Athelstane Ford Part 11

"Does my lord seek for anything that his servant may procure him?" I said, using their fulsome style.

He at once replied, in what was evidently a phrase learnt by rote--

"I cannot speak your language, but I am a friend of Omichund."

Now this Omichund was a great, rich Gentoo, a banker and merchant who, having made huge profits as a broker in the matter of the Company's investment for many years, had recently had his services dispensed with, and was believed to be disaffected on that account, and in correspondence with the Moorish Court. I needed no more to convince me that this was most likely the man whom I had been employed to apprehend. Not daring to speak English, and it being useless to address him in the Indostanee, I made signs that he should follow me, and commenced to row to the sh.o.r.e.

But here I was disappointed, for the fellow, instead of following me, at once began to move off in the opposite direction. Seeing this I at once turned, shouting after him, and pointing where I would have him go. He merely grinned and rowed further off, nor was it any better when I showed him one of my pistols, for he then merely increased his speed, so that I was obliged to pick up my oars again pretty quickly in order to pursue him.

Seeing that it was become a race between us, he bent to his oars, and I did the same, so that the two boats flew down the river, one about twelve lengths behind the other. But taking advantage of a string of barges which lay anch.o.r.ed out in the stream, he presently dodged me, running in round the tail of the line, and so altering his course up the stream. If I had not turned my head constantly to watch him, I should soon have lost him among the shipping, and these frequent turnings hindered my rowing, so that I could not gain on the other boat so fast as I should otherwise have done. For I soon perceived that I was the better rower of the two, or else had the quicker boat; and the spy seemed to perceive it too, for after taking me some distance up the middle of the river, he suddenly struck off towards the bank, rowing hard for a house which had come in sight, standing on the river's edge.

As we approached this house I could just see (for it was growing dark) a large window standing open, not above a man's height from the water.

To this my fellow rowed, and having brought his boat beneath it, threw down his oars, stood up on the gunwale, and with a desperate leap which nearly sunk the boat, gained the sill of the window and disappeared inside.

But I was close behind, running up against the side of his boat at the moment when he pa.s.sed in at the window, so that by imitating his tactics I was able to leap through immediately after him. I stumbled in alighting, picked myself up, and glanced round, to perceive the man I had been pursuing standing over against me with a pistol in his hand. The next moment I had recognised the room, and there was Marian standing up with a distressed face, one hand on her bosom and the other stretched out between us.

"Stand back!" shouted the spy to her in English, in a voice that I could have recognised anywhere in the world. "This is a d.a.m.ned Indian spy, whom I will kill as soon as I have questioned him."

"You lie, Rupert Gurney," says I, quite calm and cold, as I drew out my own pistols and stood facing him. "'Tis you are the spy, in the service of a vile, treacherous, Moorish tyrant, to whom you would betray your countrymen."

I do not think I have ever seen a man so overwhelmed as was Rupert by those words, though the surprise of this encounter must in reality have been less to him than it was to me, since Marian had of course told him of my being in Calcutta. His jaw dropped, and he ceased to present his pistol at me, no doubt being well aware that I would not take him at a disadvantage.

"Yes," I continued, "not satisfied with your piracies and murders, for which you are justly afraid to show your face in any English community, you are now become a traitor and a public enemy. You have hired yourself out to that bad man, Surajah Dowlah, and go about to deliver your fellow Christians into the hands of Mussalmans and heathen."

"Not so fast, young man," says Rupert, resuming his natural insolence.

"Your reproaches are unfair in one particular at least. I am no longer a Christian, having exchanged that religion for the more convenient and profitable one of the Alcoran."

He added a coa.r.s.e jest which I am ashamed to write down, and which a year or two before I believe he would have been ashamed to utter. I have heard that residence in the East Indies has this effect upon some men, to change their characters to evil, so that when they return to Europe they are no longer fit for the decent society of their own country. And though my cousin Gurney was an unscrupulous and daring young man before ever he left Norfolk, yet I believe he was altered for the worse after his visiting those parts.

