The next day there was not a scholar in the native school, but the love of learning soon filled it again. Even down till quite recently, when the bands of attachment to the old heathenism have become much loosened, every open conversion continued to empty the schools, though never for long at a time. The women soon recovered from their alarm and were baptized, and the mission also gained over an influential Portuguese gentleman named Fernandez, whom their tenets led them to view as in as much need of conversion as the heathen. He proved an active assistant, and for full thirty years laboured in their cause. In the meantime Lord Wellesley had been engaged in founding the college at Fort William, Calcutta, for the training of young Europeans for the civil service in the knowledge of the numerous native tongues, laws, and customs with which they had to deal--and which are as various as they are important--not only practically, but philosophically. The only person at that time in Bengal qualified to teach the Bengalese language was the Northamptonshire cobbler, who had acquired it for the love of God and the spread of Gospel light! His dissent was a disqualification for any of the higher offices of the college, but the teachership was offered to him, with a salary of 500 rupees a month--absolute affluence compared with his original condition. Yet he would not accept the post unless he were allowed still to be regarded as a missionary. No objection was made, and thus by his talent and usefulness had Carey forced from the Government which had forbidden him to set foot on their territories his recognition in the character he had always claimed. Even his private secular earnings he never regarded as his own: this income, and that arising from Marshman's school, these good men viewed as rendering their mission from henceforth independent, and setting free the Society at home to support fresh ones. Already the accounts they sent home were stirring up many more subscribers, and the commendations bestowed on them in the periodical accounts pained their humility. Ward wrote that it was like a public show: "Very fine missionaries to be seen here! Walk in, brethren and sisters, walk in!" It was happy for the missionaries that their ground had thus been won, for the war with Denmark occasioned Serampore to be occupied by British troops early in 1801, and this would, earlier in their career, infallibly have led to their expulsion: but, as it was, they were allowed to proceed exactly as they had done before.