"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 passed 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 quantity 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.
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 passed away Desmond felt more and more the gnawing of care at his heart, the constant sadness of a slave.
[#] Small flat unleavened cakes.