ruin. While he was busy
with Marshman in removing the papers in the north end some one opened a
window, when the air set the entire building on flame. By midnight the
roof fell in along its whole length, and the column of fire leapt up
towards heaven. With "solemn serenity" the members of the mission
family remained seated in front of the desolation.

The ruins were still smoking when next evening Dr. Carey arrived from
Calcutta, which was ringing with the sad news. The venerable scholar
had suffered most, for his were the manuscripts; the steel punches were
found uninjured. The Sikh and Telugoo grammars and ten Bible versions
in the press were gone. Second editions of Confucius. A Dissertation
on the Chinese Language, and of Ward on the Hindoos, and smaller works
were destroyed. The translation of the Ramayana, on which he and
Marshman had been busy for a year, was stopped for ever; fifty years
after the present writer came upon some charred sheets of the fourth
volume, which had been on the press and rescued. The Circular Letter
for April 1812 is printed on paper scorched at the edge. Worst of all
was the loss of that polyglot dictionary of all the languages derived
from the Sanskrit which, if Carey had felt any of this world's
ambition, would have perpetuated his name in the first rank of
philologists.

With the delicacy which always marked him Dr. Marshman had himself gone
down to Calcutta next morning to break the news to Carey, who received
it with choking utterance. The two then called on the friendly
chaplain, Thomason, who burst into tears. When the afternoon tide
enabled the three to reach Serampore, after a two hours' hard pull at
the flood, they found Ward rejoicing. He had been all day clearing
away the rubbish, and had just discovered the punches and matrices
unharmed. The five presses too were untouched. He had already opened
out a long warehouse nearer the river-shore, the lease of which had
fallen in to them, and he had already planned the occupation of that
uninviting place in which the famous press of Serampore and, at the
last, the Friend of India weekly newspaper found a home till 1875. The
description of the scene and of its effect on Carey by an eye-witness
like Thomason has a value of its own:--

"The year 1812 was ushered in by an earthquake which was preceded by a
loud noise; the house shook; the oil in the lamps on the walls was
thrown out; the birds made a frightful noise; t