One of Clive's Heroes Part 18

Desmond's diligence in the dockyard pleased the overseer, whose name was Govinda, and he was by and by employed on lighter tasks which took him sometimes into the town. Until the novelty wore off he felt a lively interest in the scenes that met his eye--the bazaars, crowded with dark-skinned natives, the men moustachioed, clad for the most part in white garments that covered them from the crown of the head to the knee, with a touch of red sometimes in their turbans; the women with bare heads and arms and feet, garbed in red and blue; the gosains, mendicants with matted hair and unspeakable filth; the women who fried chapatis[#]

on griddles in the streets, grinding their meal in handmills; the sword-grinders, whetting the blades of the Maratha two-edged swords; the barbers, whose shops had a never-ending succession of customers; the Brahmans, almost naked and shaved bald save for a small tuft at the back of the head; the sellers of madi, a toddy extracted from the cocoanut palm; the magicians in their shawls, with high stiff red cap, painted all over with snakes; the humped bullocks that were employed as beasts of burden, and when not in use roamed the streets untended; occasionally the hasawa, the sacred bull of Siva the destroyer, and the rath[#]

carrying the sacred rat of Ganessa. But with familiarity such scenes lost their charm; and as the months pa.s.sed away Desmond felt more and more the gnawing of care at his heart, the constant sadness of a slave.

[#] Small flat unleavened cakes.

[#] Car.

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

*In which the Babu tells the story of King Vikramaditya; and the discerning reader may find more than appears on the surface.*

Day followed day in dreary sameness. Regularly every evening Desmond was locked with his eight fellow-prisoners in the shed, there to spend hours of weariness and discomfort until morning brought release and the common task. He had the same rations of rice and ragi,[#] with occasional doles of more substantial fare. He was carefully kept from all communication with the other European prisoners, and as the Bengali was the only man of his set who knew English, his only opportunities of using his native tongue occurred in the evening, before he slept.

[#] A cereal.

His fellow-prisoners spoke Urdu among themselves, and Desmond found some alleviation of the monotony of his life in learning the lingua franca of India under the Babu's tuition. He was encouraged to persevere in the study by the fact that the Babu proved to be an excellent story-teller, often beguiling the tedium of wakeful hours in the shed by relating interminable narratives from the Hindu mythology, and in particular the exploits of the legendary hero Vikramaditya. So accomplished was he in this very Oriental art that it was not uncommon for one or other of the sentries to listen to him through the opening in the shed wall, and the head-warder who locked the prisoners' fetters would himself sometimes squat down at the door before leaving them at night, and remain an interested auditor until the blast of a horn warned all in fort and town that the hour of sleep had come. It was some time before Desmond was sufficiently familiar with the language to pick up more than a few words of the stories here and there, but in three months he found himself able to follow the narrative with ease.

Meanwhile he was growing apace. The constant work in the open air, clad, save, during the rains, in nothing but a thin dhoti[#], developed his physique and, even in that hot climate, hardened his muscles. The Babu one day remarked with envy that he would soon be deemed worthy of promotion to Angria's own gallivat, whose crew consisted of picked men of all nationalities. This was an honour Desmond by no means coveted.

As a dockyard workman, earning his food by the sweat of his brow, he did not come in contact with Angria, and was indeed less hardly used than he had been on board the _Good Intent_. But to become a galley-slave seemed to him a different thing, and the prospect of pulling an oar in the Pirate's gallivat served to intensify his longing to be free.

[#] A cloth worn round the waist, pa.s.sed between the legs and tucked in behind the back.

For, though he proved so willing and docile in the dockyard, not a day pa.s.sed but he pondered the idea of escape. He seized every opportunity of learning the topography of the fort and town, being aided in this unwittingly by Govinda, who employed him more and more often, as he became familiar with the language, in conveying messages from one part of the settlement to another. But he was forced to confess to himself that the chances of escape were very slight. Gheria was many miles from the nearest European settlement where he might find refuge. To escape by sea seemed impossible; if he fled through the town and got clear of Angria's territory he would almost certainly fall into the hands of the Peshwa's[#] people, and although the Peshwa was nominally an ally of the Company, his subjects--a lawless, turbulent, predatory race--were not likely to be specially friendly to a solitary English lad. A half-felt hope that he might be able to reach Suvarndrug, lately captured by Commodore James, was dashed by the news that that fort had been handed over by him to the Marathas. Moreover, such was the rivalry among the various European nations competing for trade in India that he was by no means sure of a friendly reception if he should succeed in gaining a Portuguese or Dutch settlement. Dark stories were told of Portuguese dealings with Englishmen, and the Dutch bore no good repute for their treatment of prisoners.

[#] The prime minister and real ruler of the Maratha kingdom.

It was a matter of wonder to Desmond that none of his companions ever hinted at escape. He could not imagine that any man could be a slave without feeling a yearning for liberty; yet these men lived through the unvarying round, eating, toiling, sleeping, without any apparent mental revolt. He could only surmise that all manliness and spirit had been crushed out of them, and from motives of prudence he forbore to speak of freedom.

But one evening, a sultry October evening when the shed was like an oven, and, bathed in sweat, he felt utterly limp and depressed, he asked the Babu in English whether any one had ever escaped out of Angria's clutches. Surendra Nath Chuckerb.u.t.ti glanced anxiously around, as if fearful that the others might understand. But they lay listless on their charpoys; they knew no English, and there was nothing in Desmond's tone to quicken their hopelessness.

