But I still remained a prey to perhaps new barbarities, without hope of relief from the old. No partner to share, no social converse to alleviate, no friend to console me under my afflictions, I looked at the body of my friend with envy, and lamented that death had not afforded me, too, a shelter from the cruelties which fate seemed determined to heap upon me.
It is impossible for me to express to you the agonies of mind I underwent during the rest of the night. In the morning, a report was made to the Commandant, of the death of Mr. Hall; and in about an hour after, he passed me by, but kept his face purposely turned away from me to the other side. I patiently waited for the removal of the dead body till the evening, when I desired the Sepoys who guarded me to apply for its being removed. They returned, and told me that they could get no answer respecting it. Night came on, but there was no appearance of an intention to unfetter me from the corpse. The Commandant was sitting in his Court, administering, in the manner I have before described, justice! I called out to him myself with all my might, but could get no answer from him. Nothing could equal my rage and consternation; for, exclusive of the painful idea of being shackled to the dead body of a friend I loved, another circumstance contributed to make it a serious subject of horror. In those climates, the weather is so intensely hot, that putrefaction almost instantly succeeds death; and meat that is killed in the morning, and kept in the shade, will be unfit for dressing at night. In a subject, then, on which putrefaction had made advances even before death, and which remained exposed to the open air, the process must have been much more rapid. So far, however, from compassionating my situation, or indulging me by a removal of the body, their barbarity suggested to them to make it an instrument of punishment; and they pertinaciously adhered to the most mortifying silence and disregard of my complaints. For several days and nights it remained attached to me by the irons. I grew almost distracted——wished for the means of putting an end to my miseries by death, and could not more without witnessing some new stage of putrescence it attained, or breathe without inhaling the putrid effluvia that arose from it——while myriads of flies and loathsome insects rested on it, the former of which every now and then visited me, crawling over my face and hands, and lighting in hundreds on my victuals. I never look back at this crisis without confusion, horror, and even astonishment; and, were it not connected with a chain of events preceding and subsequent to it, too well known by respectable people to be doubted, and too much interwoven with a part of the history of the last war in India to admit of doubt, I should not only be afraid to tell, but absolutely doubt myself whether the whole was not the illusion of a dream, rather than credit the possibility of my enduring such unheard-of hardships without loss of life or deprivation of senses.
At last, when the body had reached that shocking loathsome state of putrefaction which threatened that further delay would render removal abominable, if not impossible, the monsters agreed to take it away from me——and I was so far relieved: but the mortification and injury I underwent from it, joined to the agitation of the preceding week, made a visible inroad on my health. I totally lost my spirits; my appetite entirely forsook me: my long-nourished hopes fled; and I looked forward to death as the only desirable event that was within the verge of likelihood or possibility.
One day, my opposite friend (the native prisoner) gave me a look of the most interesting and encouraging kind; and I perceived a more than usual bustle in the citadel, while the Sepoys informed me that they were ordered on immediate service, and that some events of great importance had taken place. From this feeble gleam, my mind, naturally active, though depressed by circumstances of unusual weight, again took fire, and hope brightened with a kind of gloomy light the prospect before me: I revolved a thousand things, and drew from them a thousand surmises; but all as yet was only conjecture with me. In a day or two, the bustle increased to a high pitch, accompanied with marks of consternation: the whole of the troops in the citadel were ordered to march; and the Commandant, and a man with a hammer and instruments, came to take off my irons.
While they were at work taking off my irons, I perceived that they were taking off those of the native prisoner opposite to me also. He went away under a guard: we looked at each other complacently, nodded and smiled, as who should say, “we hope to see one another in happier times not far distant.” But, alas! vain are human hopes, and short and dark is the extent of our utmost foresight! This unhappy man, without committing any sort of offence to merit it, but in conformity to the damnable, barbarous policy of those Countries, was, by the Jemadar’s orders, taken forth, and his throat cut! This the Jemadar himself afterwards acknowledged to me——and, what was still more abominable if possible, undertook to justify the proceeding upon the principles of reason, sound sense, and precedent of Asiatic policy.
In order to elucidate the whole of this business, it is necessary for me to recur to events which happened antecedent to this time, but of which, by reason of my situation, I was then entirely ignorant; and as they involve, not only the grounds of my subsequent escape and proceedings, but a considerable portion of historical fact, and some of the material interests of the East India Company, I will be the more particularly careful in relating them, and desire from you a proportionate share of attention——But their importance entitle them to a separate Letter: therefore conclude with assuring you, &c. &c.
LETTER LV.
Hyder Alli Khawn, late Nabob of Mysore, and father to the present Tippoo Sahib Sultain, was as extraordinary a man, and perhaps possessed as great natural talents, as any recorded in the page of History. Born and bred up in the lowest ranks of an unenlightened and ignorant People, and to the last day of his life perfectly illiterate, he not only emerged from his native obscurity by the vigour of his mind and body, but became an object of terror and admiration to surrounding Potentates. Early initiated in the habits and inured to the toils of a military life, he rose, by the gradual steps of promotion, to a rank which afforded an opportunity of displaying his capacity and prowess: he soon obtained the command of that army in which he had once served as a common soldier, and immediately demonstrated that the sublimity of his mind was formed to keep pace with his extraordinary elevation.