Marian, standing terrified between us, now interfered to say--

"Be silent, Rupert, if you please. And you, Athelstane, since you perceive your cousin is here under my father's roof, I entreat you to retire as you came."

"I cannot, Marian," says I, very firm. "I am charged to take that traitor and villain, and I will do it, dead or alive."

In spite of his bravado I could see Gurney wince under these words, though he affected to make light of them.

"Leave us together, girl," he said to Marian. "I will tame this young c.o.c.kerel, as I would have done before if he had fought me fairly, with the weapons agreed to be used by us."

My blood boiled to hear this shameful taunt.

"You coward!" I cried, "I spared your life once, as you well know, and then you would have murdered me in cold blood because the cutla.s.s broke that I had of a Jew! But I will fight you now with sword, pistol, or both, and this time I swear that you shall not escape with your life."

But Marian would not consent to this.

"You are not to fight," she exclaimed. "Do you hear me, Athelstane Ford? Your cousin wants nothing but to be allowed to go away in safety; and would you be the one to deliver your own blood up to justice? For shame!"

"Shame, indeed!" I retorted bitterly, all the anguish that was pent up in my heart breaking out. "Shame that I who have loved and served you, and delivered you out of the prison where this very man had put you, should be asked to spare him now by you, whom he has never truly loved, whom he has betrayed and slighted, and is ready to betray again. I know not, though I can guess, by what wheedling tale he has cozened you to forgive him, and to lend him shelter and protection in his base designs; but do you think, Marian, that that villain standing there will care for you one moment longer than you can be of use to him, and that he will not leave you to a worse fate than before when he has done with you, and that without the least compunction? I have loved you a long time, Marian, but I have never understood you, and if this is your intention then I think you cannot be in your true mind."

I looked to see her break out and weep, but she did not. She cast her eyes to the ground, and said, when I had finished, speaking low--

"I think you are right, and that perhaps I am not in my true mind. For there are times when I know and see all the falsehood and wickedness of this man's heart as well as ever you can tell it me, and yet I tell you, to my own bitter shame, that I love him so that if he bids me follow him into any disgrace or crime, G.o.d help me, I cannot refuse!"

CHAPTER X

_TAKEN CAPTIVE_

Rupert, when he heard those words of Marian, gave a laugh, and advanced a step towards me.

"There now, you see how it is," he said, "as I told you long ago in Yarmouth; but you wouldn't believe me. Come, why need we keep up our quarrel any longer, when the girl tells you to your face that she prefers me? After all, we are of the same blood, good Norfolk dumplings both; and if I have done you any injury in the past, I am here ready to tender my best amends for it."

He spoke this with a brave air, and I believe was going to offer me his hand. I must confess that I was a little touched with compunction at that mention of Norfolk, where I was born. Something, too, of that old superiority and fascination which this man had exercised over me in my boyhood revived as he spoke. But the memory of his subsequent treacheries and crimes was too strong for me to feel more than a momentary inclination towards yielding. I drew back from him, therefore, and shook my head.

"If we are related, it is a thing I cannot help, though it is to my shame," I answered him. "But I will have no more part nor lot with you, were you the last of my kin left on earth. Do not suppose that, because Marian is so far bewitched that she has forgiven you your wicked treatment of her, I shall do the same. What are you now but a traitor to your countrymen, and a spy in the service of a b.l.o.o.d.y Indian tyrant? Rupert Gurney, I must tell you that I hold you for a detestable villain and a coward, and I will pursue you without truce and without rest till I have rid the earth of such a wretch. And I am here now ready to begin."

