"Bulger," said Desmond, when the loading was done, "you will consider yourself in charge of this convoy. The Babu will interpret for you. You will hurry on as fast as possible toward Calcutta. I shall overtake you by and by. The people here believe that I am a Frenchman, so you had better pass as that, too, for of course your disguise will deceive no native in the daylight."
"Well I knows it." said Bulger. "They've been starin' at me like as if I was a prize pig this half hour and more, and lookin' most uncommon curious at my little button hook. But, sir, I don't see any call for me to make out I'm a mounseer. 'T'ud make me uneasy inside, sir, the very thought of eatin' what the mounseers eat."
"My good man, there's no need to carry it too far. Do as you please, only take care of the goods."
Except Desmond and four men whom he retained, the whole party moved off with the hackeris towards Calcutta. The road was an unmade track, heavy with dust, rough, execrably bad; and at the gumashta's suggestion Desmond had arranged for three extra teams of oxen to accompany the carts, to extricate them in case of necessity from holes or soft places. Fortunately the weather was dry: had the rains begun--and they were overdue--the road would have been a slough of mud and ooze, and the journey would have been impossible.
When the convoy had set off, Desmond with three men, including the serang, returned to the empty boats. The lookers-on stared to see the craft put off and drop down the river with a crew of one man each: Desmond in the first, and the smaller boat that had contained Bulger and his party trailing behind. Floating down some four or five miles with the stream, Desmond gave the order to scuttle the three petalas, and rowed ashore in the smaller boat. On reaching land he got the serang to knock a hole in the bottom of the boat, and shoved it off towards midstream, where it rapidly filled and sank.
It was full daylight when Desmond and his party of three struck off inland in a direction that would bring them upon the track of the carts. He had a presentiment that his difficulties were only beginning. By this time, no doubt, the news of his escapade had been carried through the country by the swift kasids of the Nawab. His passing at Khulna and Amboa would be reported, and a watch would be kept for him at Hugli. If perchance a kasid or a chance traveler entered Santipur, the trick he had practised there would be immediately discovered; but if the messenger only touched at the places on the direct route on the other bank, he might hope that some time would elapse before the authorities there suspected that he had left the river. They must soon learn that three petalas lay wrecked in the stream below Amboa; but they could not satisfy themselves without examination that these were the vessels of which they were in search.
Tramping across two miles of fields newly sown with maize and sorghum, he at length descried the trail of his convoy and soon came up with it. If pursuers were indeed upon his track, only by the greatest good fortune could he escape them. The carts creaked along with painful slowness; the wheels halfway to the axles in dust; now stopping altogether, now rocking like ships in a stormy sea.
With his arrival and the promise of liberal bakshish the hackeriwallahs urged the laboring oxen with their cruel goads till Desmond, always tender with animals, could hardly endure the sight. By nine o'clock the morning had become stiflingly hot. There was little or no breeze, and Desmond, unused of late to active exercise, found the heat terribly trying. But Bulger suffered still more. A stout, florid man, he toiled along, panting, streaming with sweat, in difficulties so manifest, that Desmond, eying him anxiously, feared lest a stroke of apoplexy should bring him to an untimely end.
The country was so flat that a string of carts could not fail to be seen from a long distance. If noticed from the towers of Hugli across the river, curiosity, if not suspicion, would be aroused, and it would not take long to send over by a ford a force sufficient to arrest and capture the party. To escape observation it was necessary to make wide detours. At several small hamlets on the route Desmond managed to get fresh oxen, but not enough for complete changes of team.
So, through all the broiling heat of the day, at hours when no other Europeans in all Bengal were out of doors, the convoy struggled on, making its own road, crossing the dry beds of pools, skirting or laboring over rugged nullahs.