One of Clive's Heroes Part 17

Diggle looked round, smiled, and leisurely approached the shed.

"Why have they shut me up here?" demanded Desmond. "Captain Barker said I was to return at once. Do get the door unlocked."

"You ask the impossible, my young friend," replied Diggle through the hole. "You are here by the orders of Angria, and 'twould be treason in me to pick his locks."

"But why? what right has he to lock me up? and you, why did you let him?

You said you were my friend; you promised--oh, you know what you promised."

"I promised? Truly, I promised that, if you were bent on accompanying me to these sh.o.r.es, I would use my influence to procure you employment with one of my friends among the native princes. Well, I have kept my word; 'firmavi fidem,' as the Latin hath it. Angria is my friend; I have used my influence with him; and you are now in the service of one of the most potent of Indian princes. True, your service is but beginning. It may be arduous at first; it may be long 'ab ovo usque ad mala'; the egg may be hard, and the apples, perchance, somewhat sour; but as you become inured to your duties, you will learn resignation and patience, and----"

"Don't!" burst out Desmond, unable to endure the smooth-flowing periods of the man now self-confessed a villain. "What does it mean? Tell me plainly; am I a slave?"

"'Servulus, non servus,' my dear boy. What is the odds whether you serve d.i.c.k Burke, a b.o.o.by farmer, or Tulaji Angria, a prince and a man of intelligence? Yet there is a difference, and I would give you a word of counsel. Angria is an Oriental, and a despot; it were best to serve him with all diligence, or----"

He finished the sentence with a meaning grimace.

"Mr. Diggle, you can't mean it," said Desmond. "Don't leave me here! I implore you to release me. What have I ever done to you? Don't leave me in this awful place."

Diggle smiled and began to move away. At the sight of his malicious smile the prisoner's despair was swept away before a tempest of rage.

"You scoundrel! You shameless scoundrel!"

The words, low spoken and vibrant with contempt, reached Diggle when he was some distance from the shed. He turned and sauntered back.

"Heia! Contumeliosae voces! 'Tis pretty abuse. My young friend, I must withdraw my ears from such shocking language. But stay! if you have any message for Sir Willoughby, your squire, whose affections you have so diligently cultivated to the prejudice of his nearest and dearest, it were well for you to give it. 'Tis your last opportunity; for those who enter Angria's service enjoy a useful but not a long career. And before I return to Gheria from a little journey I am about to take, you may have joined the majority of those who have tempted fate in this insalubrious clime. In a moment swift death cometh--you remember the phrase?"

Diggle leant against the wooden wall, watching with malicious enjoyment the effect of his words. Desmond was very pale; all his strength seemed to have deserted him. Finding that his taunts provoked no reply, Diggle went on:

"Time presses, my young friend. You will be logged a deserter from the _Good Intent_. 'Tis my fervent hope you never fall into the hands of Captain Barker; as you know, he is a terrible man when roused."

Waving his gloved hand he moved away. Desmond did not watch his departure. Falling back from the window, he threw himself upon the ground, and gave way to a long fit of black despair.

How long he lay in this agony he knew not. But he was at last roused by the opening of the door. It was almost dark. Rising to his feet, he saw a number of men hustled into the shed. Ranged along one of the walls, they squatted on the floor, and for some minutes afterwards Desmond heard the clank of irons and the harsh grating of a key. Then a big Maratha came to him, searched him thoroughly, clapped iron bands upon his ankles, and locked the chains to staples in the wall. Soon the door was shut, barred, and locked, and Desmond found himself a prisoner with eight others.

For a little they spoke among themselves, in the low tones of men utterly spent and dispirited. Then all was silent, and they slept. But Desmond lay wide awake, waiting for the morning.

The shed was terribly hot. Air came only through the one narrow opening, and before an hour was past the atmosphere was foul, seeming the more horrible to Desmond by contrast with the freshness of his life on the ocean. Mosquitoes nipped him until he could scarcely endure the intense irritation. He would have given anything for a little water; but though he heard a sentry pacing up and down outside, he did not venture to call to him, and could only writhe in heat and torture, longing for the dawn, yet fearing it and what it might bring forth.

Worn and haggard after his sleepless night, Desmond had scarcely spirit enough to look with curiosity on his fellow-prisoners when the shed was faintly lit by the morning sun. But he saw that the eight men, all natives, were lying on rude charpoys[#] along the wall, each man chained to a staple like his own. One of the men was awake; and, catching Desmond's l.u.s.treless eyes fixed upon him, he sat up and returned his gaze.

[#] Mat beds.

"Your honour is an English gentleman?"

The words caused Desmond to start: they were so unexpected in such a place. The Indian spoke softly and carefully, as if anxious not to awaken his companions.

"Yes," replied Desmond. "Who are you?"

"My name, sir, is Surendra Nath Chuckerb.u.t.ti. I was lately a clerk in the employ of a burra[#] sahib, English factor, at Calcutta."

[#] Great.

"How did you get here?"

"That, sahib, is a moving tale. While on a visit of condolence to my respectable uncle and aunt at Chittagong, I was kidnapped by Sanderband piratical dogs. Presto!--at that serious crisis a Dutch ship makes apparition and rescues me; but my last state is more desperate than the first. The Dutch vessel will not stop to replace me on mother-earth; she is for Bombay across the kala pani[#], as we say. I am not a swimmer; besides, what boots it?--we are ten miles from land, to say nothing of sharks and crocodiles and the lordly tiger. So I perforce remain, to the injury of my caste, which forbids navigation. But see the issue. The Dutch ship is a.s.saulted; grabs and gallivats galore swarm upon the face of the waters; all is confusion worse confounded; in a brace of shakes we are in the toils. It is now two years since this untoward catastrophe. With the crew I am conveyed hither and eat the bitter crust of servitude. Some of the Dutchmen are consigned to other forts in possession of the Pirate, and three serve here in his state barge."

