by G. A. Henty
“Do you have sentries round here at night?” he asked the governor.
“No. It would not be necessary, even if an enemy were encamped below. If you will ride round the foot of the hill when you leave, you will see for yourself that, save from the side you came up, the place is absolutely inaccessible.”
The view from the top of the hill was superb. Away to the northeast, the governor pointed out the pagodas of Bangalore, twenty-two miles away; the distance, in the clear air, seeming comparatively trifling.
“Are there many troops there?” Dick asked.
“There are about five battalions of the regular troops, and three Chelah battalions. These can hardly be counted as troops. They have never been of the slightest use. In the last war they ran like sheep. It is a fancy of the sultan’s. But, indeed, he can hardly expect men to fight who have been forced into the ranks, and made to accept Mohammedanism against their will. Naturally they regard an invader, not as an enemy, but as a deliverer.
“Of course the sultan’s idea was, that since the native troops, drilled and led by Englishmen, fought so well; the Chelahs, who were also drilled and led by Englishmen, would do the same. But the Company’s troops are willing soldiers, and it is the English leading, more than the English drill, that makes them fight. If the Chelahs were divided among the hill fortresses they might do good service; and I could, as far as fighting goes, do with a battalion of them here; for, mixed up with my men, they would have to do their duty. But, of course, they will never be placed in the hill forts, for one would never be safe from treachery. Even if all the lower walls were in the hands of my own men, some of the Chelahs would be sure to manage to desert, and give information as to all the defences.”
A considerable portion of the upper plateau of the rock was occupied by the huts of the troops, for the forts were much too small to contain them and their families. On their way back, they passed through these. Dick looked anxiously about for white faces, but could see none, nor any building that seemed to him likely to be used as a prison.
When they returned to the governor’s quarters, they found that a room had been placed at their disposal, and they presently sat down to dinner with him.
“I suppose you have no English prisoners here?” Dick said carelessly, when the meal was over.
The governor paused a moment, before he replied.
“I don’t want any of them here,” he said shortly. “Batches are sent up, sometimes, from Bangalore; but it is only for execution. I am a loyal subject of the sultan, but I would that this work could be done elsewhere. Almost all the executions take place in the hill forts; in order, I suppose, that they may be done secretly. I obey orders, but I never see them carried out. I never even see the captives. They have done no harm, or, at most, one of their number has tried to escape, for which they are not to be blamed. I always have them shot, whether that is the mode of execution ordered or not. It is a soldier’s death, and the one I should choose myself, and so that they are dead it can matter little to the sultan how they die. If they were all shot, as soon as they were taken, I should not think so much of it; but after being held captive for years, and compelled to work, it seems to me that their lives should be spared. As far as giving up my own life is concerned, I would willingly do it at the orders of the sultan, but these executions make me ill. I lose my appetite for weeks afterwards. Let us talk of something else.”
And the governor puffed furiously away at the hookah he had just lighted. Then the conversation turned to the forts again.
“No, I do not find the life dull,” he said, in answer to a remark of Dick’s. “I did so at first, but one soon becomes accustomed to it. I have my wife and two daughters, and there are ten officers, so that I can have company when I choose. All the officers are married, and that gives society. Up here, we do not observe strictly the rules of the plains, and although the ladies, of course, wear veils when they go beyond the house, they put them aside indoors, and the families mix freely with each other, so that we get on very well. You see, there are very few changes ever made, and as many of the ladies are, like my wife, no longer young, we treat them as comrades.”
In the morning Dick and Surajah mounted their horses, took a hearty farewell of the governor, and rode down to the gate. A soldier had been sent down, half an hour before, and they found their escort in readiness to move. They had decided that, before going to the next fort, they would ride round the foot of the hill of Savandroog. This they did, going at a foot pace, and scanning the cliffs and slopes as they passed. Sometimes they reined up their horses and rode a little farther back, so as to have a view to the very summit.
When they completed the round, they agreed that there were but two spots where it seemed to them that an ascent was barely possible, and they were very doubtful whether the difficulties, when examined more closely, would not prove to be absolutely insurmountable.
“That is not a satisfactory outlook,” Dick said, “but fortunately there is, now, no motive for climbing the precipice. Certainly those places would be of no use to a party wanting to make an attack. In the first place, though you and I might get up, with soft shoes on, I am sure that English soldiers, with muskets and ammunition pouches, could never do it, especially at night; and in the daytime, even if a body of troops strong enough to be of any use could get up, those who first arrived at the top would be killed before the others could come to their assistance, and a few stones rolled down would sweep all behind them to the bottom.
“I don’t like turning my back on the place,” he went on, as they turned their horses’ heads to the south; for Savandroog was the farthest north of the forts they were to visit. “It seems to me that, even now, my father may be there.”
“How can that be, Dick?” Surajah said in surprise. “Nothing could be more straightforward than the governor seemed to be. I thought that he was even rash, in speaking as frankly as he did to us.”
