href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@18813@[email protected]#PicK" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Dick and his friends escape from the hill fortress

Preface.

While some of our wars in India are open to the charge that they were undertaken on slight provocation, and were forced on by us in order that we might have an excuse for annexation, our struggle with Tippoo Saib was, on the other hand, marked by a long endurance of wrong, and a toleration of abominable cruelties perpetrated upon Englishmen and our native allies. Hyder Ali was a conqueror of the true Eastern type. He was ambitious in the extreme. He dreamed of becoming the Lord of the whole of Southern India. He was an able leader, and, though ruthless where it was his policy to strike terror, he was not cruel from choice.

His son, Tippoo, on the contrary, revelled in acts of the most abominable cruelty. It would seem that he massacred for the very pleasure of massacring, and hundreds of British captives were killed by famine, poison, or torture, simply to gratify his lust for murder. Patience was shown towards this monster until patience became a fault, and our inaction was naturally ascribed by him to fear. Had firmness been shown by Lord Cornwallis, when Seringapatam was practically in his power, the second war would have been avoided and thousands of lives spared. The blunder was a costly one to us, for the work had to be done all over again, and the fault of Lord Cornwallis retrieved by the energy and firmness of the Marquis of Wellesley.

The story of the campaign is taken from various sources, and the details of the treatment of the prisoners from the published narratives of two officers who effected their escape from prisons.

G. A. Henty.

Chapter 1: A Lost Father.

"There is no saying, lad, no saying at all. All I know is that your father, the captain, was washed ashore at the same time as I was. As you have heard me say, I owed my life to him. I was pretty nigh gone when I caught sight of him, holding on to a spar. Spent as I was, I managed to give a shout loud enough to catch his ear. He looked round. I waved my hand and shouted, 'Goodbye, Captain!' Then I sank lower and lower, and felt that it was all over, when, half in a dream, I heard your father's voice shout, 'Hold on, Ben!' I gave one more struggle, and then I felt him catch me by the arm. I don't remember what happened, until I found myself lashed to the spar beside him.

"'That is right, Ben,' he said cheerily, as I held up my head; 'you will do now. I had a sharp tussle to get you here, but it is all right. We are setting inshore fast. Pull yourself together, for we shall have a rough time of it in the surf. Anyhow, we will stick together, come what may.'

"As the waves lifted us up, I saw the coast, with its groves of coconuts almost down to the water's edge, and white sheets of surf running up high on the sandy beach. It was not more than a hundred yards away, and the captain sang out,

"'Hurrah! There are some natives coming down. They will give us a hand.'

"Next time we came up on a wave, he said, 'When we get close, Ben, we must cut ourselves adrift from this spar, or it will crush the life out of us; but before we do that, I will tie the two of us together.'

"He cut a bit of rope from the raffle hanging from the spar, and tied one end round my waist and the other round his own, leaving about five fathoms loose between us.

"'There,' he shouted in my ear. 'If either of us gets chucked well up, and the natives get a hold of him, the other must come up, too. Now mind, Ben, keep broadside on to the wave if you can, and let it roll you up as far as it will take you. Then, when you feel that its force is spent, stick your fingers and toes into the sand, and hold on like grim death.'

"Well, we drifted nearer and nearer until, just as we got to the point where the great waves tumbled over, the captain cut the lashings and swam a little away, so as to be clear of the spar. Then a big wave came towering up. I was carried along like a straw in a whirlpool. Then there was a crash that pretty nigh knocked the senses out of me. I do not know what happened afterwards. It was a confusion of white water rushing past and over me. Then for a moment I stopped, and at once made a clutch at the ground that I had been rolling over. There was a big strain, and I was hauled backwards as if a team of wild horses were pulling at me. Then there was a jerk, and I knew nothing more, till I woke up and found myself on the sands, out of reach of the surf.

"Your father did not come to for half an hour. He had been hurt a bit worse than I had, but at last he came round.

"Well, we were kept three months in a sort of castle place; and then one day a party of chaps, with guns and swords, came into the yard where we were sitting. The man, who seemed the head of the fellows who had been keeping us prisoners, walked up with one who was evidently an officer over the chaps as had just arrived. He looked at us both, and then laid his hand on the captain. Then the others came up.

"The captain had just time to say, 'We are going to be parted, Ben. God bless you! If ever you get back, give my love to my wife, and tell her what has happened to me, and that she must keep up her heart, for I shall make a bolt of it the first time I get a chance.'

"The next day, I was taken off to a place they call Calicut. There I stopped a year, and then the rajah of the place joined the English against Tippoo, who was lord of all the country, and I was released. I had got, by that time, to talk their lingo pretty well, though I have forgotten it all now, and I had found out that the chaps who had taken your father away were a party sent down by Tippoo, who, having heard that two Englishmen had been cast on shore, had insisted upon one of them being handed over to him.

"It is known that a great many of the prisoners in Tippoo's hands have been murdered in their dungeons. He has sworn, over and over again, that he has no European prisoners, but every one knows that he has numbers of them in his hands. Whether the captain is one of those who have been murdered, or whether he is still in one of Tippoo's dungeons, is more than I or any one else can say."

"Well, as I have told you, Ben, that is what we mean to find out."

"I know that is what your mother has often said, lad, but it seems to me that you have more chance of finding the man in the moon than you have of learning whether your father is alive, or not."

"Well, we are going to try, anyhow, Ben. I know it's a difficult job, but Mother and I have talked it over, ever since you came home with the news, three years ago; so I have made up my mind, and nothing can change me. You see, I have more chances than most people would have. Being a boy is all in my favour; and then, you know, I talk the language just as well as English."

"Yes, of course that is a pull, and a big one; but it is a desperate undertaking, lad, and I can't say as I see how it is to be done."

"I don't see either, Ben, and I don't expect to see until we get out there; but, desperate or not, Mother and I are going to try."

Dick Holland, the speaker, was a lad of some fifteen years of age. His father, who was captain of a fine East Indiaman, had sailed from London when he was nine, and had never returned. No news had been received of the ship after she touched at the Cape, and it was supposed that she had gone down with