and of Surat. No {110} sooner,
then, had the Emperor arranged matters at Ahmadabad for the good
order of the country, than he set out for Cambay, and reached it in
five days. There, we are told by the historians, he gazed for the
first time on the sea. After a stay there of nearly a week, he
marched, in two days, to Baroda. There he completed his arrangements
for the administration of the country, appointing Ahmadabad to be the
capital, and nominating a governor from amongst the nobles who had
accompanied him from Agra. Thence, too, he despatched a force to
secure Broach and Surat. Information having reached him that the
chief of Broach had murdered the principal adherent of the Mughal
cause in that city, and had then made for the interior, passing
within fifteen miles of Baroda, Akbar dashed after him with what
troops he had in hand, and on the second night came in sight of his
camp at Sarsa, on the further side of a little river.

Akbar had then with him but forty horsemen, and, the river being
fordable, he endeavoured to conceal his men until reinforcements
should arrive. These came up in the night to the number of sixty, and
with his force, now increased to a total number of a hundred, Akbar
forded the river to attack ten times their number. The rebel leader,
instead of awaiting the attack in the town, made for the open, to
give a better chance to his preponderating numbers. Akbar carried the
town with a rush, and then dashed in pursuit. But the country was
intercepted by lanes, {111} bordered on both sides by cactus hedges,
and the horsemen of Akbar were driven back into a position in which
but three of them could fight abreast, the enemy being on either side
of the cactus hedges. The Emperor was in front of his men, having by
his side the gallant Rajput prince, Raja Bhagwan Das of Jaipur, whose
sister he had married, and the Raja's nephew and destined successor,
Man Singh, one of the most brilliant warriors of the day. The three
were in the greatest danger, for the enemy made tremendous efforts to
break in upon them. But the cactus hedges, hitherto a bar to their
formation, now proved a defence which the enemy could not pass. And
when Bhagwan Das had slain his most prominent adversary with his
spear, and Akbar and the nephew had disposed of two others, the three
took advantage of the momentary confusion of the enemy to charge
forward, and aided by the desperate gallantry of their men, roused by
the danger of thei