My anger against him gathered and swelled as I spoke, recalling his base actions, so different from his words. He immediately let me see that his behaviour was not changed, for before I had well done speaking he suddenly raised his pistol and discharged it in my face; after which he turned and ran out through the doorway, without waiting to see the result of his shot. To do my cousin justice, I believe he had plenty of natural courage, being of the right Ford strain, as he said. But after that great combat which we had in the boat off Yarmouth river, he never faced me again without a certain reluctance and blenching, as though his conscience misgave him.

I was very little hurt on this occasion, for the ball entered my mouth sideways, merely depriving me of two teeth, and issuing again through the left cheek. But the sudden pain and bleeding incommoded me so far as to hinder my pursuit of Rupert, so that he got clear away and left the town that night, it seems, for Moorshedabad.

I reported the affair to Mr. Drake, merely concealing some details, as that this was my kinsman; and he was so well satisfied to have got rid of him that he promised me I should receive half the reward offered for his capture. But the subsequent events doubtless put it out of his mind, for I never received anything. And on the whole I was satisfied with this, not wishing to make a profit, as it were, out of the treachery of one of my own family, however unworthy.

Even had I succeeded in taking Gurney, and had he been executed, it was now too late to have altered the course of events. Every day brought fresh intelligence confirming the hostility of the Nabob towards the English. One day he sent to demand the levelling of Fort William to the ground, the next he threatened the withdrawal of the Company's privileges, and in particular the dustucks, which he said were abused by being lent to Gentoos, his own subjects. Finally word came that Surajah Dowlah had marched out of Moorshedabad with his army, and had sat down before Cossimbuzar, where we had a factory and a small fort.

All this time the Governor and others of the Council had refused to believe that anything was intended beyond extorting a sum of money from the Company. But the wiser and more prudent ones, among whom were Messrs. Byng and Holwell, took a different view, which they made me share. Now at last Mr. Drake seemed to rouse from his supineness, and gave orders for the town and fort to be prepared against attack.

Before these orders could be carried out, however, arrived the news that Mr. Watts, chief of the Cossimbuzar party, was a prisoner in the Nabob's hands, that the place was surrendered, and plundered by the Moors, and that our garrison, though promised security, had been so barbarously used by them that Mr. Elliott, the commanding officer, had taken his own life.

And now men began to tell each other fearful stories of Surajah Dowlah and his career. It was said that when he was a child his favourite pastime had been the torturing of birds and animals, from which, while still in his boyhood, he had pa.s.sed to mutilating slaves; that not only had he given himself from his earliest years to every species of oriental l.u.s.t--some too vile to be named--but he was even a drunkard, a vice forbidden by the Alcoran and foreign to the manners of Indostan. To his great-uncle, the late Nabob, who doted on him to distraction, he had shown, it was said, the basest ingrat.i.tude, insolently taking advantage of the old man's affection to accomplish his crimes and murders with impunity, and, if restrained in any of his desires, to withdraw from the Court and threaten rebellion, knowing that his uncle would yield anything rather than endure the absence of his darling. At the present moment, it was affirmed, he had quarrelled with and set aside all the wisest and princ.i.p.al men in his dominions, and was governed by minions of his own, buffoons and such creatures, sprung from the lowest cla.s.s and promoted to high stations as a reward for their partic.i.p.ation in his guilty orgies. Such was the young man, incapable of reason or mercy, and pa.s.sing from one transport of pa.s.sion to another, who was now in full march with all his force against Calcutta, having sworn to exterminate the English from Bengal.

Immediately I found there was talk of resistance and fighting, I went to Mr. Byng and begged to be allowed to serve with the garrison. This offer he thankfully accepted, and in the course of a day or two every other Englishman in the town either volunteered or was pressed into the same service. Our regular garrison consisted of only two hundred European troops, to which were added some Topa.s.ses, a mixed breed of Indians and Portuguese, very suitable to be used as mercenaries, and about a thousand of the black natives armed as buxerries, or matchlock men. Out of regard to my having been the first to volunteer and to my former service on board a man-of-war, I was presently appointed a sergeant, and put in charge of a party of twelve men, a.s.signed to the defence of the rope-walk which joins the main east road from the fort to the Morattoe ditch.