“I think he saw there was no fear of our repeating what he said, Surajah. He is a frank, outspoken old soldier, and has evidently been so disgusted at the treatment of the prisoners that he could not mince his words; and yet, you know, he did not absolutely say that he had no prisoners.”
“No; I noticed that he did not reply directly to your question.”
“On the contrary, he distinctly hesitated before he spoke. Now, why should he have done that? He might just as well have said, ‘No, I have no prisoners. They are only sent up here for execution.’ That would have been his natural answer. Instead of that he hesitated, and then began, ‘I don’t want any of them here; batches are sent up sometimes from Bangalore.’ Now, why did he shirk the question? If it had been any other subject, I might not have noticed that he had not really answered it, but of course, as it was so important a one, I was listening most anxiously for his reply, and noticed his hesitation at once, and that he gave no direct answer at all.
“Now, think it over, Surajah. Why should he have hesitated, and why should he have turned the question off without answering it, unless there had been some reason? And if so, what could the reason be?”
Surajah had no suggestion to make, and they rode on for some distance in silence.
“It is quite evident,” Dick went on, after a long pause, “that he is a kind-hearted man, and that he objects altogether to Tippoo’s cruelty to the prisoners. Therefore, if he had any captives, his reason for not answering was most likely a kindly one.”
“Yes, I should think so.”
“You see, he would consider that we should report, to the sultan, all particulars we had gathered about the fortress. His remarks about the execution of the prisoners, and the worthlessness of the Chelah battalions, and so on, was a private conversation, and was only a matter of opinion. But, supposing he had had some prisoners, and had said so, we might, for anything he knew, have had orders to inspect them, and to report about them, as well as about the garrisons and defences.”
“Yes, he might have thought that,” Surajah agreed; “but a
fter all, why should he mind that?”
Dick did not answer for some time. He was trying to think it out. Presently, he reined in his horse suddenly.
“This might be the reason,” he said, excitedly. This governor may be the very one who we heard had taken my father with him, when he was moved from that fort up in the north. He was in command at Kistnagherry before he came here, after the war, and he may have gone to Kistnagherry from that fort in the north. You see there have been executions, but they have been those of fresh batches sent up, and the governor would not include the captive he had brought with him. In time, his very existence may have been forgotten, and he may still be living there. That would account for the governor’s objection to answering the question, as he would be sure that, did Tippoo hear there was a prisoner there, he would send orders for him to be executed at once.
“This may be all fancy, Surajah, but I cannot think of any other reason why he should have shirked my question.”
He took up the reins again, and the horse at once started forward. They rode for some little time in silence, Dick thinking the matter over, again and again, and becoming more and more convinced he was right; except that, as he admitted to himself, the prisoner whom the governor wished to shield might not be his father.
He was roused, at last, by Surajah asking the question, “Is there anything that you would like us to do?”
“Not now,” Dick replied. “We could not go back again. We must visit the other forts on our list, and see what we can find out there. When we have quite assured ourselves that my father is not in any of them, we can think this over again; but at present we must put it aside. However, I sha’n’t rest until I get to the bottom of it.”
During the next ten days, they inspected the forts of Navandroog, Sundradroog, Outradroog, and Chitteldroog. Few of these were as extensive, and none so strong, as Savandroog. They did the official part of their business, and assured themselves that no English captives were contained in any of them. The governors all said that prisoners were never kept there many days, and that it was only when Tippoo wished to get rid of them that they were sent there. None of the governors made any objection to answering Dick’s questions on the subject, generally adding an expression of satisfaction that prisoners were never left long under their charge.
“It entails a lot of trouble,” the governor of Outradroog said. “They have to be watched incessantly, and one never feels certain they may not slip away. Look at this place. You would think that no one could make his escape; and yet, some ten years ago, fourteen of them got away from here. They slid down a precipice, where no one would have thought a human being could have got down alive. They were all of them retaken, except one, and executed the following day; but the sultan was so furious that, although it was no fault of the governor, who had sentries placed everywhere, he sent for him to Seringapatam, and threw him to the tigers, declaring that there must have been treachery at work. You may be sure that I have no desire to hold English prisoners, after that; and when they have been sent here have been glad, indeed, when orders came for their execution.
“A good many were ordered to be starved to death. But I never waited for that. It took too long. Do what I could, the guards would smuggle in pieces of bread, and they lingered on for weeks; so that it was more merciful to finish with them at once, besides making me feel comfortable at the knowledge that there was no chance of their making their escape. There were sentries at their doors, as well as on the walls, when the fourteen I have told you about escaped; but they dug a passage out at the back of their hut, chose a very dark night, and it was only when the sound of some stones, that they dislodged as they scrambled down the precipice, gave the alarm to the sentries, that their escape was discovered.
“No, I do not want any prisoners up here, and when they do come, there is no sleep for me until I get the order to execute them. But they do not often come now. Most of the prisoners who were not given up have been killed since, and there are not many of them left.”
