Chapter 20

Mr. Diggle finds that others can quote Latin on occasion.

Next morning, when Desmond left the shed with his fellow prisoners, he took with him, secreted in a fold of his dhoti, a small piece of clay. It had been given him overnight by the Babu. An hour or two later, happening to be for a moment alone in the tool shop, he took out the clay and examined it carefully. It was a moment for which he had waited and longed with feverish impatience. The clay was a thin strip, oval in shape, and slightly curved. In the middle of it was the impression, faint but clear, of a key. A footstep approaching, he concealed the clay again in his garment, and, when a workman entered, was busily plying a chisel upon a deal plank.

Before he left the tool shop, he secreted with the clay a scrap of steel and a small file. That day, and for several days after, whenever chance gave him a minute or two apart from his fellow workmen, he employed the precious moments in diligently filing the steel to the pattern on the clay. It was slow work: all too tedious for his eager thought. But he worked at his secret task with unfailing patience, and at the week's end had filed the steel to the likeness of the wards of a key.

That night, when his "co-mates in exile" were asleep, he gently inserted the steel in the lock of his ankle band. He tried to turn it. It stuck fast; the wards did not fit. He was not surprised. Before he made the experiment he had felt that it would fail; the key was indeed a clumsy, ill-shapen instrument. But next day he began to work on another piece of steel, and on this he spent every spare minute he could snatch. This time he found himself able to work faster. Night and morning he looked searchingly at the key on the warder's bunch, and afterward tried to cut the steel to the pattern that was now, as it were, stamped upon his brain.

He wished he could test his second model in the morning light before the warder came, and correct it then. But to do so would involve discovery by his fellow captives; the time to take them into his confidence was not yet. He had perforce to wait till dead of night before he could tell whether the changes, more and more delicate and minute, made upon his key during the day were effective. And the Babu was fretful; having done his part admirably, as Desmond told him, in working the key into his story, he seemed to expect that the rest would be easy, and did not make account of the long labor of the file.

At length a night came when, inserting the key in the lock, Desmond felt it turn easily. Success at last! As he heard the click, he felt an extraordinary sense of elation. Quietly unclasping the fetter, he removed it from his ankle, and stood free. If it could be called free--to be shut up in a locked and barred shed in the heart of one of the strongest fortresses in Hindostan! But at least his limbs were at liberty. What a world of difference there was between that and his former state!

Should he inform the Babu? He felt tempted to do so, for it was to Surendra Nath's ingenuity in interpolating the incident of the key into a well-known story that he owed the clay pattern of the warder's key. But Surendra Nath was excitable; he was quite capable of uttering a yell of delight that would waken the other men and force a premature disclosure. Desmond decided to wait for a quiet moment next day before telling the Babu of his success. So he replaced his ankle band, locked the catch, and lay down to the soundest and most refreshing sleep he had enjoyed for many a night.

He had only just reached the workshop next morning when a peon came with a message that Angria Rho {a chief or prince} required his instant attendance at the palace. He began to quake in spite of himself. Could the prince have discovered already that the lock of his fetters had been tampered with? Desmond could scarcely believe it. He had made his first test in complete darkness; nothing had broken the silence save the one momentary click; and the warder, when he unloosed him, had not examined the lock. What if he were searched and the precious key were found upon him? It was carefully hidden in a fold of his dhoti. There was no opportunity of finding another hiding place for it; he must go as he was and trust that suspicion had not been aroused. But it was with a galloping pulse that he followed the peon out of the dockyard, within the walls of the fort, and into the hall where he had had his first interview with the Pirate.

His uneasiness was hardly allayed when he saw that Angria was in company with Diggle. Both were squatting on the carpeted dais; no other person was in the room. Having ushered him in, the peon withdrew, and Desmond was alone with the two men he had most cause to fear. Diggle was smiling, Angria's eyes were gleaming, his mobile lips working as with impatience, if not anxiety.

The Pirate spoke quickly, imperiously.

"You have learnt our tongue, Firangi {originally applied by the natives to the Portuguese, then to any European} boy?" he said.

"I have done my best, huzur," replied Desmond in Urdu.

"That is well. Now harken to what I say. You have pleased me; my jamadar {head servant} speaks well of you; but you are my slave, and, if I will it, you will always be my slave. You would earn your freedom?"

