Having now gratified our curiosity, and performed our duty to the public, the inquest broke up—verdict, of course, “justifiable alligatricide”—and we returned home.
One morning, a few days after this—the most eventful, as will be seen in the sequel, which had occurred to me since I had trodden Indian ground—we were seated at table after breakfast, my host drowsily smoking his hookha and conning the Calcutta paper, I concocting a despatch for home, when suddenly a confused and distant noise was heard, including the rapid beat of a doog-doogie, or small native drum.
My host laid down his paper and listened; for a moment it died away, then again rose on the wind; there was a hubbub of voices—of flying footsteps—and lastly, of one or two dropping shots.
“By heavens! there’s something wrong,” said Augustus, half-rising from his chair, and still intently listening. “Quon hye?” (‘who waits?’)
The words were scarcely uttered, when, wild with alarm, a servant rushed in followed by one or two others, exclaiming, in almost frantic tones, “Sahib! sahib! dacka! dacka!”
My host turned pale, started from his chair, and rapidly interrogated the affrighted men, who answered him all clamorously at once, and with the most animated gesticulations.
“In the name of all that’s good,” said I, thunderstruck at the scene, “what on earth is the matter?”
“Matter! my dear fellow, the dacoits—that’s all; the robbers are upon us; we must defend our lives; there is not a moment to be lost.”
The plot now began to thicken: three burkundauzes rushed in, with a confirmation of the intelligence that Ramsunker and his gang were close at hand, bent on fulfilling their recent threats, and that they had already plundered two or three neighbouring hamlets.
Not an instant was wasted; the doors were banged to and bolted in a trice, bars laid across, and some heavy boxes piled up against them. Guns, pistols, and hog-spears were put in requisition; the burkundauzes loaded their matchlocks and blew their matches, and the whole of us immediately ascended to the flat roof, determined to defend the fortress.