CHAPTER XVI.
OUR DEPARTURE.
With sorrow and humiliation, if not with consternation and horror, I took my place again beside my leader in his buggy, the dense and awful crowd crushing and surging to each side to open a way for us to pass. The fiendish Minister for War, Bomblazo, was the very first to congratulate me on my victory. A dreadful silence reigned around. The people gazed at us, as it were, in petrified surprise, in thunder-stricken astonishment. I regarded this terrible stillness as ominous of pent-up rage, and of a bloody vengeance rapidly approaching; and with a sigh of despair prepared myself for the worst. The Doctor, however, did not seem to regard it in this light. He chirruped to his horses, began to laugh, quietly to himself at first, then with gradually-increasing hilarity, until, finally, he burst into the loudest roars I ever heard, saying in the intervals of his paroxysms: 'Hurrah! hurrah! that rat won't squeak again—hurrah!'
'Hurraw!' shouted a larrikin recruit in the crowd, and instantly twenty thousand mouths were opened, and a wild and tremendous cheer burst forth from them. I did not take off my hat, or bow in return for their acclamations, although I knew they were intended for me, My heart was full of grief and bitterness, and I was surprised at the conduct of the Doctor, and more than inclined to be