"I am in your august hands, huzur," said Desmond diplomatically.

"You may earn your freedom in one way," continued Angria in the same rapid, impatient tone. "My scouts report that an English fleet has passed up the coast towards Bombay. My spies tell me that in Bombay a large force is collected under the command of that sur ka batcha {son of a pig} Clive. But I cannot learn the purpose of this armament. The dogs may think, having taken my fortress of Suwarndrug, to come and attack me here. Or they may intend to proceed against the French at Hyderabad. It is not convenient for me to remain in this uncertainty. You will go to Bombay and learn these things of which I am in ignorance and come again and tell me. I will then set you free."

"I cannot do it, huzur."

Desmond's reply came without a moment's hesitation. To act as a spy upon his own countrymen--how could Angria imagine that an English boy would ever consent to win his freedom on such terms?

His simple words roused the Maratha to fury. He sprang to his feet and angrily addressed Diggle, who had also risen, and stood at his side, still smiling. Diggle replied to his vehement words in a tone too low for Desmond to catch what he said. Angria turned to the boy again.

"I will not only set you free; I will give you half a lakh of rupees; you shall have a place at my court, or, if you please, I will recommend you to another prince in whose service you may rise to wealth and honor. If you refuse, I shall kill you; no, I shall not kill you, for death is sweet to a slave; I shall inflict on you the tortures I reserve for those who provoke my anger; you shall lose your ears, your nose, and--"

Diggle again interposed.

"Pardon me, bhai {brother}," Desmond heard him say, "that is hardly the way to deal with a boy of my nation. If you will deign to leave him to me, I think that in a little I shall find means to overcome his hesitation."

"But even then, how can I trust the boy? He may give his word to escape me; then betray me to his countrymen. I have no faith in the Firangi."

"Believe me, if he gives his word he will keep it. That is the way with us."

"It is not your way."

"I am no longer of them," said Diggle with consummate aplomb. "Dismiss him now; I shall do my best with him."

"Then you must hasten. I give you three days: if within that time he has not consented, I shall do to him all that I have said, and more also."

"I do not require three days to make up my mind," said Desmond quietly. "I cannot do what--"

"Hush, you young fool!" cried Diggle angrily in English.

Turning to the Pirate he added: "The boy is as stiff-necked as a pig; but even a pig can be led if you ring his snout. I beg you leave him to me."

"Take him away!" exclaimed Angria, clapping his hands.

Two attendants came in answer to his summons, and Desmond was led off and escorted by them to his workshop.

Angry and disgusted as he was with both the Maratha and Diggle, he was still more anxious at this unexpected turn in his affairs. He had but three days! If he had not escaped before the fourth day dawned, his fate would be the most terrible that could befall a living creature. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel! He had seen, among the prisoners, some of the victims of Angria's cruelty; they had suffered tortures too terrible to be named, and dragged out a life of unutterable degradation and misery, longing for death as a blissful end. With his quick imagination he already felt the hands of the torturers upon him; and for all the self control which his life in Gheria had induced, he was for some moments so wholly possessed by terror that he could scarcely endure the consciousness of existence.

But when the first tremors were past, and he began to go about his usual tasks, and was able to think calmly, not for an instant did he waver in his resolve. Betray his countrymen! It was not to be thought of. Give his word to Angria and then forswear himself! Ah! even Diggle knew that he would not do that. Freedom, wealth, a high place in some prince's court! He would buy none of them at the price of his honor. Diggle was false, unspeakably base; let him do Angria's work if he would; Desmond Burke would never stoop to it.

He scarcely argued the matter explicitly with himself: it was settled in Angria's presence by his instinctive repulsion. But it was not in a boy like Desmond, young, strong, high spirited, tamely to fold his hands before adverse fate. He had three days: it would go hard with him if he did not make good use of them. He felt a glow of thankfulness that the first step, and that a difficult one, had been taken, providentially, as it seemed, the very night before this crisis in his fate. His future plan had already outlined itself; it was necessary first to gain over his companions in captivity; that done, he hoped within the short period allowed him to break prison and turn his back forever on this place of horror.