Upon finishing their round, they returned to Seringapatam, where Dick drew up a full report of the result of their investigations. The sultan himself went through it with them, questioned them closely, cut off a good many of the items, and gave orders that the other demands should be complied with, and the guns and ammunition sent off at once to the various forts, from the great arsenal at the capital.
Dick was depressed at the result of their journey. His hopes had fallen lower and lower, as, at each fort they visited, he heard the same story—that all prisoners sent up to the mountain fortresses had, in a short time, been put to death. It was possible, of course, that his father might still be at one of the towns where new levies had been drilled; but he had not, from the first, thought it likely that a merchant sailor would be put to this work; and had it not been that he clung to the belief that there was a prisoner at Savandroog, and that that prisoner was his father, he would have begun to despair.
It was true that there were still many hill forts scattered about the country, unvisited, but there seemed no reason why any of the prisoners should have been allowed to survive in these forts, when they had all been put to death in those they had visited, among which were the places that had been most used as prisons.
“I would give it up,” he said to Surajah, “were it not that, in the first place, it would almost break my mother’s heart. Her conviction that my father is still alive has never been shaken. It has supported her all these years, and I believe that, were I to return and tell her that it was no longer possible to hope, her faith would still be unshaken. She would still think of him as pining in some dungeon, and would consider that I had given up the search from faint heartedness. That is my chief reason. But I own that I am almost as much influenced by my own conviction that he is in Savandroog. I quite admit that I can give no reason whatever why, if there is a prisoner there, it should be my father, and yet I cannot get it out of my mind that it is he. I suppose it is because I have the conviction that I believe in it. Why should I have that impression so strongly, if it were not a true one? I tell myself that it is absurd, that I have no real grounds to go upon, and yet that does not shake my faith in the slightest. It is perhaps because we have been so fortunate. Altogether everything has turned out so favourably, that I can’t help thinking he is alive, and that I shall find him.
“What do you think, Surajah? Ought we to give it up?”
“Why should we?” Surajah replied stoutly. “I think you are right, and that we are destined to find your father. There is no hurry. We have not been anything like so long a time as we expected to be, and Fortune has, as you say, befriended us wonderfully. We are well off here. We have positions of honour. For myself, I could wish for nothing better.”
“Well, at any rate we will wait for a time,” Dick said. “We may be sent to Savandroog again, and if so, I will not leave the place until I find out from the governor whether he has still a prisoner; and if so, manage to obtain a sight of him.”
The next day, Dick was informed by the chamberlain that the officer who was in charge of the wild beasts had fallen into disgrace, and that the sultan had appointed him to the charge. Dick was well pleased, in some respects. The work would suit him much better than examining stores, and seeing that the servants of the Palace did their duty; but, on the other hand, it lessened his chance of being sent to Savandroog again. However, there was no choice in the matter, and Surajah cheered him by saying:
“You must not mind, Dick. Has not everything turned out for the best? And you may be sure that this will turn out so, also.”
It was, indeed, but two days later that Dick congratulated himself upon the change, for Surajah was sent by Tippoo with an order for the execution of four English prisoners. Dick knew nothing of the matter until Surajah, on his return, told him that he had been obliged to stop and see the orders carried out, by poison being forced down the unfortunate officers’ throats.
“It was horrible,” he said, with tears in his ey
es.
“Horrible!” Dick repeated. “Thank God I have been put to other work, for I feel that I could not have done it. And yet, to have refused to carry out the tyrant’s orders would have meant death to us both, while it would not have saved the lives of these poor fellows. Anyhow, I would not have done it. As soon as I had received the order I would have come to you, and we would have mounted and ridden off together, and taken our chance.”
“Let us talk of something else,” Surajah said. “Are the beasts all in good health?”
“As well as they can be, when they are fed so badly, and so miserably cooped up. I made a great row this morning, and have kept the men at work all day in cleaning out the places. They were all in a horrible state, and before I could get the work done, I had to threaten to report the whole of them to Tippoo, and they knew what would come of that. I told Fazli, last night, that the beasts must have more flesh, and got an order from him that all the bones from the kitchens should be given to them.”
That evening when Dick, on his way to the apartments of one of the officers, was going along a corridor that skirted the portion of the Palace occupied by the zenana; a figure came out suddenly from behind the drapery of a door, dropped on her knees beside him, and, seizing his hand, pressed it to her forehead. It was, to all appearance, an Indian girl in the dress of one of the attendants of the zenana.
“What is it, child?” he said. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.”
“No, Bahador,” she said, “it is yourself I wanted to thank. One of the other attendants saw you go along this corridor, some time ago, and ever since I have watched here of an evening, whenever I could get away unobserved, in hopes of seeing you. It was I, my lord, whom the tiger was standing over when you came to our rescue. I was not greatly hurt, for I was pushed down when the tiger burst in, and, save that it seized me with one of its paws, and tore my shoulder, I was unhurt. Ever since I have been hoping that the time would come when I could thank you for saving my life.”