ears ago. But in the first place,
I was very slow in picking up their lingo. You see, until within the
last three or four years, there have always been other Englishmen with
me. Of course we talked together, and as most of them were able to
speak a little of the lingo, there was no occasion for me to learn it.
Then I was always, from the first, when they saw that I was handy at
all sorts of things, kept at odd jobs, and so got less chance of
picking up the language than those who were employed in drilling, or
who had nothing to do but talk to their guards. But most of all, I did
not try to escape because I found that, if I did so, it would
certainly cost my companions their lives. That was the way that
scoundrel Tippoo kept us from making attempts to get off.

"Well, soon after the last of the other captives was murdered, we
moved away to Kistnagherry, which was a very difficult place to escape
from; and besides, very soon after we got there, I heard of the war
with our people, and hoped that they would take the place. It was, as
you may suppose, a terrible disappointment to me when they failed in
their attack on it. Still, I hoped that they would finally thrash
Tippoo, and that, somehow, I might get handed over to them. However,
as you know, when peace was made, and Kistnagherry had to be given
over, the governor got orders to evacuate it, without waiting for the
English to come up to take possession.

"Well, since I have been at Savandroog, I have thought often of trying
to get away. By the time I got there, I had learned to speak the
language fairly enough to make my way across the country, and I have
been living in hopes that, somehow or other, I might get possession of
a rope long enough to let myself down the rocks. But, as I told you, I
have never so much as seen one up there twenty feet long.

"I did think of gradually buying enough cotton cloth to twist up and
make a rope of; but you see, when one has been years in captivity, one
loses a lot of one's energy. If I had been worse off, I should have
set about the thing in earnest; but you see, I was not badly treated
at all. I was always doing odd carpentering jobs for the colonel and
officers, and armourer's work at the guns. Any odd time I had over, I
did jobs for the soldiers and their wives. I got a good many little
presents, enough to keep me in decent clothes and decent food--if you
can call the food you have up there decent--and to provide me with
tobacc