oticed that a crowd of many hundreds had
collected outside. Scarcely realizing that they were the cause of
the crowd, after finishing their meal, they came out to return to
the Mission Boarding-House, but were met by cries on all sides:
"These are the kidnappers! Kill them! kill them!" Even now they
did not understand the cause of the excitement, but when they asked
what it was all about, and what was wanted from them, they were only
answered by derisive shouts and a shower of stones and brickbats.
Before they had time to organize any resistance they were separated
one from another, in the midst of a raging mob, who belaboured them
with stones and sticks until they fell senseless in the street. Two
only managed to escape--Rahim Bakhsh, whom I had met in the hostel,
and one other, who had managed to get into a passing carriage.

Five of them, having been reduced to a state of insensibility, were
taken by the mob and thrown into a back alley, where the blood from
their wounds continued to flow and trickle down in a red stream
into the street gutter. One of them--Ganpat Rai--was rescued by
a friendly Bengal gentleman, who bundled him into his house and
attended to his wounds, and afterwards sent him under escort to the
hospital. Another--Gurmukh Das--was being belaboured by some ruffians
while lying in the middle of the road, when an English gentleman passed
in his carriage. Naturally indignant at what he saw, he jumped down
and asked them what they thought themselves to be, beating a senseless
man in that way; and if he had committed a crime, why did they not
take him to the police-station? Someone in the crowd called out,
"This Englishman is their officer: let us kill him!" and, leaving
the boy, they all set on him. He defended himself for some time,
when some ruffian, coming up behind, turned a basket over his head,
and it would have gone hard with him had not some friendly natives
pulled him into the Ripon College, which was close at hand.

We would fain have got away from Calcutta as soon as the condition
of the wounded enabled us to travel, for the unaccustomed diet and
climate was affecting the health of all of us; but we found ourselves
prisoners to the will of the Government, who required us to remain
in Calcutta as witnesses in the prosecution which the Government was
instituting, and we had to spend day after day of weary waiting,
hanging about the police-courts of Bow Street Bazaar. The police
had secured a n