[#] Black water--the sea.

Desmond glanced at the sleeping forms.

"No, sir, they are not here," said the Babu[#], catching his look.

"They share another apartment with your countrymen--chained? Oh yes!

These, my bedfellows of misfortune, are Indians, not of Bengal, like myself; two are Biluchis hauled from a country ship; two are Musalmans from Mysore; one a Gujarati; two Marathas. We are a motley crew--a miscellany, no less."

[#] Equivalent to Mr.; generally applied to educated Bengalis.

"What do they do with you in the daytime?"

"I, sir, adjust accounts of the Pirate's dockyard; for this I am qualified by prolonged driving of quill in Calcutta, to expressed satisfaction of Honourable Company and English merchants. But my position, sir, is of Damoclean anxiety. I am horrified by conviction that one small error of calculation will entail direst retribution.

Videlicet, sir, this week a fellow-captive is minus a finger and thumb--and all for oversight of six annas.[#] But I hear the step of our jailer; I must bridle my tongue."

[#] The anna is the sixteenth part of a rupee.

The Babu had spoken throughout in a low monotonous tone that had not disturbed the slumbers of his fellow-prisoners. But they were all awakened by the noisy opening of the door and the entrance of their jailer. He went to each in turn, and unlocked their fetters; then they filed out in dumb submission, to be escorted by armed sentries to the different sheds where they fed, each caste by itself. When the eight had disappeared the jailer turned to Desmond, and, taking him by the sleeve, led him across the courtyard into the palace. Here, in a little room, he was given a meagre breakfast of rice; after which he was taken to another room where he found Angria in company with a big Maratha, who had in his hand a long bamboo cane. The Pirate was no longer in durbar[#] array, but was clad in a long yellow robe with a lilac-coloured shawl.

[#] Council, ceremonial.

Conscious that he made a very poor appearance in his tatters, Desmond felt that the two men looked at him with contempt. A brief conversation pa.s.sed between them; then the Maratha salaamed to Angria and went from the room, beckoning Desmond to follow him. They went out of the precincts of the palace, and through a part of the town, until they arrived at the docks. There the labourers, slaves and free, were already at work. Desmond at the first glance noticed several Europeans among them, miserable objects who scarcely lifted their heads to look at this latest newcomer of their race. His guide called up one of the foremen shipwrights, and instructed him to place the boy among a gang of the workmen. Then he went away. Scarcely a minute had elapsed when Desmond heard a cry, and looking round, saw the man brutally belabouring with his rattan the bare shoulders of a native. He quivered; the incident seemed of ill augury. In a few minutes Desmond found himself among a gang of men who were working at a new gallivat in process of construction for Angria's own use. He received his orders in dumb show from the foreman of the gang. Miserable as he was, he would not have been a boy if he had not been interested in his novel surroundings; and no intelligent boy could have failed to take an interest in the construction of a gallivat. It was a large rowboat of from thirty to seventy tons, with two masts, the mizzen being very slight. The mainmast bore one huge sail, triangular in form, its peak extending to a considerable height above the mast. The smaller gallivats were covered with a spar deck made of split bamboos, their armament consisting of pettararoes fixed on swivels in the gunwale. But the larger vessels had a fixed deck on which were mounted six or eight cannon, from two- to four-pounders; and in addition to their sail they had from forty to fifty oars, so that, with a stout crew, they attained, even in a calm, a rate of four or five miles an hour.

One of the first things Desmond learnt was that the Indian mode of shipbuilding differed fundamentally from the European. The timbers were fitted in after the planks had been put together; and the planks were put together, not with flat edges, but rabbeted, the parts made to correspond with the greatest exactness. When a plank was set up, its edge was smeared with red lead, and the edge of the plank to come next was pressed down upon it, the inequalities in its surface being thus shown by the marks of the lead. These being smoothed away, if necessary several times, and the edges fitting exactly, they were rubbed with da'ma, a sort of glue that in course of time became as hard as iron.

The planks were then firmly riveted with pegs, and by the time the work was finished the seams were scarcely visible, the whole forming apparently one entire piece of timber.

The process of building a gallivat was thus a very long and tedious one; but the vessel when completed was so strong that it could go to sea for many years before the hull needed repair.

Desmond learnt all this only gradually; but from the first day, making a virtue of necessity, he threw himself into the work and became very useful, winning the good opinion of the officers of the dockyard. His feelings were frequently wrung by the brutal punishments inflicted by the overseer upon defaulters. The man had absolute power over the workers. He could flog them, starve them, even cut off their ears and noses. One of his favourite devices was to tie a quant.i.ty of oiled cotton round each of a man's fingers and set light to these living torches. Another, used with a man whom he considered lazy, was the tank. Between the dockyard and the river, separated from the latter only by a thin wall, was a square cavity about seven feet deep covered with boarding, in the centre of which was a circular hole. In the wall was a small orifice through which water could be let in from the river, while in the opposite wall was the pipe and spout of a small hand-pump.

The man whom the overseer regarded as an idler was let down into the tank, the covering replaced, and water allowed to enter from the river.

This was a potent spur to the defaulter's activity, for if he did not work the pump fast enough the water would gradually rise in the tank, and he would drown. Desmond learnt of one case where the man, utterly worn out by his life of alternate toil and punishment, refused to work the pump and stood in silent indifference while the water mounted inch by inch until it covered his head and ended his woes.