and cracking; and an elephant looked very brilliant for a
moment, and then went off through his eyes with a bang, and was no
more;--sham men exploded; and real men jumped into sparkling, crackling
flames; and rockets and fire-balloons went up; so that, if the lessee of
Vauxhall or Cremorne could let off or send up half as many things as were
let off and went up on this occasion in the court-yard of the Lucknow
Durbar, he would make a fortune. At last everything that had not gone in
some other direction went out; the King stood at the top of the stairs,
and those who were presented, after receiving tinsel necklaces from the
hands of royalty, passed down stairs, and the guests went away by
whatever means of conveyance they might possess--a very motley and
somewhat noisy party. The mode which we made use of to return to
cantonments, a distance of four miles, was rather singular, not to be
recommended except on an emergency: the carriages seemed to have
decreased in proportion as the number of guests had multiplied, and in
some unaccountable manner many of us were left to accomplish our return
as best we could. It was in vain that we attempted to persuade the seven
occupants of a buggy to receive us among them--we met with a stern
refusal. It was useless to supplicate a number of rich Baboos, on a
handsome elephant, to help us in our difficulties; the rich Baboos
laughed, and told us we might get up behind, if we liked. And so all
that brilliant throng went whirling back to cantonments, and we were left
disconsolately standing in the court-yard, with the probability of having
to trudge home. This was not to be thought of for a moment, and we had
just arrived at a pitch of desperation when a handsome carriage, with the
blinds all up, and drawn by a pair of high-stepping horses, came rattling
toward us. Not a moment was to be lost; we rushed frantically forward
and ordered an immediate halt. In vain did the venerable coachman and
determined-looking servant intimate to us that the carriage was his
Majesty's; his Majesty, we assured them, was still carousing in his
palace: so, depositing them both in the interior, without loss of time we
mounted the box, and a moment after the high-stepping horses were dashing
along the road to cantonments in brilliant style. We looked
contemptuously down into the buggy, still clung to by its seven
occupants, and galloped at a startling pace past the jocose Baboos, very
much to the annoy