Athelstane Ford Part 14

"I can do nothing. It is by the Nabob's orders that you are locked up, and I dare not interfere."

"But we are dying, man!" cried Mr. Holwell. "The Nabob swore that he would spare our lives. Listen! I will give you two thousand rupees--anything--if you will procure us some relief!"

The old man went off once more, and hope revived for a moment. While we were thus waiting some one at the back of the room suddenly said aloud--

"Let us take off our clothes!"

Hardly were the words out of his mouth than in an instant, as it seemed, nearly every one was stark naked. They tore their things off furiously and cast them to the ground. I resisted the contagion as long as I could, but when I saw even Mr. Holwell, though nearer the air than myself, stripped to his shirt, I could not resist following his example; and in our dreadful extremity my unhappy companion was presently forced to do the same, hiding her face with her hands and choking down great sobs.

When the Jemautdar returned for the second time he made it appear that our case was hopeless.

"No one dares help you," he said, speaking with evident compunction.

"Surajah Dowlah is asleep, and it is as much as any man's life is worth to awake him."

As soon as the meaning of these words was understood by the hundred and fifty miserable wretches inside, a pitiful, low wail went up. Then commenced that long, dreadful agony which so few were to survive, and which I only remember in successive glimpses of horror spread over hours that were like years.

One of the last things we did, before all self-control was lost, was to try and make a current of air by all sitting down together, and then suddenly rising; but unhappily by this time several had grown so weak that, having once gone down, they proved unequal to the effort of getting up again, and fell under the feet of their companions. Among these unfortunates was Marian's father, Mr. Rising, who had come in with us, and stood a little way off in the press. Although preserving his dazed, unconscious air in the midst of these calamities, he had exhibited many symptoms of physical distress. He now remained sitting helpless on the floor, and while I was trying to contrive some means of a.s.sisting him, I saw the next man behind him very coolly step over his body, spurning it with his foot. Poor Mr. Rising fell on his back, groaning, and was instantly trodden out of sight.

My first impulse was to spare Marian the knowledge of her father's shocking fate. Turning round hastily, I whispered--

"Don't look behind you, for G.o.d's sake!"

The words came too late. She turned her head, saw what had happened, and shrieked aloud.

That shriek was the signal for fifty others, like wild beasts answering each other in a wood, as the manhood of that tortured mob suddenly forsook it, to be succeeded by brute despair. Some began to hurl themselves against the door, others broke into frantic prayers and imprecations. The clamour died down, rose again, and finally settled into a monotonous, incessant cry for water.

All this time I had preserved my self-control very well, but when this cry for water was raised, either the excessive pain I endured, or else the mere example of so many persons around me, so shook me that I could no longer command my motions, and I found myself screaming the words in Indostanee at the old Jemautdar as though I would have torn him in pieces.

The old man seemed to be really moved by our sufferings. He sent two or three of the soldiers to fetch water, and they presently came to the windows bearing it in skins.

It was a fatal act of mercy. The mere sight of the water instantly overthrew the reason of half the unhappy wretches behind us. A wild howl went up, and a frantic struggle commenced to get to the windows.

Those who a few minutes before had been rational Christian beings were now to be seen fighting and striking each other as they leaped and plunged to climb over those in front. Marian, terror-stricken by the outburst, put her hands before her eyes, and would have been swept away from her place like a leaf if I had not set my back to hers and fought furiously against the lunatics behind. I can see now the dark, flushed face of one man, his parched tongue dropping out of his mouth, and his eyes rolling horribly, quite mad, as he flung himself upon me and tried to tear me down. To add to the horror, the Indian soldiers brought their torches to the windows in order to gloat on this scene.

I heard them laugh like devils as the red light flashed on the naked heap of infuriated Englishmen writhing and fighting in that narrow h.e.l.l.

After ten minutes the struggles began to die down through sheer exhaustion, and then those of us who stood next the windows were allowed to drink from the skins; after which we filled hats with the water and pa.s.sed them into the back of the apartment. In this way every one obtained some, but no good effect was wrought thereby. So far as I was concerned, the heat and drought were so fearful that no sooner had I swallowed my share of the fluid than my throat became as dry as it had been before--the momentary relief served only to aggravate my torments.

Then as the fever gained upon me, my thoughts broke bounds, and there danced confusedly through my brain odd sc.r.a.ps of memories and pictures of other scenes. For whole moments together I lost the knowledge of where I was; those dark walls and haggard faces pa.s.sed, and in their stead came visions of the pleasant places I used to know, the ruffling of the wind upon the Breydon Water and the d.y.k.es, the stir among the reeds and rushes, and the cattle browsing in the Norfolk fields.

