When the day broke, those of our officers who had learned the bearings of the locality during many a hot tramp after snipe and wild-fowl saw with chagrin that they had hardly gained ten miles in twice as many hours. And yet that dawn brought one last glimmer of hope. The wet weather had arrived: the river would soon be mounting fast: and nothing was to be seen of the enemy. Presently some natives walked down the bank for their morning wash; and Vibart sent on shore a native drummer, with five rupees in his hand, and directions to obtain information, and, if possible, some provisions. He accosted a peasant, who desisted from the occupation of cleaning his mouth with a bit of stick chewed into a tooth-brush, and listened very civilly to what our envoy had to say. This man undertook to procure some rice and flour, but assured the drummer that our people would have no further need of victuals, as Baboo Ram Bux, a powerful noble whose estates lay a little further down on the Oude side, had engaged that not an Englishman should pass his territory alive. He, however, showed no objection to take our money, and went inland, leaving behind his brass drinking-vessel to guarantee his fidelity: a pledge which he never came back to redeem. On hearing the report of their messenger the fugitives agreed to despair. After the manner of becalmed and starving mariners, Whiting pencilled some lines on a scrap of paper, which he enclosed in a bottle, and committed to the stream: the faithless stream, that has never rendered up the sad deposit.