It must have been about midnight—perhaps somewhat later, for I had been asleep some time, after the customary struggle with the heat—that I was woke up by a tremendous clatter. Voices, the clash of swords, and pistol-shots were all resounding close at hand, and Marianna, who sleeps across my door, came screaming to tell me that the house was attacked, and we should all be murdered. As I sat up in bed, all trembling, to listen, my papa, in his night-cap, suddenly looked in at the door. He was buckling on his sword over his morning-gown, and there was a pair of great pistols sticking out of his pocket.
“Get into your tuszaconna[06] with your iya, miss,” he cried, “and lock yourself in, and don’t unfasten the door for any one until I bid you.”
I lingered only to throw on a wrapper and a pair of shoes, and obeyed him. The tuszaconna, or as we should say wardrobe, is the closet in which my gowns and jewels are kept, lighted only by one small window high in the wall. Here Marianna and I locked ourselves in, and not satisfied with that, dragged one of my trunks against the door, and sat upon it (and upon my honour, I don’t know which of us trembled the most. The poor wench had lost all her English in her fright, and bewailed herself in some Indian tongue, calling at times upon her Popish saints in scraps of Latin, while your cowardly Sylvia shook so much that the door trembled against which she leant).
The confused noise of fighting now ceased suddenly from the front of the house, and there was a rushing along the varanda outside our place of refuge. My heart was in my mouth, for I knew that the robbers must be making for my chamber, “and in a minute (I thought) they’ll guess our hiding-place and break open the door, and then——” But almost at the same moment I heard the door of the chamber burst open again, and my papa’s voice cheering on the servants; and so well did they second him that the invaders never penetrated inside the room, but were turned back on the varanda. The noise of the fighting was so dreadful that I could not remain without seeing what went on, and, climbing on a great wooden chest, I peeped out of the window, in time to see the robbers driven off by my papa and the servants, leaving two of their number prostrate on the ground. One of these was a European wearing a masque, who had been knocked down with a blow from a club by our head-peon.
“Throw some water over him and revive him, Jemmautdar,” says Mr Freyne. “He has to answer to me for the night’s work.”
But when the Jemmautdar obeyed, and plucking off the fellow’s masque showed his face as he began to recover his intellects, I could have screamed, for it was Mr Menotti. He looked about him like one dazed.
“Your servant, sir,” says my papa, standing before him with his sword out. “When you’re ready, I’ll trouble you to draw.”
“At your service, sir,” said the villain, fumbling for his sword, which one of the servants, at a glance from Mr Freyne, picked up and gave to him, whispering something at the same time to my papa.
“What, the Cotwal[07] coming round with his peons?” cried Mr Freyne. “Why don’t he come when he might be some use? However” (looking scornfully upon Mr Menotti, who was risen from the ground, but stood swaying uneasily about), “you look none too steady upon your legs, sir, and I’ve no desire to murder you, though I could wish my Jemmautdar had done his work more thoroughly. You shall hear from me very shortly. Two of you take him and set him in the road outside.”
“I shall anticipate with pleasure the arrival of any friend of yours, sir,” the hardy wretch succeeded in saying before he was seized by two of the servants and run across the compound and through the gates. By this time I was descended from my perch and had opened the door of the hiding-place.