It did not take me long to make my preparations and devise my plans.
In such matters as these I have always found it best to prepare for
every possible contingency, and then, with a trustful heart, to leave
the rest to chance. I therefore calculated to a nicety the number of
miles we should have to traverse, took into account the physical
configuration of the country through which we should have to pass, the
height of its various mountains, the depth of its valleys, the breadth
and current of its rivers, its capacity for food supply, and the
nature of its inhabitants. Having done all this, I spare the reader
unnecessary details. It would profit him but little if I were to set
down exactly the equipment, the clothing, the arms, and all the other
preparations which my matchless experience prompted me to make. Such
an expedition as that which I was about to engage in can never be
undertaken again, for the simple reasons that there are now no pink
hippopotami in the world, and that improved methods of communication,
ridiculous railways, absurd telegraphs, preposterous telephones, and
ludicrously well-metalled roads have robbed life, even in
Seringapatam, of all the romance which, in my younger days, cast a
halo of adventure round the smallest undertaking. How gloriously we
revelled, how grandly we fought, how magnificently contemptuous we
were of danger! But now we clothe ourselves in patent wool, we tremble
at the shadow of a policeman, we judge everything by the mean standard
of its money value. Some day we shall awake from our dreams of false
security, when the crash of invasion sounds in our ears, and we see
our homesteads ruthlessly trampled down by the hoof of some despised
and foreign foe. Then, when it is too late, the public will remember
that England still possesses one great leader inured to hardship and
danger from his earliest youth, one whom, though a perverse Parliament
has slighted him, the greatest warriors and the gallantest sportsmen
have been proud to salute as their unquestioned superior. I shall
answer to the call with what strength I may still possess, and my
prematurely grizzled hair shall be seen waving in the van of my
country's defenders; but even an ORLANDO WILBRAHAM (have I mentioned
that that was my name?) must fail if he has only shop-reared dummies
to support his efforts. Enough, however, of these mournful
prognostications.
My preparations, then, were quickly made. I resolved on confining the
numbers of the expedition within the smallest possible limits, and,
after much thought, I decided to take only one associate. My choice
fell upon Major THEOPHILUS GANDERDOWN. He had gone through the whole
of the previous campaign with me, and had proved his solid worth on
many a hard-fought field. A man, like myself, of herculean strength,
and of inexhaustible endurance, he was eminently fitted to help me in
those perilous situations in which I had no doubt we should find
ourselves before the adventure was over and the task performed. It was
not his fault that he lacked those brilliant powers of initiative,
that wonderful ingenuity of resource for which I had already become
famous. But one genius of that kind is sufficient in any adventure,
and I knew that for courage, strength, and bulldog tenacity, I could
reckon on GANDERDOWN to the death.
We fixed our start for a Thursday, always a lucky day for any
expedition in which I have been engaged. I gave GANDERDOWN rendezvous
at the western gate, at midnight, and bade him maintain the complete
secrecy in which all our plans had hitherto been involved. I myself
set forth when dinner was over to bid farewell to the beautiful and
affectionate CHUDDAH, the last scion of the glorious Rampore dynasty,
who was at that time dwelling in the little marble palace on the
outskirts of the park of her vindictive aunt, the Ranee of
Seringapatam.
[Illustration: "_Chuddah_"]
Ah, CHUDDAH, loveliest of olive maidens, even now, when I think of
thee, this war-worn heart beats faster in my breast, and the
unaccustomed tear trickles down a cheek seamed by many a scar. How
different would my life have been had cruel fate not stepped in to
prevent us from fulfilling those mutual vows of eternal love which we
had pledged to one another, I, who water these lines with my tears,
might now have been the ruler over hosts of dusky myrmidons, the
acclaimed chief of the fierce and warlike Châl tribes, whilst thou, a
queen, a wife, a mother, wouldst have---- But, bah, these wailing
regrets are unmanly. To my story.
(_To be continued._)
* * * * *
Note: [=O] represents O-macron.