Dying by threes and fours of frightful maladies, the designations of which they hardly knew; trying to eat nauseous and unwonted food, and to sleep upon a bed of boards; tormented by flies, and musquitoes, and dirt, and prickly heat, and all the lesser evils that aggravate and keep for ever fresh the consciousness of a great misfortune: doing for the murderer of their dearest ones that labour which in Asia has always been the distinctive sign and badge of slavery: to such reality of woe had been reduced these beings whose idea of peril had once been derived from romances, and who had been acquainted with destitution only through tracts and the reports of charitable institutions. Alas for the delicate Mem Sahibs, and the pretty Missy Babas, for whom nothing had formerly been too dainty and well-appointed! Alas for the handy and patient soldiers' wives, who had followed their good men into the discomfort of barrack life to be rewarded thus! Alas for sturdy Bridget Widdowson, and tender Mrs. Moore, who bore on her bosom a child destined never to lisp the name of his brave father! Her perchance one of the victors, whose son or brother had fallen beneath her husband's sword, (for he was no sluggard in the onset), might see weeping like Andromache over her toil at the weary mill, and might say: "This was the wife of him who of all the English fought the best, whenever the battle waxed hot around their wall." And, so speaking, he would renew her grief at thought of the man who was no longer there to shield her from the day of bondage. But he, floating on his face past some distant city, or stranded on a bank of sand trodden by none save the vulture and the crocodile, saw not how she was misused, nor heard when she cried for succour. The number of captives diminished so fast that the Nana began to fear lest he should soon have no hostages wherewith to provide against the consequences of a possible reverse. They were accordingly driven twice a day into the verandah, and forced to sit there until they had inhaled as much fresh air as, in the judgment of the Begum, would support an English constitution for the space of twelve hours. This substitute for the morning gallop and the evening promenade was very distasteful to our ladies, on account of the idlers who came to stare, and remark how odd a Lady Sahib looked when neither on horseback nor in her carriage. The poor creatures were overheard whispering among themselves that the British never used their prisoners thus.