"No, sahib," said the Bengali; "such escapade, if successful, is beyond my ken. There have been attempts: _cui bono_? n.o.body is an anna the better. Nay, the last state of such misguided men is even worse; they die suffering very ingenious torture."

Desmond had been amazed at the Babu's command of English until he learnt that the man was an omnivorous reader, and in his leisure at Calcutta had spent many an hour in poring over such literature as his master's scanty library afforded, the works of Mr. Samuel Johnson and Mr. Henry Fielding in particular.

At this moment Desmond said no more, but in the dead of night, when all were asleep, he leant over to the Babu's charpoy and gently nudged him.

"Surendra Nath!" he whispered.

"Who calls?" returned the Babu.

"Listen. Have you yourself ever thought of escaping?"

"Peace and quietness, sir. He will hear."

"Who?"

"The Gujarati, sir--Fuzl Khan."

"But he doesn't understand. And if he did, what then?"

"He was the single man, positively unique, who was spared among six attempting escape last rains."

"They did make an attempt, then. Why was he spared?"

"That, sir, deponent knoweth not. The plot was carried to Angria."

"How?"

"That also is dark as pitch. But Fuzl Khan was spared, that we know.

No man can trust his _vis-a-vis_. No man is now so bold to discuss such matters."

"Is that why we are all chained up at night?"

"That, sir, is the case. It is since then our limbs are shackled."

Desmond thought over this piece of information. He had noticed that the Gujarati was left much alone by the others. They were outwardly civil enough, but they rarely spoke to him of their own accord, and sometimes they would break off in a conversation if he appeared interested.

Desmond had put this down to the man's temper; he was a sullen fellow, with a perpetually hangdog look, occasionally breaking out in paroxysms of violence which cost him many a scourging from the overseer's merciless rattan. But the att.i.tude of his fellow-prisoner was more easily explained if the Babu's hint was well founded. They feared him.

Yet, if he had indeed betrayed his comrades, he had gained little by his treachery. He was no favourite with the officers of the yard. They kept him hard at work, and seemed to take a delight in harrying him.

More than once, unjustly as it appeared to Desmond, he had made acquaintance with the punishment tank. In his dealings with his fellows he was morose and offensive. A man of great physical strength, he was a match for any two of his shed companions save the Biluchis, who, though individually weaker, retained something of the spirit of their race and made common cause against him. The rest he bullied, and none more than the Bengali, whose weaklier const.i.tution spared him the hard manual work of the yard, but whose timidity invited aggression.

Now that the subject which constantly occupied his thoughts had been mooted, Desmond found himself more eagerly striving to find a solution of the problem presented by the idea of escape. At all hours of the day, and often when he lay in sleepless discomfort at night, his active mind recurred to the one absorbing matter: how to regain his freedom.

He had already canva.s.sed the possibilities of escape by land, only to dismiss the idea as utterly impracticable; for even could he elude the vigilance of the sentries he could not pa.s.s as a native, and the perils besetting an Englishman were not confined to Angria's territory. But how stood the chances of escape by sea? Could he stow himself on board a grab or gallivat, and try to swim ash.o.r.e when near some friendly port?

He put the suggestion from him as absurd. Supposing he succeeded in stowing himself on an outgoing vessel, how could he know when he was near a friendly port without risking almost certain discovery? Besides, except in such rare cases as the visit of an interloper like the _Good Intent_, the Pirate did little trade. His vessels were employed mainly in dashing out on insufficiently-convoyed merchantmen.

But the train of thought once started could not but be followed out.

What if he could seize a grab or gallivat in the harbour? To navigate such a vessel required a party, men having some knowledge of the sea.

How stood his fellow-prisoners in that respect? The Biluchis, tall wiry men, were traders, and had several times, he knew, made the voyage from the Persian Gulf to Surat. It was on one of these journeys that they had fallen into Angria's hands. They might have picked up something of the simpler details of navigation. The Mysoreans, being up-country men and agriculturists, were not likely even to have seen the sea until they became slaves of Angria. The Marathas would be loth to embark; they belonged to a warrior race which had for centuries lived by raiding its neighbours; but being forbidden by their religion to eat or drink at sea they would never make good sailors. The Babu was a native of Bengal, and the Bengalis were physically the weakest of the Indian peoples, const.i.tutionally timid, and unenterprising in matters demanding physical courage. Desmond smiled as he thought of how his friend Surendra Nath might comport himself in a storm.

There remained the Gujarati, and of his nautical capacity Desmond knew nothing. But, mentioning the matter of seamanship casually to the Babu one day, he learnt that Fuzl Khan was a khalasi[#] from Cutch. He had in him a strain of negro blood, derived probably from some Zanzibari ancestor brought to Cutch as a slave. The men of the coast of Cutch were the best sailors in India; and Fuzl Khan himself had spent a considerable portion of his life at sea.

[#] Sailor.

Thus reflecting on the qualities of his fellow-captives. Desmond had ruefully to acknowledge that they would make a poor crew to navigate a grab or gallivat. Yet he could find no other, for Angria's system of mixing the nationalities was cunningly devised to prevent any concerted schemes. If the attempt was to be made at all, it must be made with the men whom he knew intimately and with whom he had opportunities of discussing a plan.