Instead of the swarthy Indian soldiers with their torches I saw the friendly, homely figures of the carters as they rode their horses to the pool at sundown after the day's work was over, and the familiar groups of villagers, and the face of little Patience Thurstan as she looked up at me, ready to weep, that time I said goodbye to her on my last day at home; and there rose before me the likeness of the dear old homestead, the gables and the crooked chimney, and the porch with jasmine growing over one side and boys' love on the other; and I saw my father and my mother where they sat and faced each other across the hearthplace, and thought, maybe, of their son, so that there came over me a great and miserable longing to return to them; and, like the prodigal son when he ate husks among the swine, I repented of my rebellion and running away, and in that hour I took a resolution that if I ever outlived the night I would leave the wicked land of India for ever, and go back to my own country, and ask my father to forgive me, as I knew my mother had forgiven me long ago.

Such were the thoughts that, by fits and starts, pa.s.sed through me during the first hours of the death struggle; but the worst horror of that awful night came presently. In the recesses of the chamber, furthest from the windows, a harder evil than the heat was the intolerable foulness of the air. Even where I was standing it had become an excruciating pain to breathe, and my breast felt as though laced about with iron bands. In the interior many had by this time dropped down, not so much suffocated as poisoned by the fetid gas they were compelled to inhale. And now at length I detected a new, indescribably nauseous odour, added to the acrid smell of the place.

At first I tried to conceal even from my own mind what this was. But not for long. In a very few minutes the secret was known to all there.

The unhappy man I had seen trodden down had been dead for about half an hour, and his body was already corrupt.

Then that whole den of madmen broke loose, raving and cursing; some imploring G.o.d to strike them dead, others casting the most foul and savage insults at the guards without, if by that means they might tempt them to fire in through the windows and put an end to what they endured. They struck at one another, they clutched each other's hair, surging and trampling one another down to gain an inch nearer the miserable air-holes which afforded the only chance of life. The floor was choked with corpses, among which the survivors were entangled in one seething ma.s.s. As for me, I became light-headed, and had only one blind instinct left, to strike down any man who attempted to thrust Marian from her breathing ground. I was aware that she had lost her senses and sunk down between me and the wall; yet I went on battling, as in some dreadful nightmare, with the furious forms that rose up and loomed out of the darkness. When I could no longer make out their faces I still struck out blindly, and heard them go down heavily upon the pile of bodies behind which I stood entrenched. Hour after hour that ghastly combat raged, till the corpses were thrice and four times more numerous than those who still breathed; and at last an awful lethargy settled down over the scene, broken only when one of the survivors roused himself for an expiring effort that sent a quiver through the dead and dying heap.

After that I know no more, for when the morning broke, and the officers came to release the handful left alive, the energy that had held me up so long forsook me, and I sank down unconscious.

CHAPTER XII

_RUPERT IN A NEW LIGHT_

When I came to my senses again I was lying on the ground under the gallery. The door of that Gehenna was standing open, twenty paces from me, and the stench from the corpses piled within tainted the air of the whole court.

My first thought was of Marian. I looked round as well as I was able, but could see no signs of her. The great weakness in which I found myself was such as to prevent me from standing on my feet, but I lifted myself up so far as to lean on one elbow, and in that posture glanced round over the little group of those who survived.

I counted twenty-two in all, less than one-sixth of the number of those who had been promised the mercy of Surajah Dowlah on the evening of yesterday. Close beside me lay Mr. Holwell, seeming to breathe painfully, as he laboured to gain his self-command. I heard afterwards that this worthy gentleman had been found unconscious and almost lifeless, on the floor; and that a lane had had to be cleared through the dead to bring out the twenty-three of us that remained alive.

But, look where I would, Marian was not there, and my heart misgave me that that beautiful form was lying in the loathsome charnel-house whence I had so hardly come out. A man near me, who appeared to have preserved his strength better than most of us, presently observing my trouble, and guessing its cause, undertook to enlighten me.

"You look for Mistress Rising?" he said. "She was among the survivors; I saw her brought out immediately before you. But she is not here; one of the Moors' officers led her away out of the fort, no doubt to bestow her in safe keeping somewhere in the town."

This intelligence served to remove my worst apprehensions, yet it left me not a little uneasy as to what next might befall Marian among those in whose hands we were still captives. At the moment of which I speak, however, I was too ill to pursue the inquiry as to what had become of her. The fever I had taken during the night was still strong upon me, indeed we were all in a very pitiful state, scarce able to move or speak, and looking more like ghosts than men. It was not till above a week had pa.s.sed that I began to shake off the effects of those few hours' torture; and I sometimes think that I have never yet wholly recovered from them.