It seemed to his eager impatience that that day would never end. It was November, and the beginning of the cold season, and the work of the dockyard, being urgent, was carried on all day without the usual break during the hot middle hours, so that he found no opportunity of consulting his fellows. Further, the foremen of the yard were specially active. The Pirate had been for some time fearful lest the capture of Suwarndrug should prove to be the prelude to an assault upon his stronger fort and headquarters at Gheria, and to meet the danger he had had nine new vessels laid down. Three of them had been finished, but the work had been much interrupted by the rains, and the delay in the completion of the remaining six had irritated him. He had visited his displeasure upon the foremen. After his interview with Desmond he summoned them to his presence and threatened them with such dire punishment if the work was not more rapidly pushed on, that they had used the lash more furiously and with even less discrimination than ever. Consequently when Desmond met his companions in the shed at night he found them all in desperate indignation and rage. He had seen nothing more of Diggle; he must strike while the iron was hot.

When they were locked in, and all was quiet outside, the prisoners gave vent, each in his own way, to their feelings. For a time Desmond listened, taking no part in their lamentation and cursing. But when the tide of impotent fury ebbed, and there was a lull, he said quietly:

"Are my brothers dogs that, suffering these things, they merely whine?"

The quiet level tones, so strangely contrasting with the tones of fierceness and hate that were still ringing in the ears of the unhappy prisoners, had an extraordinary effect. There was dead silence in the shed: it seemed that every man was afraid to speak. Then one of the Marathas said in a whisper:

"What do you mean, sahib?"

"What do I mean? Surely it must be clear to any man. Have we not sat long enough on the carpet of patience?"

Again the silence remained for a space unbroken.

"You, Gulam Mahomed," continued Desmond, addressing one of the Biluchis whom he considered the boldest--"have you never thought of escape?"

"Allah knows!" said the man in an undertone. "But He knows that I remember what happened a year ago. Fuzl Khan can tell the sahib something about that."

A fierce cry broke from the Gujarati, who had been moaning under his charpoy in anguish from the lashings he had undergone that day. Desmond heard him spring up; but if he had meant to attack the Biluchi, the clashing of his fetters reminded him of his helplessness. He cursed the man, demanding what he meant.

"Nothing," returned Gulam Mahomed. "But you were the only man, Allah knows, who escaped the executioner."

"Pig, and son of a pig!" cried Fuzl Khan, "I knew nothing of the plot. If any man says I did he lies. They did it without me; some evil jin must have heard their whisperings. They failed. They were swine of Canarese."

"Do not let us quarrel," said Desmond. "We are all brothers in misfortune; we ought to be as close knit as the strands of a rope. Here is our brother Fuzl Khan, the only man of his gang who did not try to escape, and see how he is treated! Could he be worse misused? Would not death be a boon?

"Is it not so, Fuzl Khan?"

The Gujarati assented with a passionate cry.

"As for the rest of us, it is only a matter of time. I am the youngest of you, and not the hardest worked, yet I feel that the strain of our toil is wearing me out. What must it be with you? You are dying slowly. If we make an attempt to escape and fail we shall die quickly, that is all the difference. What is to be is written, is it not so, Shaik Abdullah?"

"Even so, sahib," replied the second Biluchi, "it is written. Who can escape his fate?"

"And what do you say, Surendra Nath?"

"The key, sahib," whispered the Babu in English; "what of the key?"

"Speak in Urdu, Babu," said Desmond quickly. "Don't agree at once."

Surendra Nath was quick witted; he perceived that Desmond did not wish the others to suspect that there had been any confidences between them.

"I am a coward, the sahib knows," he said in Urdu. "I could not give blows; I should die. It was told us today that the English are about to attack this fort. They will set us free; we need run no risks."

"Wah!" exclaimed one of the Mysoreans. "If the Firangi get into the fort, we shall all be murdered."

"That is truth," said a Maratha. "The Rho would have our throats cut at once."

The Babu groaned.

"You see, Surendra Nath, it is useless to wait in the hope of help from my countrymen," said Desmond. "If there is fighting to be done, we can do all that is needed: is it not so, my brothers? As for you, Babu, if you would sooner die without--well, there is nothing to prevent you."

"If the sahib does not wish me to fight, it is well. But has the sahib a plan?"

