windows looked merely into one end of a long arcade[1]. At six o'clock next morning, twenty-two men and one woman passed alive out of the stench of that deadly torture-room. Holwell, who had been saved almost by a miracle, was carried off, with several others, in irons to Murshidábád; while the rest were left to rejoin Drake's party on board the fleet then lying off Govindpur. A few days later the ships cast anchor at Falta, a village and Dutch station near the confluence of the Húglí with the Dámodar. Here Drake resolved to wait for the answer which Madras would surely send to his prayer for help against the Súbahdár.
On the 2nd August the refugees at Falta were cheered by the arrival of a ship which brought Major Kilpatrick and two hundred and thirty soldiers from Madras. Meanwhile Hastings kept Drake regularly informed of all that was going on, so far as he could learn, in Bengal. Presently supplies ran short in the camp at Falta, and disease played havoc among the troops. At Drake's request Hastings pleaded with the Súbahdár's ministers so successfully, that a native market was opened at Falta, which supplied Drake's people with the fresh food they sorely needed. He had also become the channel for secret correspondence between his chief and certain leaders of a plot against their oppressive master in his own capital. But the fear of detection drove him ere long in hasty flight to Chánár, and thence down the Ganges to his friends at
- ↑ Busteed's Echoes from Old Calcutta.
