rably bad; and at the gumashta's suggestion Desmond
had arranged for three extra teams of oxen to accompany the carts, to
extricate them in case of necessity from holes or soft places.
Fortunately the weather was dry: had the rains begun--and they were
overdue--the road would have been a slough of mud and ooze, and the
journey would have been impossible.

When the convoy had set off, Desmond with three men, including the
serang, returned to the empty boats. The lookers-on stared to see the
craft put off and drop down the river with a crew of one man each:
Desmond in the first, and the smaller boat that had contained Bulger and
his party trailing behind. Floating down some four or five miles with the
stream, Desmond gave the order to scuttle the three petalas, and rowed
ashore in the smaller boat. On reaching land he got the serang to knock a
hole in the bottom of the boat, and shoved it off towards midstream,
where it rapidly filled and sank.

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 traveler 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 halfway 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 laboring oxen with their cruel goads till Desmond, always
tender with animals,