"Yes, I have a plan."

He paused; there was sound of hard breathing.

"Tell it us," said the Gujarati eagerly.

"You are one of us, Fuzl Khan?"

"The plan! the plan! Is not my back mangled? Have I not endured the tank? Is not freedom sweet to me as to another? The plan, sahib! I swear, I Fuzl Khan, to be true to you and all; only tell me the plan."

"You shall have the plan in good time. First I have a thing to say. When a battle is to be fought, no soldier fights only for himself, doing that which seems good to him alone. He looks to the captain for orders. Otherwise mistakes would be made, and all effort would be wasted. We must have a captain: who is he to be?"

"Yourself, sahib," said the Gujarati at once. "You have spoken; you have the plan; we take you as leader."

"You hear what Fuzl Khan says. Do you all agree?"

The others assented eagerly. Then Desmond told his wondering hearers the secret of the key, and during several hours of that quiet night he discussed with them in whispers the details of the scheme which he had worked out. At intervals the sentry passed and flashed his light through the opening in the wall; but at these moments every man was lying motionless upon his charpoy, and not a sound was audible save a snore.

Next day when Desmond, having finished his midday meal of rice and mangoes, had returned to his workshop, Diggle sauntered in.

"Ah, my young friend," he said in his quiet voice and with his usual smile, "doubtless you have expected a visit from me. Night brings counsel. I did not visit you yesterday, thinking that after sleeping over the amiable and generous proposition made to you by my friend Angria you would view it in another light. I trust that during the nocturnal hours you have come to perceive the advantages of choosing the discreet part. Let us reason together."

There were several natives with them in the workshop, but none of them understood English, and the two Englishmen could talk at ease.

"Reason!" said Desmond in reply to Diggle's last sentence. "If you are going to talk of what your pirate friend spoke of yesterday, it is mere waste of time. I shall never agree."

"Words, my young friend, mere words! You will be one of us yet. You will never have such a chance again. Why, in a few years you will be able to return to England, if you will, a rich man, a very nawab {governor}. My friend Angria has his faults; nemo est sine culpa: but he is at least generous. An instance! The man who took the chief part in the capture of the Dutchman two years ago--what is he now? A naib {deputy governor}, a man of wealth, of high repute at the Nizam's court. There is no reason why you should not follow so worthy an example; cut out an Indiaman or two, and Desmond Burke may, if he will, convey a shipload of precious things to the shores of Albion, and enjoy his leisured dignity on a landed estate of his own. He shall drive a coach while his oaf of a brother perspires behind a plow."

Desmond was silent. Diggle watched him keenly, and after a slight pause continued:

"This is no great thing that is asked of you. You sail on one of Angria's grabs; you are set upon the shore; you enter Bombay with a likely story of escape from the fortress of the Pirate; you are a hero, the boon fellow of the men, the pet of the ladies--for there are ladies in Bombay, forma praestante puellae. In a week you know everything, all the purposes that Angria's spies have failed to discover. One day you disappear; the ladies wail and tear their hair; a tiger has eaten you; in a week you will be forgotten. But you are back in Angria's fortress, no longer a slave, downtrodden and despised; but a free man, a rich man, a potentate to be. Is it not worth thinking of, my young friend, especially when you remember the other side of the picture? It is a dark side; an unpleasant side; even, let me confess, horrible: I prefer to keep it to the wall."

He waved his gloved hand, deprecatingly, watching Desmond with the same intentness. The boy was dumb: he might also have been deaf. Diggle drew from his fob an elaborately chased snuffbox and took a pinch of fine rappee, Desmond mechanically noticing that the box bore ornamentation of Dutch design.

"If I were not your friend," continued Diggle, "I might say that your attitude is one of sheer obstinacy. Why not trust us? You see we trust you. I stand pledged for you with Angria; but I flatter myself I know a man when I see one: si fractus illabitur orbis--you have already shown your mettle. Of course I understand your scruples; I was young myself once; I know the generous impulses that rule the hearts of youth. But this is a matter that must be decided, not by feeling, but by hard fact and cold reason. Who benefits by your scruples? A set of hard-living money grubbers in Bombay who fatten on the oppression of the ryot, who tithe mint and anise and cumin, who hoard up treasure which they will take back with their jaundiced livers to England, there to become pests to society with their splenetic and domineering tempers. What's the Company to you, or you to the Company? Why, Governor Pitt was an interloper; and your own father: yes, he was an interloper, and an interloper of the best."

