CHAPTER V.
ON THE BANK OF THE GANGES.
THE Council at Calcutta had decided on war with the Nawab. It was necessary to send some arms to the factory at Patna soon. For that purpose a boat laden with arms was got ready.
It had also become necessary to send some secret instructions to Mr. Ellis, the Agent at the Patna factory. Mr. Amyatt was at Monghyr to settle the differences with the Nawab. "No definite instructions could be given to Mr. Ellis without ascertaining what Mr.Amyatt was doing there, and how he understood the posture of afiairs. It became, therefore, necessary to send an astute officer. He would visit Mr. Amyatt, take instructions from him, and go to Mr. Ellis, and then explain to him the views of the Council at Calcutta and those of Amyatt.
With this object Governor Vansittart had called Mr.Foster back from Purandarpur. He was to go in charge of the boat of arms, and after, visiting Amyatt proceed to Patna. Consequently, Foster had to start up country as soon as he reached Calcutta. He got intimation about these things beforehand, and consequently sent Shaibalini to Monghyr in advance. On his way to Patna he met Shaibalini.
With Shaibalini and the boat of arms, Foster came to Monghyr, where he moored. After visiting Mr. Amyatt, he had just taken his leave, when Gurgan Khan seized one of his boats. Recriminations followed between Amyatt and the Nawab. At last it was settled between Amyatt and Foster that, if the Nawab would release the boat in the meantime, well and good; otherwise, the next morning, Foster would leave the boat of arms behind, and pursue his journey to Patna.
Both the boats of Foster had been fastened to the bank of the river. One was a country junk, very large, and the other, a barge. On the junk a few of the Nawab’s sepoys were mounting guard. A few more sepoys were also stationed on the bank. This was the boat in which arms had been stowed away and Gurgan Khan wanted to intercept.
The barge did not carry any arms. It was lying about fifty cubits off the junk. There was no guard of the Nawab on it. An English sentry, commonly called Telinga, was sitting on the roof and keeping watch.
It was nearly half—past one in the morning. The night was dark, but clear. The sentries on the barge now stood up, then sat down, and again drowsily nodded. On the bank was a small reed—copse. Behind it a man was watching. The watcher was Protap Ray himself.
Protap Ray marked the sentry’s drowsy nodding and he quietly glided into the water. Hearing the splash, the sentry drowsily called out, “who come there”? Protap Ray did not answer. The sentry went on nodding away as before. Inside the boat, Foster lay in vigilant wakefulness. At the sentry’s challenge, he threw his eyes round from within the barge and saw a man had got into the water for a bath.
At this moment suddenly the crack of a musket was heard in the direction of the reed-thicket. The sentry on the barge, hit by the bullet, fell into the water Protap then moved away in the shadow of the barge and stood immersed in water up to the lips.
At the report of the musket the sepoys of the junk noisily shouted out, “what is up there?” All the other men in the boat were roused. Foster came out, musket in hand.
He began to look round on all sides. He saw that the Telinga sentry had vanished, and in the starlight he found his dead body floating on the water. His first thought was that the Nawab’s sepoys had hit the Telinga, but the next moment, he discovered a slight trail of smoke in the direction of the reed-thicket. He also found that the men of the other boat were running up to learn what the matter was. The stars were glimmering in the sky, lights were burning in the city, hundreds of large boats along the bank of the Ganges lay motionless in the dark like sleeping ogresses, and the ever-flowing Ganges ran past bubbling along. In that current the sentry’s corpse floated down. Foster saw all this in a trice.
Foster noticed a thin streak of smoke hovering on the copse; he raised the musket in his hand and began to take aim in that direction. He had been perfectly convinced that behind the thicket lay the lurking foe. He knew also that the enemy who had killed the sentry unseen might also kill him at that very moment. But Foster had come out to India after the battle of Plassey. That an Indian could dare aim at an Englishman, found no lodgment in his mind. Moreover, for an Englishman, death was preferable rather than be afraid of an Indian enemy. With this idea he took his stand there, and had just raised his musket, when out flashed a gun from the thicket. Again the crack of a firearm was heard, and struck in the head Foster fell into the current below like the sentry before him, the gun in his hand falling on the boat with a crash.
At that very instant, Protap unsheathed a knife from his girdle and cut the rope which confined the barge. The water being shallow at that place and the current being feeble, the boatmen did not cast anchor; and even if they had done so, it could not stand in the way of the supple-fingered and powerful Protap. Then at one bound Protap sprang into the boat.
All these happened within a hundreth part of the time taken in narrating these events. The fall of the sentry, the coming out of Foster, then his fall, and again the entrance of Protap into the boat, all these happened before the men in the other boat could come up. But they did come at last.
They found that Protap’s skill had set the barge adrift. One of them tried to swim up and overtake it, but Protap took up a pole and struck him on the head. This sent him spinning back and no one else made any further attempt. Protap punted the boat, the boat veered into a deep current and darted of in an easterly direction.
Pole in hand, Protap turned round and saw that another Telinga sepoy resting his knee against the roof of the boat was taking aim at him. Protap raised his pole aloft and struck him on the hand. Disabled by the stroke, the gun fell from his hands. Protap took it up, and also the one which had fallen from Foster’s hands, and then addressed the men of the boat in the following words :—
“Now listen to me! Know me as Protap Ray. Even the Nawab does not despise me. With these two guns and my pole, I think, I alone can settle you all If you follow my advice, I will not molest you. I am going at the helm, let the crew take the oars. The rest of you shall remain where you are. Budge an inch, and you are dead men; otherwise, there is no fear.”
With these words Protap Ray poked the crew up with his pole and set them about. Shrinking in fear they applied themselves to the cars. Protap himself took the helm, no one spoke a word after that. The boat spun along. Some random shots were fired from the junk, but no one being able to take proper aim in the starlight, they instantly ceased.
A few men belonging to the junk got into a dinghey with muskets and tried to tackle the barge. At first Protap did not oppose them, but when they had come sufiiciently near, be aimed both his guns at them and fired. Two men were wounded, and the rest taking fright put about the boat and withdrew.
When Ramcharan, who lay concealed in the reed-thicket, found that Protap was out of harm’s way and certain sepoys of the junk were approaching to search the copse, he quietly turned on his heel.