ipal gumashtas. The Bengalis, always ready for an
entertainment of this kind, slipped overboard and were soon rowing down
to Chinsura. Their orders were to be back immediately after the second
watch of the night. Only the lascar and Hossain were left in the boat.

Ten minutes after the men had disappeared from view, the serang lit a
small oil lamp in the tiny cabin. He then made his way to the helm,
whispered a word in the lascar's ear, and took his place. The latter
nodded and went into the cabin. Drawing the curtains, he squatted on a
mattress, took from a hiding place in the cabin a few sheets of paper and
a pencil, and, resting the paper on the back of a tray, began to write.

As he did so he frequently consulted a scrap of paper he kept at his left
hand; it was closely covered with letters and figures, these latter not
Hindustani characters, but the Arabic figures employed by Europeans.

The first line of what he wrote himself ran thus:

29 19 28 19 36 38 32 20 21 39 23 34 19 29 29 35 32 38 24 38 23 32
{constructed from the cipher actually used by Mr. Watts at Murshidabad}.

The letter or message upon which he was engaged was not a lengthy one,
but it took a long time to compose. When it was finished the lascar went
over it line by line, comparing it with the paper at his left hand. Then
he folded it very small, sealed it with a wafer, and, returning to the
serang, said a few words. Whereupon Hossain made a trumpet of his hands,
and, looking toward the left bank, sounded a few notes in imitation of a
bird's warble. The shore was fringed here with low bushes. As if in
answer to the call a small boat darted out from the shelter of a bush; a
few strokes brought it alongside of the petala; and the serang, bending
over, handed the folded paper to the boatman, and whispered a few words
in his ear. The man pushed off, and the lascar watched the boat float
silently down the stream until it was lost to sight.

Dawn was hardly breaking when Major Killpatrick, awakened by his servant,
received from his hands a folded paper which by the aid of a candle he
began to pore over, laboriously comparing it with a small code similar to
that used by the lascar. One by one he penciled on a scrap of paper
certain letters, every now and then whistling between his teeth as he
spelt out the words they made. The result appeared thus:

Magazines for ammunition and stores of grain being prepared Tribeni and
Hugli. Bazaar rumor Nawab about