again
through the left cheek. But the sudden pain and bleeding incommoded me
so far as to hinder my pursuit of Rupert, so that he got clear away
and left the town that night, it seems, for Moorshedabad.

I reported the affair to Mr. Drake, merely concealing some details, as
that this was my kinsman; and he was so well satisfied to have got rid
of him that he promised me I should receive half the reward offered
for his capture. But the subsequent events doubtless put it out of his
mind, for I never received anything. And on the whole I was satisfied
with this, not wishing to make a profit, as it were, out of the
treachery of one of my own family, however unworthy.

Even had I succeeded in taking Gurney, and had he been executed, it
was now too late to have altered the course of events. Every day
brought fresh intelligence confirming the hostility of the Nabob
towards the English. One day he sent to demand the levelling of Fort
William to the ground, the next he threatened the withdrawal of the
Company's privileges, and in particular the dustucks, which he said
were abused by being lent to Gentoos, his own subjects. Finally word
came that Surajah Dowlah had marched out of Moorshedabad with his
army, and had sat down before Cossimbuzar, where we had a factory and
a small fort.

All this time the Governor and others of the Council had refused to
believe that anything was intended beyond extorting a sum of money
from the Company. But the wiser and more prudent ones, among whom were
Messrs. Byng and Holwell, took a different view, which they made me
share. Now at last Mr. Drake seemed to rouse from his supineness, and
gave orders for the town and fort to be prepared against attack.
Before these orders could be carried out, however, arrived the news
that Mr. Watts, chief of the Cossimbuzar party, was a prisoner in the
Nabob's hands, that the place was surrendered, and plundered by the
Moors, and that our garrison, though promised security, had been so
barbarously used by them that Mr. Elliott, the commanding officer, had
taken his own life.

And now men began to tell each other fearful stories of Surajah Dowlah
and his career. It was said that when he was a child his favourite
pastime had been the torturing of birds and animals, from which, while
still in his boyhood, he had passed to mutilating slaves; that not
only had he given himself from his earliest years to every species of
oriental lust--some too vile to be named