Dec. ye 23rd.
I may perhaps seem over-bold, madam, in continuing to trouble you with my unworthy epistles when the beloved link between us is wanting, but I believe my kind Mr and Mrs Hurstwood will excuse my presumption, remembering, in the goodness of their hearts, what state of mind I must be in, deprived as I am of the delicious hopes that have sustained me hitherto. That you, madam, was joined with your humble correspondent in a common admiration for our incomparable Miss Freyne, is reason enough for me to regard you as my sole remaining friend, and I can’t doubt but Mrs Hurstwood’s worthy spouse will allow me in this melancholy pleasure of reckoning with his lady how much we have both lost. There are at present but two thoughts in my distracted mind, the one to kill the Nabob, the other to fulfil the last pious duties to the mortal (alas that I must write it!)—the mortal remains of my charmer. True, the accomplishing the first won’t restore her to me (any more than the finest tomb I might raise to her memory could do more than tempt Indian lovers to drop a tear on the spot where a Briton bewailed his mistress), but at least it would rid the world of the monster who is responsible for such a calamity’s coming upon it. En’t that a laudable object, madam? I entreat your opinion, for I have incurred the displeasure of my revered commander Mr Watson on this very matter.
The affair happened thus. I was returning this evening from a solitary ramble on the skirts of the town, engrossed with my own melancholy thoughts, when there met me a Dutch artilleryman, who offered to sell me an Indian scymetar he was carrying, which he had got (he said) some time back from a disabled Mogul that had been wounded in the Nabob’s Purhunea campaign, and had no further use for it. The weapon pleased me, and paying the fellow what he asked, I carried it with me. Passing through the town, I met a party of officers from the Kent, among them Billy Speke, who exclaimed on seeing me carry a great sword naked in my hand, and asked me what use I designed to put it to.
“Oh, ’twill serve to kill the Soubah,” I said, my mind still on the same topics.
“’Twill kill no one without it be sharpened,” says one of the gentlemen.
“How do these fellows manage to fight with such a thing?” says another.
“Oh, sir, ’tis a most deadly weapon when bright and keen,” said the first.
“Sure you would not compare it with one of our swords, sir?” asked the other.
“I vow, sir, you might find yourself hard put to it to maintain your ground against a person skilled in its use. Pray, Mr Fraser, if you en’t in no haste to return to the Tyger, come on board with us, and let us have your scymetar sharpened, and convince this unbeliever by a pass or two that it’s no toy.”
I complied the more readily with this request that I remembered a message I had promised to deliver from our surgeon to Dr Ives of the Kent, and went on board with the other gentlemen in a shore-boat, when Billy Speke ran to find one of the armourer’s mates, and brought him to us with his tools. While we stood round watching his work on the sword, the discourse turned, as might be expected, on fighting, and the officers of the Kent, in anticipating the progress of events, began to prophesy the capture of the Nabob’s strongholds and the destruction of all his army.