s of the shops of those merchants who dealt in
articles of Western manufacture. These were largely Marwari merchants
from the Bombay Presidency, and they thought to relieve themselves of
this wasp-like horde of boy sentinels by circulating the rumour that a
number of Panjabis and Afghans had come down from the North to kidnap
boys and children whom they could lay hands on. This rumour was widely
believed by the credulous mob of Calcutta, and, all unknown to us,
who were ignorant even of the existence of the rumours, our team had
been pointed out as some of the probable kidnappers.

We had returned on the morning of August 23, 1906, from playing
a number of matches in Krishnagar, and were to leave Calcutta the
same afternoon to play a match the following day at Bhagalpur. The
team had broken up into two parties to get their breakfast in one of
those eating shops which abound in the Calcutta Bazaar, and I had
gone along to Howrah Station to purchase the tickets. It was a hot
day, and on my return I stopped at a refreshment shop in the Harrison
Road, near the Church Mission Boarding-House, where we were stopping,
to get a glass of lemonade.

I was sitting quietly drinking it in the shop front, when I noticed
the whole bazaar was in an uproar. The crowd was rushing to and fro,
and the shopkeepers were hurriedly putting up their shutters. All
ignorant of the fact that it was my own boys who were being attacked,
I quietly finished my glass and strolled back to our hostel, thinking
there was no reason why I should trouble myself about affairs of
Calcutta which did not concern me. No sooner had I entered the
gates of the compound when I saw one of our team--Rahim Bakhsh--his
face covered with blood, and another one injured. "Do you not know,"
cried one, "that our boys have been murderously assaulted, and perhaps
killed?" "Where are they?" I hurriedly asked. "They are probably in the
hospital by this time." A cab was passing at the moment, and I jumped
in, and drove off to the hospital. Running up into the casualty room,
I was horrified to find six of the team lying about with their clothes
all torn and covered with blood and mud. Their heads had been shaved
by the casualty dressers, and were so cut and swollen that I could
not recognize them all until I had spoken to them, and then for the
first time I learnt what had happened.

A party of nine had gone in a refreshment room, and were having their
breakfast. Meanwhile they n