Besides this ditch, begun to be dug many years before at a time when the Morattoe armies were invading Bengal, and never finished, there was no fortification of any kind round the town; so that barricades had now to be thrown up, and guns planted in the streets at whatever points seemed most favourable for intercepting the advance of the enemy. The plan of defence, so far as any plan was adhered to in the confusion and panic which prevailed, was to defend these outposts as long as possible, then to retire into Fort William itself and stand a siege, and when the fort could be maintained no longer to take to the ships which lay in the river, and drop down the stream out of reach of the enemy.

My own post was, as I have said, at the rope-walk. At one end of this place, on the main road into the town, was a battery under the command of a captain, so disposed as to check any advance. But in case the enemy should try to creep round through some side streets and take the battery in flank, our little party of twelve was stationed at the other end of the rope-walk, ready to detect and resist any such attempt.

The first notice we had of the arrival of the Moors' army was by a cannon fired on the north side of the town, at a place where the Morattoe ditch joined the river Hooghley. This being the direct way for an army coming from Moorshedabad to enter Calcutta, the Moors here made their first attack, and all that day the sound of cannon and musketry came to us on the breeze, without our seeing the enemy or knowing how the fortune of the day was turning. But with evening came the good news that the enemy had been repulsed and had drawn off to the other side of the ditch.

That night we did not dare to retire to rest indoors, but slept at our post, under a shed put up over some wheels on which the twine was wound. At four in the morning we were up and eating some bread and cold meat sent to us from the fort for our breakfast, when suddenly we heard a fearful rattle and crash of musketry close at hand. The enemy had been informed of the gap in the Morattoe ditch further south, had swarmed across it, and were now attacking our outposts all along the line.

Leaving our meal half-eaten, we sprang to our feet and took our weapons. I ordered the men not to expose themselves more than was needed, an order which one or two of them obeyed so zealously as to place themselves where they could neither see nor be seen by the enemy, and where all they did was to load their muskets and discharge them into the air in the direction from which the attack seemed to come. However, I found some braver than that, and as the Moors seemed much afraid of our fire we held them at bay well enough. Their own fire was more frightening than dangerous, the noise being out of all proportion to the number of persons. .h.i.t. So much was this the case that after some hours had gone by without a single ball taking effect on any member of our party, their first fears wore off and all began to expose themselves in a very reckless manner.

There was a wall forming the side of the rope-walk, about four feet high, and behind this wall we stood and fired at the Moors as they showed themselves in any of the streets commanded by our position. I cannot describe how interested and excited I got in this cruel sport, for such it resembled. I chose for myself a long, narrow street leading to the southward, with about a dozen lanes crossing it from east to west. Loading my gun and resting it on the coping of the wall with the muzzle pointed down this street, I kept my eyes on the various openings. Every quarter of an hour, perhaps, a small party of soldiers in bright silk turbans, with glittering arms and armour, would pa.s.s out from one of the lanes into this street, either crossing it or moving up or down. Each time I would wait till a whole group emerged, so as to have a bigger target, and then discharge my piece.

Almost invariably a man would fall, and the whole party, terrified and not understanding the smallness of our force, would run into one of the lanes adjoining, leaving a wounded or dead man lying in the deserted street. This went on till, I think, fifteen or twenty bodies lay at different points along the roadway, besides those who, being slightly hurt, had crawled away into shelter.

In the end I suppose the Moorish leader in this part of the attack must have had notice of our proceedings; for presently a force of some thirty or forty Indians emerged suddenly from a corner very near the rope-walk and advanced towards us at a run, firing freely as they came. Now it was that one of our men was. .h.i.t for the first time, a Company's servant named Parkes, a young lad who had arrived in Bengal only six weeks before from England. A ball struck him under the right eye, and he died in a few minutes.