He inclined his head in the direction of an unhappy woman, the wife of a ship’s officer whose dead body we had discovered in the early morning when searching for Mr Holwell, who was in the act of being dragged away, more dead than alive, towards the quarters in which were imprisoned the Indian women that had been captured in the pillage of the Black houses. “If I had a pistol handy,” went on the worthy fellow, “it should go hard with me but I would rob those fiends of their prey.”
Alas! we had not a weapon among us, and the man turned again to the body he had brought out last, which I now saw to be that of Captain Colquhoun of the garrison, a most excellent upright person, and the only one of our senior military officers that had or showed any the least warlike capacity, and began composing the limbs as decently as he could, covering the countenance with his own handkerchief. The deep sighs that broke from him during this operation, and the tears that rolled down his cheeks, helped me to recognise him, which the changes wrought by the night’s suffering had prevented me from doing hitherto.
“Sure you’re the sergeant to whom the Captain was so partial?” I said.
“That am I, sir, the unhappy reprobate as has lost the best friend and the kindest commander ever a man had. Three times I was broke for drunkenness, and three times the Captain kept me from going to the devil, and helped me to work my way up again, and now he can’t look after me no more.”
The poor fellow’s complaint was interrupted by the passing of a sad procession. Coming from the Governor’s apartments in the Fort, which the Nabob had appropriated to himself, and taking the way to the gate, where a common hackery drawn by oxen awaited them, we beheld our dear and respected Mr Holwell, and with him Mess. Walcot, Court, and Burdet, all surrounded by a guard drawn from the command of Meer Mudden,[01] the Soubah’s general of the Household Troops, and before them an Indian that carried a huge Marrato[02] battle-axe, with the edge turned towards the prisoners. Mr Cooke sat watching them like one stunned.
“Sure we have seen the last of Mr Holwell!” he said, heavily.
“You think he and the other gentlemen will be put to death, sir?” I asked him.
“Who can doubt it, sir? Han’t you seen the axe?”
This fresh misfortune kept us sad and silent for some time after we had waved our mournful farewells to our unfortunate companions, but then our own guards began to call out to us contemptuously to be gone, for we that were left might betake ourselves wherever we would. But where were we to go? Our ships were dropped down the river, and in all Calcutta, where we had reigned like princes a week before, who was now so poor to do us reverence? Such were the questions that, with blank countenances, we asked one another, almost ready to confess that our dead friends, whose bodies were now being carried from that frightful prison to be flung promiscuously into the ditch of our unfinished ravelin before the east gate, had found a happier fate than ours. But our sad speculations were quickly forgotten in an event that revived our worst fears. The Jemmautdar in charge of our guard (a depraved wretch like most of his fellows) was examining the dead bodies before they were carried out, with the view of discovering such poor remains of personal property as had escaped the plunderers of the evening before and the struggles of the night, and securing them for his own use. Unhappily there catched his eye the glitter of a silver buckle on Miss Freyne’s shoe, which was exposed by her torn gown, and he fetched out a knife to cut it away from the leather. So clumsily did the brutal mercenary do his sacrilegious work that the knife cut deep into the lady’s foot, when, to my horror and that of Mr Cooke, a faint groan escaped her lips, while a convulsive shudder ran through her entire frame.
“Bravo!” cried the wretch, “the woman’s alive, then! She shall go to Muxadabad. Sure his Highness will pay handsomely for a European female to add to his seraglio.”