1 62 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
they must he finally overpowered ; yet they main- 
tained the unequal contest with unflinching con- 
stancy. 
A hundred and eighty of the enemy had fallen ; they 
nevertheless still retained an overwhelming majority. 
Upwards of a hundred Rahtores were lying on the 
field of slaughter, hut the fury of the fight did not 
slacken. The field was strewed with dead, and the 
survivors were every moment adding to the number 
of the slain. The Hara chief performed acts of valour 
which would not have disgraced his best days ; hut 
his thirst of revenge was unslaked while he saw 
his valiant foe alive. He encountered him a second 
time, and defeat was again the result. At length, 
after a desperate struggle, the Rahtores were cut off 
to a man ; their leader alone escaped alive, and he 
quitted the field under the cover of evening, leaving 
hut fifty of his enemies to tell the story of their san- 
guinary victory. 
The brave though vanquished chief retired, weary 
and dispirited, into the neighbouring forest. He was 
goaded by remorse at the idea of having survived a 
contest in which all his companions had obtained the 
soldier’s noblest meed — a glorious death on the field 
of battle, whilst he was skulking into the covert, 
under the veil of darkness, like a hunted beast of 
prey, as if to avoid a foe from whom death would 
now be a boon. At first his thoughts were so 
many goads that irritated, to an insupportable de- 
gree, the lacerations of his fiery spirit, but, in propor- 
tion as these paroxysms gave way to calm reflection, 
he seemed to rise above his condition and to be en- 
