It was full daylight when Desmond and his party of three struck off inland in a direction that would bring them upon the track of the carts. He had a presentiment that his difficulties were only beginning. By this time, no doubt, the news of his escapade had been carried through the country by the swift kasids of the Nawab. His passing at Khulna and Amboa would be reported, and a watch would be kept for him at Hugli. If perchance a kasid or a chance traveller entered Santipur, the trick he had practised there would be immediately discovered; but if the messenger only touched at the places on the direct route on the other bank, he might hope that some time would elapse before the authorities there suspected that he had left the river. They must soon learn that three petalas lay wrecked in the stream below Amboa; but they could not satisfy themselves without examination that these were the vessels of which they were in search. Tramping across two miles of fields newly sown with maize and sorghum, he at length descried the trail of his convoy and soon came up with it. If pursuers were indeed upon his track, only by the greatest good fortune could he escape them. The carts creaked along with painful slowness; the wheels half-way to the axles in dust; now stopping altogether, now rocking like ships in a stormy sea. With his arrival and the promise of liberal bakshish the hackeriwallahs urged the labouring oxen with their cruel goads till Desmond, always tender with animals, could hardly endure the sight. By nine o’clock the morning had become stiflingly hot. There was little or no breeze, and Desmond, unused of late to active exercise, found the heat terribly trying. But Bulger suffered still more. A stout, florid man, he toiled along, panting, streaming with sweat, in difficulties so manifest that Desmond, eyeing him anxiously, feared lest a stroke of apoplexy should bring him to an untimely end. The country was so flat that a string of carts could not fail to be seen from a long distance. If noticed from the towers of Hugli across the river, curiosity, if not suspicion, would be aroused, and it would not take long to send over by a ford a force sufficient to arrest and capture the party. To escape observation it was necessary to make wide detours. At several small hamlets on the route Desmond managed to get fresh oxen, but not enough for complete changes of team. So, through all the broiling heat of the day, at hours when no other Europeans in all Bengal were out of doors, the convoy struggled on, making its own road, crossing the dry beds of pools, skirting or labouring over rugged nullahs.