Part 14 (1/2)
”I can do nothing. It is by the Nabob's orders that you are locked up, and I dare not interfere.”
”But we are dying, man!” cried Mr. Holwell. ”The Nabob swore that he would spare our lives. Listen! I will give you two thousand rupees--anything--if you will procure us some relief!”
The old man went off once more, and hope revived for a moment. While we were thus waiting some one at the back of the room suddenly said aloud--
”Let us take off our clothes!”
Hardly were the words out of his mouth than in an instant, as it seemed, nearly every one was stark naked. They tore their things off furiously and cast them to the ground. I resisted the contagion as long as I could, but when I saw even Mr. Holwell, though nearer the air than myself, stripped to his s.h.i.+rt, I could not resist following his example; and in our dreadful extremity my unhappy companion was presently forced to do the same, hiding her face with her hands and choking down great sobs.
When the Jemautdar returned for the second time he made it appear that our case was hopeless.
”No one dares help you,” he said, speaking with evident compunction.
”Surajah Dowlah is asleep, and it is as much as any man's life is worth to awake him.”
As soon as the meaning of these words was understood by the hundred and fifty miserable wretches inside, a pitiful, low wail went up. Then commenced that long, dreadful agony which so few were to survive, and which I only remember in successive glimpses of horror spread over hours that were like years.
One of the last things we did, before all self-control was lost, was to try and make a current of air by all sitting down together, and then suddenly rising; but unhappily by this time several had grown so weak that, having once gone down, they proved unequal to the effort of getting up again, and fell under the feet of their companions. Among these unfortunates was Marian's father, Mr. Rising, who had come in with us, and stood a little way off in the press. Although preserving his dazed, unconscious air in the midst of these calamities, he had exhibited many symptoms of physical distress. He now remained sitting helpless on the floor, and while I was trying to contrive some means of a.s.sisting him, I saw the next man behind him very coolly step over his body, spurning it with his foot. Poor Mr. Rising fell on his back, groaning, and was instantly trodden out of sight.
My first impulse was to spare Marian the knowledge of her father's shocking fate. Turning round hastily, I whispered--
”Don't look behind you, for G.o.d's sake!”
The words came too late. She turned her head, saw what had happened, and shrieked aloud.
That shriek was the signal for fifty others, like wild beasts answering each other in a wood, as the manhood of that tortured mob suddenly forsook it, to be succeeded by brute despair. Some began to hurl themselves against the door, others broke into frantic prayers and imprecations. The clamour died down, rose again, and finally settled into a monotonous, incessant cry for water.
All this time I had preserved my self-control very well, but when this cry for water was raised, either the excessive pain I endured, or else the mere example of so many persons around me, so shook me that I could no longer command my motions, and I found myself screaming the words in Indostanee at the old Jemautdar as though I would have torn him in pieces.
The old man seemed to be really moved by our sufferings. He sent two or three of the soldiers to fetch water, and they presently came to the windows bearing it in skins.
It was a fatal act of mercy. The mere sight of the water instantly overthrew the reason of half the unhappy wretches behind us. A wild howl went up, and a frantic struggle commenced to get to the windows.
Those who a few minutes before had been rational Christian beings were now to be seen fighting and striking each other as they leaped and plunged to climb over those in front. Marian, terror-stricken by the outburst, put her hands before her eyes, and would have been swept away from her place like a leaf if I had not set my back to hers and fought furiously against the lunatics behind. I can see now the dark, flushed face of one man, his parched tongue dropping out of his mouth, and his eyes rolling horribly, quite mad, as he flung himself upon me and tried to tear me down. To add to the horror, the Indian soldiers brought their torches to the windows in order to gloat on this scene.
I heard them laugh like devils as the red light flashed on the naked heap of infuriated Englishmen writhing and fighting in that narrow h.e.l.l.
After ten minutes the struggles began to die down through sheer exhaustion, and then those of us who stood next the windows were allowed to drink from the skins; after which we filled hats with the water and pa.s.sed them into the back of the apartment. In this way every one obtained some, but no good effect was wrought thereby. So far as I was concerned, the heat and drought were so fearful that no sooner had I swallowed my share of the fluid than my throat became as dry as it had been before--the momentary relief served only to aggravate my torments.
Then as the fever gained upon me, my thoughts broke bounds, and there danced confusedly through my brain odd sc.r.a.ps of memories and pictures of other scenes. For whole moments together I lost the knowledge of where I was; those dark walls and haggard faces pa.s.sed, and in their stead came visions of the pleasant places I used to know, the ruffling of the wind upon the Breydon Water and the d.y.k.es, the stir among the reeds and rushes, and the cattle browsing in the Norfolk fields.
Instead of the swarthy Indian soldiers with their torches I saw the friendly, homely figures of the carters as they rode their horses to the pool at sundown after the day's work was over, and the familiar groups of villagers, and the face of little Patience Thurstan as she looked up at me, ready to weep, that time I said goodbye to her on my last day at home; and there rose before me the likeness of the dear old homestead, the gables and the crooked chimney, and the porch with jasmine growing over one side and boys' love on the other; and I saw my father and my mother where they sat and faced each other across the hearthplace, and thought, maybe, of their son, so that there came over me a great and miserable longing to return to them; and, like the prodigal son when he ate husks among the swine, I repented of my rebellion and running away, and in that hour I took a resolution that if I ever outlived the night I would leave the wicked land of India for ever, and go back to my own country, and ask my father to forgive me, as I knew my mother had forgiven me long ago.
Such were the thoughts that, by fits and starts, pa.s.sed through me during the first hours of the death struggle; but the worst horror of that awful night came presently. In the recesses of the chamber, furthest from the windows, a harder evil than the heat was the intolerable foulness of the air. Even where I was standing it had become an excruciating pain to breathe, and my breast felt as though laced about with iron bands. In the interior many had by this time dropped down, not so much suffocated as poisoned by the fetid gas they were compelled to inhale. And now at length I detected a new, indescribably nauseous odour, added to the acrid smell of the place.
At first I tried to conceal even from my own mind what this was. But not for long. In a very few minutes the secret was known to all there.
The unhappy man I had seen trodden down had been dead for about half an hour, and his body was already corrupt.
Then that whole den of madmen broke loose, raving and cursing; some imploring G.o.d to strike them dead, others casting the most foul and savage insults at the guards without, if by that means they might tempt them to fire in through the windows and put an end to what they endured. They struck at one another, they clutched each other's hair, surging and trampling one another down to gain an inch nearer the miserable air-holes which afforded the only chance of life. The floor was choked with corpses, among which the survivors were entangled in one seething ma.s.s. As for me, I became light-headed, and had only one blind instinct left, to strike down any man who attempted to thrust Marian from her breathing ground. I was aware that she had lost her senses and sunk down between me and the wall; yet I went on battling, as in some dreadful nightmare, with the furious forms that rose up and loomed out of the darkness. When I could no longer make out their faces I still struck out blindly, and heard them go down heavily upon the pile of bodies behind which I stood entrenched. Hour after hour that ghastly combat raged, till the corpses were thrice and four times more numerous than those who still breathed; and at last an awful lethargy settled down over the scene, broken only when one of the survivors roused himself for an expiring effort that sent a quiver through the dead and dying heap.
After that I know no more, for when the morning broke, and the officers came to release the handful left alive, the energy that had held me up so long forsook me, and I sank down unconscious.