view, was gloomy. The Gujarati had
evidently won over the whole ship's company. Were they acting from the
inclination for a rover's life, coupled with the hope of gain, or had
they been jockeyed into mutiny by Fuzl Khan? Desmond could not tell, nor
could he find out without betraying a knowledge of the plot.

Then he remembered the Babu. He alone had been excepted; the other men
held him in contempt; but despite his weaknesses, for which he was indeed
hardly accountable, Desmond had a real liking for him; and it was an
unpleasant thought that, whatever happened to himself, if the plot
succeeded, Surendra Nath was doomed.

But thinking of this, Desmond saw one ray of hope. He had not been for
long the companion of men of different castes without picking up a few
notions of what caste meant. The Babu was a Brahman; as a Bengali he had
no claim on the sympathies of the others; but as a Brahman his person to
other Hindus was inviolable. The Marathas were Hindus, and they at least
would not willingly raise their hand against him. Yet Desmond could not
be certain on this point. During his short residence in Gheria he had
found that, in the East as too often in the West, the precepts of
religion were apt to be kept rather in the letter than in the spirit. He
had seen the sacred cow, which no good Hindu would venture to kill for
untold gold, atrociously overworked, and, when too decrepit to be of
further service, left to perish miserably of neglect and starvation. It
might be that although the Marathas would not themselves lay hands on the
Babu, they would be quite content to look calmly on while a Mohammedan
did the work.

At the best, it was Desmond and the Babu against the crew--hopeless odds,
for if it came to a fight the latter would be worse than useless. Not
that Desmond held the man in such scorn as the men of his own color.
Surendra Nath was certainly timid and slack, physically weak,
temperamentally a coward: yet he had shown gleams of spirit during the
escape, and it seemed to Desmond that he was a man who, having once been
induced to enter upon a course, might prove both constant and loyal. The
difficulty now was that, prostrated by his illness during the storm, he
was not at his best; certainly in no condition to face a difficulty
either mental or physical.

So Desmond resolved not to tell him of the danger impending. He feared
the effect upon his shaken nerves. He would not intentionally do anything