Nor must I spare to mention those other changes which were wrought in me by that night, pa.s.sed, I may say, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Up to this time, I perceived on looking back over my previous adventures, I had been no better than a mad young fool, following after a will-o'-the-wisp to my own hurt and destruction. And though I cannot say that that ill-starred and calamitous love of mine for Marian, which had haunted me since I first saw her in the tavern of the "Three-decker" at Yarmouth, was abated at this time, yet I think I did now begin to perceive how evil an influence it had exerted over my life, and to gradually bring myself to a manlier frame of mind. So that I no longer hugged myself with false and pernicious hopes of what could never be brought to pa.s.s, but set myself resolutely to uproot this my besetting weakness, and thus to transfer Marian, as it might be, from the place of a mistress to that of an old and dear friend.

In all which resolves and efforts at amendments I found myself greatly helped and encouraged by the recollection of those better thoughts which had come to me in my distress, when my eyes were opened to the wickedness of which I had been guilty towards my parents. And from this time on, through all the vicissitudes I was yet to encounter, I looked forward steadily to the day when I should turn my feet once more towards home, and behold my father and my mother, and the simple, loving face of little Patience Thurstan.

But before that day came there were many things to be done, nor would I have willingly left the land of Indostan till I had seen the blood of the English he had so barbarously murdered revenged upon Surajah Dowlah's head. How this was to be brought about I did not then know, yet I had a confidence that it would be so, which sustained me. For I felt that I had witnessed, and been partly victim of, a most heinous and devilish crime, scarcely to be matched in the annals of mankind, and such as scarce any punishment within the power of man to inflict could wholly purge. It was as if there had been revealed to me, in the light of those flaring torches thrust in mockery between the bars of our prison windows, a whole secret h.e.l.l of cruelty and darkness, such as our Christian land knows nothing of, which we can never understand, but which for ever lies waiting for the moment to burst forth, under the obsequious and servile behaviour of the natives of India. Since that time, I confess, I have never regarded, nor can regard, them as my fellow-beings; I look upon all faith or mercy shown to them as wasted, and were it possible for the English to overthrow every one of their governments, and to reduce the whole peninsula into slavery, I should not think enough had been done to extinguish the memory of that one misdeed.

The cup of the Nabob's cruelty was even yet not full. In the morning, as soon as we had partaken of a little food and wine, merely enough to give us strength to stand up, our miserable remnant was ordered to come before him, to be questioned again.

We found Surajah Dowlah enthroned in the princ.i.p.al apartment of the fort, in even greater state than I had before seen him in, flushed with all the triumph of a conqueror. He looked to have just awakened from sleeping off a debauch, and glanced at us, as we came in, with a heavy, lowering eye. The supple, handsome Lal Moon was standing beside his master as usual, and close behind the favourite I saw my kinsman, with a countenance somewhat discomposed. He turned a very scrutinising look on our party, frowned when he caught sight of me, and was evidently disturbed at not perceiving Marian amongst the rest.

The Nabob, instead of displaying any interest in our condition, or pretending any regret for the ma.s.sacre of our fellow prisoners, at once addressed Mr. Holwell in a very peremptory manner.

"Now, English dog, you have had a night to consider," he said insolently, "are you disposed to behave more civilly to me in the matter of the treasure?"

Poor Mr. Holwell had scarce strength enough to answer him. He said feebly--

"I can only repeat what I told you last night. Your Highness has been deceived. There is no treasure here of the Company."

"You are a liar, and the son of a liar!" returned Surajah fiercely.

"Do you think I am a fool to believe that the English come all the way from your country here to ama.s.s a paltry sum of fifty thousand rupees? Such a sum would not pay the expense of your establishment here. I know well that you have a treasure somewhere hidden; but you are resolved to keep it from me, the rightful master of this country.

I swear I will teach you that it is safer to stand in the path of a mad elephant than to disobey the least command of Surajah Dowlah!"

He rolled his eyes savagely as he made these threats, which struck dismay into the stoutest of us. Mr. Holwell attempted no further answer, and presently the Nabob rose in a fury and marched out of the hall, giving no orders concerning our disposal.

As soon as he was gone the general of his army, Meer Jaffier, came down off the das and approached us. He began offering some expressions of sympathy to Mr. Holwell, and a.s.sured him that he would use his influence with his nephew to procure our release.

While Meer Jaffier was talking to Mr. Holwell, I saw my cousin slowly approaching me. I turned my back, so loth was I to hold intercourse with him, but he came up, and persisted in addressing me.

"Athelstane, what has become of Marian Rising?" he asked abruptly.

"Nay, I leave that to you to find out, who delivered her to Surajah Dowlah to be tortured and killed," I answered bitterly.