksmen was well directed and deliberate.
When this was done, they picked out thick pieces of wood for crossbars. Then they took a beam, eight feet long, made a hole with their tulwars in the clay floor close to the wall, put one end of the beam into it, and reared it upright against the window. Dick held it in its place, while Surajah hacked a deep notch in it a by no means difficult matter, for it was half rotten with exposure.
Even also our tulwars and our spears are ready for service so be it there is a reward in lands and gold." The Pindari Chief paced the marble floor twice, then with his eyes watching the effect of his words in the face of Barlow he said: "Captain Sahib, it is of an affair of feeling I would speak now.
The brave sepoys have undoubtedly been destroyed to a man; but that should make us still more eager to avenge their death. And what are you worth, if you cannot do so with your carbines and sharp tulwars? Come on, then, at once! We may take the foe by surprise while engaged in plundering the dead." The rajah's address seemed to be producing some effect.
All this journey is studded with battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to make a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically Private Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the hesitation of his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the mutineers.
Each passage was about fifty feet wide and quite straight. But the space between the bridge end and the arena, and the arena itself, had to be kept free from trespassers by fifty swaggering ruffians armed to the teeth. Every man of the thousands there had a knife in evidence, but the arena guards had magazine rifles well as Khyber tulwars. Nobody else wore firearms openly.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking