Like Another Helen

by Sydney C. Grier

I entreated the dear gentleman’s forgiveness with tears, as I knelt on the floor beside him, and my grief so wrought upon his tenderness that he was moved to take a more cheerful view of our situation, encouraging me with hopes that the ships would return with the flood-tide, and take off the whole garrison. Presently there came in the Gentoo, Omy Chund’s servant, whom we now knew to be the person that had raised the alarm of the enemy’s breaking through the south-west pallisado, which was proved to be false, though not before it had frightened away Mr Drake and his friends; but asking the fellow why he spread such a report, he answered that he had believed it to be true. He brought with him a second small quantity of the salve, which he said was all he had, and, having promised that by his master’s order all his interest should be exerted in favour of our safety and honourable treatment should the Moors break into the Fort, departed again. About this time there fell on us the most cruel disappointment of all. The sloop Prince George, which had been ordered down from Perrins the night before, and was still lying opposite our south-west bastion, was signalled to approach closer, in the hope that she might be able to take us off. Mess. Pearkes and Lewis, going off to her in one of her boats that she sent on shore, carried instructions to her commander to bring his ship as near the Fort as possible, and this gentleman had sufficient courage and humanity to obey. But as the vessel approached us, and all watched her with tears in their eyes, thinking that safety was at last within reach, what was the general consternation when, owing either to the timid incompetency, or, as some said, the treachery, of her pilot, she run aground on one of those sand-banks that are everywhere lying in wait for unwary wretches in the course of the deceitful Hoogly! This destroyed our last hope of escape by water, for she could not be got off (those on board of the other ships making not the slightest offer of assistance), and her crew saved themselves at last in their boats, which durst not approach the shore.

But what shall I say of the conduct of the President and those with him on board the shipping, who took no step to save the wretches they had so basely abandoned? Either on Saturday or on Sunday they might have stood up the river with the flood, and with the aid of their crews and of the stores of munitions aboard of them, have turned the entire course of affairs, or at least have taken off the garrison and the Company’s papers and treasure without the loss of a single man; but in spite of all the urgent and affecting signals made to them, they did nothing. Nay, had they dropped down the river out of sight, for safety’s sake, one might forgive them better, but they lay off Surmans, in full view of us, for over four-and-twenty hours, as though to feast their eyes upon our dying agonies, and stood away only when they perceived that the worst had happened (though how fearful that worst was to be they could not have guessed).

As for those who were thus deserted, in spite of their natural resentment and despondency, they prepared to fight to the last under the new commanderie, and die as becomes Britons. Bales of broadcloth were got up from the warehouses, and built up into traverses along the eastern wall and its two bastions, which were swept by the enemy’s fire from the church, and with these, and the bags of cotton placed along the other ramparts, some shelter was obtained for our wearied garrison. Towards noon the enemy, being questionless disappointed that we had not offered to surrender the Fort to them in the panic at the President’s departure, drew off a little, and made no more attempts at storming our defences either that day or night, contenting themselves with keeping up their constant fire of cannon and musquetry, to which we were by now well accustomed. Will it surprise you, Amelia, to learn that your Sylvia passed that afternoon in sleep? I’ll assure you that I can hardly believe it of myself, and yet I had not slept all the night before, and even our dangerous situation, and the cruel anxiety I was in, could not keep me from drowsiness. Mr Bellamy coming in, fresh from the walls (where, good gentleman, he had fought as well as any lay person of them all), to see my papa, found me fallen asleep with my head on the sufferer’s pillow, and bade me go into the next room and rest, while he watched beside the dear gentleman. I was very reluctant to go, for my papa’s least movement made his wounds begin to burst out bleeding afresh; but on the Padra promising to call me the moment that there was any change, I obeyed him, and slept until it was dark, when I waked up to find the enemy still cannonading us, and fire-signals burning instead of flags to summon the ships. That night passed much as the last had done, the gentlemen coming in every now and then with the most agreeable punctuality to exhort me to keep up heart, for if we could only maintain ourselves until the following night, Mr Holwell was devising a scheme with Captain Colquhoun for cutting our way through the enemy, and retiring to Surmans, where we might get on board the ships. The enemy had fired all the European houses in the town, except those which gave them a footing from which to annoy us, and the dreadful glare and heat was most distressing, although the Moors remained tolerable quiet.

The morning of Sunday the 20th of June found our garrison divided between resolution and a desire to capitulate. The gentlemen of the Service and the officers, both those of the army and the ships, were resolved to preserve their honour by dying where they stood rather than yield, but there was a discontented spirit abroad in the lower ranks, which were full of Dutchmen, To-passes, and Armenians, few English being left. Among these men Mr Holwell divided three chests of treasure in the hope of pacifying them, and even went so far in yielding to their demands as to send to Omy Chund in his prison, requesting him to accept of his release and go to treat with the Nabob for us. This the vindictive Gentoo refused to do, but consented to write a letter from his cell to Raja Monickchund, the Phousdar of Hoogly, entreating him to intercede with the Soubah on our behalf, and this letter Mr Holwell threw over the wall when the enemy had opened their attack upon us again with the daylight, but the humiliating expedient had no effect, for there was a very determined attack made at noon on the north side of the Fort, which the enemy sought to escalade under cover of a prodigious fire from the ruins of Mr Cruttenden’s house. They were again beat off, but not without a dreadful struggle, in which five-and-twenty of our bravest remaining defenders were killed, and over seventy received wounds. So stubborn was the fighting that it seemed to me more than once that all must be lost, and I was like to cry out with joy when the news of the enemy’s repulse was brought me by that sergeant of Captain Colquhoun’s of whom I have told you before. This worthy fellow, who is named Jones, came to me running with all his might, and with one hand clapped to his face.

“So please you, madam, the Moors is drove off again,” says he, and would have hasted away at once, but thinking he must have received some wound, I asked him why he ran in so odd a style.

“Why, madam,” says he, “you’ve heard as how I’ve promised the Captain to touch no spirits until he gives me leave, and I’ve kept it, too. But when the other men broke into the arrack storehouse just now, where they’re making themselves as drunk as fiddlers, I knew as how the devil was setting a trap for me, and I says to myself as I’d not linger a moment before getting back to the Captain, nor give myself the chance of so much as smelling the stuff.”

And away he went, holding his nose as before. It pleased me that he should be so anxious to keep his promise to his Captain, and I told my papa of it, but to my grief the tale threw him into a great melancholy, for he began to lament that in all his life he had never done so much kindness to any fellow-creature as to help him to withstand his temptations. I sought to comfort him with the recollection that at least he had never led any astray, but he refused to listen to me.

“All my life,” he said, “I have been satisfied to be of the breed of Democritus, smiling at what was evil, and admiring what was good—and staying there. My natural easiness of temper has made me believe that I was right so long as I did no wrong, nor interfered with others’ doing it if they pleased. I thought that if I did no good, at least I did no harm, and now I am reaping the fruits of my foolishness. My wife has taken advantage of my slackness—nay, let me rather say that I in my slackness have suffered her to bring disgrace on herself and destruction on the factory. My daughter is here exposed to the worst of perils instead of finding herself safe under the protection of a husband, and my business here—how shall I answer for it to the Company, to the women that are left homeless, or to the brave men that are foredoomed to perish within these walls? ’Twas in my power to have spoke and voted in the Council for wise and prudent measures, perhaps to have restrained the extravagancies of the President and his two friends, but I did it not, I loved my ease too well. And this is the end of it all. Truly I have left undone those things which I ought to have done.”

I was beyond measure affected to hear such words from my papa’s lips, and seeing Mr Bellamy crossing the court, all blackened with powder and stained with blood, I ran out in the sun to him, and prayed him to come to the dear sufferer. Such was the kindness of this good man that he robbed himself of the rest which he so much needed, and gave up the time for it to Mr Freyne, sitting beside him and reading passages from the Scriptures, bidding him also look away from the life of which he was now ashamed to that of Christ who had died for him, and not add to the sins which he deplored that of unbelief and of the rejection of God’s mercy. Nay, he was even so thoughtful as to comfort him concerning the poor girl that he was leaving, as he feared, to the most extreme peril, saying that when man’s power was utterly at an end, then was the time for the manifestation of the power of God. And how often the good Padra’s words have served to comfort me since that day, I could not tell you, Amelia.

About two o’clock, the attack being renewed, Mr Bellamy was compelled to leave us to take his place on the walls, and my papa fell into a kind of slumber, with his hand clasped in mine. After a while Lieutenant Bellamy came to tell me that the enemy had desisted from their efforts and betaken themselves to places of shelter out of the reach of our fire, where, said he, ’twas to be hoped they would stay, for nearly all our common soldiers were so drunk with the arrack they had stole as to be lost to all sense of duty. After this all was quiet until a little after four, when the Gentoo, Omy Chund’s servant, came running, and with a naked scymitar in his hand took up his post before our doorway. On my asking him what was the matter (for I had learnt to speak Moors well enough to understand the servants and they me, though but in a broken manner), he told me that the enemy having shown a flag of truce, Mr Holwell had replied with another, throwing over the wall also a letter addressed to Raja Doolubram, the Nabob’s duan, asking for terms. While our people’s attention was engaged by this parley, the enemy all flocked out of their hiding-places, and made fierce attacks both on the eastern gate of the Fort and the pallisadoes on the south-west, wounding Mr Baillie with a musquet-ball as he stood by Mr Holwell’s side. On Mr Holwell running down to the parade to summon our common men, he found the few that were not drunk asleep, and those that were drunk, hearing of the danger, broke open the western gate, headed by a Dutchman of the Train, seeking to escape along the slime of the river, and so admitted the enemy. Hurrying to the south-east bastion Mr Holwell met with Captain Colquhoun, and the two gentlemen agreed that no further resistance was possible, since the Moors had also, by using bamboos for scaling-ladders, succeeded in great numbers in escalading the south wall, by means of the roofs of the godowns built against it, and were pouring into the Fort. The Gentoo added that he had seen the two gentlemen give up their swords to a Jemmautdar of the Nabob’s, and that he had hastened hither to defend us with his life, as his master’s orders were.