swollen." The impudent fabrication was generally accepted in the city
and the cantonments; and met with ready credence in England, where the
imaginations of men were excited by a series of prurient and ghastly
fictions. Under one shape or another the incident long went the round
of provincial theatres, and sensation magazines, and popular lectures
illustrated with dissolving views. Meanwhile the poor girl was living
quietly in the family of her master under a Mahomedan name. Our police
made diligent inquiries, which resulted in a strong conviction that
she had accompanied the flight of the rebels, and, after being hurried
about from camping-ground to camping-ground, had met a natural death
in a corner of Nepaul. She was by no means of pure English blood. To
some the very statement of the fact may appear heartless, but truth
demands that it should be made.
The ladies on board the escaped vessel had no reason to congratulate
themselves on their fortune: for they were embarked on a voyage which,
for concentrated misery, has no parallel even among the narratives of
famous shipwrecks so dear to the taste of our forefathers. Soon after
leaving the shore, Major Vibart had taken a large party off a sinking
boat; so that more than five-score persons were crowded into a space
which could barely accommodate fifty. It was difficult to propel the
craft, and impossible to guide her. A shot from the southern bank sent
her spinning round in the current, with a broken rudder; and the native
boatmen had taken good care to leave behind neither oar nor punt-pole.
Alternately stranding and drifting; paddling with planks torn from the
bulwarks, and trying to steer with a spare stretcher; our countrymen
tended down towards Allahabad at the rate of half a mile an hour, under
a shower of canister and shells from either bank. "We were often," says
Thomson, "within a hundred yards of the guns on the Oude side of the
river, and saw them load, prime, and fire into our midst." Presently
the bullocks which drew the sepoy artillery broke down in the deep sand
of the Ganges; but incessant volleys of musketry, at point blank range,
allowed our countrymen little leisure to rejoice over the intermission
of the cannonade.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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