"But not a pirate," said Desmond hotly, his scornful silence yielding at last.

"True, true," said Diggle suavely; "but in the Indies, you see, we don't draw fine distinctions. We are all bucaneers in a sense; some with the sword, others the ledger. Throw in your lot frankly with me; I will stand your friend."

"You are wasting your breath and your eloquence," interrupted Desmond firmly, "and even if I were tempted to agree, as I never could be, I should remember who is talking to me."

Then he added with a whimsical smile, "Come, Mr. Diggle, you are fond of quotations; I am not; but there's one I remember--'I fear the Greeks, though'--"

"You young hound!" cried Diggle, his sallow face becoming purple. His anger, it seemed to Desmond afterwards reflecting on it, was out of proportion to the cause of offense. "You talk of my eloquence. By heaven, when I see you again I shall use it otherwise. You shall hear something of how Angria wreaks his vengeance; you shall have a foretaste of the sweets in store for an obstinate, recalcitrant pig-headed fool!"

He strode away, leaving Desmond a prey to the gloomiest anticipations.

That evening, when the prisoners were squatting outside the shed for the usual hour of talk before being locked up for the night, a new feature was added to the entertainment. One of the Marathas had somehow possessed himself of a tom tom, and proved himself an excellent performer on that weird instrument. While he tapped its sides, his fellow Maratha, in a strange hard tuneless voice, chanted a song, repeating its single stanza again and again without apparently wearying his hearers, and clapping his hand to mark the time.

It was a song about a banya {merchant} with a beautiful young daughter-in-law, whom he appointed to deal out the daily handful of flour expected as alms by every beggar who passed his door. Her hands being much smaller than his own, he pleased himself with the idea that, without losing his reputation for charity, he would give away through her much less grain than if he himself performed the charitable office. But it turned out bad thrift, for so beautiful was she that she attracted to the door not only the genuine beggars, but also many, both young and old, who had disguised themselves in mendicant rags for the mere pleasure of beholding her and getting from her a smile and a gentle word.

It was a popular song, and the warder himself was tempted to stay and listen until, the hour for locking up being past, he at last recollected his duty and bundled the prisoners into the shed.

"Sing inside if you must," he said, "but not too loud, lest the overseer come with the bamboo."

Inside the shed, reclining on their charpoys, the men continued their performance, changing their song, though not, as it seemed to Desmond, the tune. He, however, was perhaps not sufficiently attentive to the monotonous strains; for, as soon as the warder had left the yard, he had unlocked his fetters and begun to work in the darkness. Poised on one of the rafters, he held on with one hand to a joist, and with the other plied a small saw, well greased with ghi. The sound of the slow careful movements of the tool was completely drowned by the singing and the hollow rat-a-pan of the tom tom. Beneath him stood the Babu, extending his dhoti like an apron, and catching in it the falling shower of sawdust.

Suddenly the figure on the rafter gave a low whistle. Through the window he had seen the dim form of the sentry outside approach the space lighted by the rays from the lantern, which he had laid down at a corner of the shed. Before the soldier had time to lift it and throw a beam into the shed (which he did as much from curiosity to see the untiring performers as in the exercise of his duty) Desmond had swung down from his perch and stretched himself upon the nearest charpoy. The Babu meanwhile had darted with his folded dhoti to the darkest corner. When the sentry peered in, the two performing Marathas were sitting up; the rest were lying prone, to all appearance soothed to sleep.

"Verily thou wilt rap a hole in the tom tom," said the sentry with a grin. "Better save a little of it for tomorrow."

"Sleep is far from my eyes," replied the man. "My comrades are all at rest; if it does not offend thee--"

"No. Tap till it burst, for me. But without sleep the work will be hard in the morning."

He went away. Instantly the two figures were again upon their feet, and the sawing recommenced. For three hours the work continued, interrupted at intervals by the visits of the sentry. Midnight was past before Desmond, with cramped limbs and aching head, gave the word for the song and accompaniment to cease, and the shed was in silence.