With Clive in India; Or, The Beginnings of an Empire. G. A. Henty

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ little more one's own master, and one's duties begin to be a little more varied and pleasant. One gets a chance of being sent up, occasionally, with goods; or on some message or other to one of the native princes, and then one gets treated like a prince, and sees that India is not necessarily so detestable as we have contrived to make it here. The only bearable time of one's life is the few hours after dinner, when one can sit in a chair in the veranda, and smoke and look at the sea. Some of the fellows play billiards and cards; but if you will take my advice, you won't go in for that sort of thing. It takes a lot out of one, and fellows that do it are, between you and me, in the bad books of the bigwigs. Besides, they lose money, get into debt, and all sorts of mischief comes of it."

      The speaker was sitting between Charlie and Peters, and was talking in a tone of voice which would not be overheard by the others.

      "Thank you," Charlie said. "I, for one, will certainly take your advice. I suppose one can buy ponies here. I should think a good ride every morning early, before work, would do one good."

      "Yes, it is not a bad thing," Johnson said. "A good many fellows do it, when they first come out here. But after a time they lose their energy, you see, though some do keep it up.

      "What appetites you fellows have! It does one good to see you eat."

      "I have not the least idea what we are eating," Charlie said, laughing; "but it's really very nice, whatever it is. But there seems an immense quantity of pepper, or hot stuff of some kind or other; which one would have thought, in this tremendous heat, would have made one hotter instead of cooler."

      "Yes," their new friend answered. "No doubt all this pepper and curry do heat the blood; but you see, it is done to tempt the appetite. Meat here is fearfully coarse and tasteless. Our appetites are poor, and were it not for these hot sauces, we should eat next to nothing.

      "Will you have some bananas?"

      "They are nice and cool," Peters said as, having peeled the long fruit as he saw his companion doing, he took a bite of one; "but they have very little taste."

      "Most of our fruit is tasteless," Johnson said, "except, indeed, the mango and mangostine. They are equal to any English fruit in flavour, but I would give them all for a good English apple. Its sharpness would be delicious here.

      "And now, as you have done, if you will come and sit in the veranda of my room, we will smoke a cigar and have something cool to drink; and I will answer, as well as I can, the questions you've asked me about the state of things here."

      When they had seated themselves in the extremely comfortable cane chairs, in a veranda facing the sea, and had lit their cigars, their friend began:

      "Madras isn't much of a place, now; but you should have seen it before the French had it. Our chiefs think of nothing but trade, and care nothing how squalid and miserable is the place in which they make money. The French have larger ideas. They transformed this place; cleared away that portion of the native town which surrounded the factory and fort, made wide roads, formed an esplanade, improved and strengthened the fortifications, forbade the natives to throw all their rubbish and offal on the beach; and made, in fact, a decent place of it. We hardly knew it when we came back, and whatever the Company may have thought, we were thoroughly grateful for the French occupation.

      "One good result, too, is that our quarters have been greatly improved; for not only did the French build several new houses, but at present all the big men, the council and so on, are still living at Fort Saint David, which is still the seat of administration. So you see, we have got better quarters; we are rid of the stenches and nuisances of the native town; the plague of flies which made our life a burden is abated; and we can sit here and enjoy the cool sea breeze, without its being poisoned before it reaches us by the heaped up filth on the beach.

      "It must have wrung Dupleix's heart to give up the place over which they expended so much pains, and after all it didn't do away with the fighting. In April we sent a force from Fort Saint David--before we came back here--four hundred and thirty white soldiers and a thousand Sepoys, under the command of Captain Cope, to aid a fellow who had been turned out of the Rajahship of Tanjore. I believe he was a great blackguard, and the man who had taken his place was an able ruler liked by the people."

      "Then why should we interfere on behalf of the other?" Charlie asked.

      "My dear Marryat," their host said compassionately, "you are very young yet, and quite new to India. You will see, after a time, that right has nothing at all to do with the dealings of the Company, in their relations to the native princes. We are, at present, little people living here on sufferance, among a lot of princes and powers who are enemies and rivals of each other. We have, moreover, as neighbours, another European colony considerably stronger than we are. The consequence is, the question of right cannot enter into the considerations of the Company. It may be said that, for every petty kingdom in Southern India, there are at least two pretenders, very often half a dozen. So far we have not meddled much in their quarrels, but the French have been much more active that way. They always side with one or other of these pretenders, and when they get the man they support into power, of course he repays them for their assistance. In this manner, as I shall explain to you presently, they have virtually made themselves masters of the Carnatic, outside the walls of Fort Saint David and this place.

      "Well, our people thought to take a leaf out of the French book, and as the ex-rajah offered us, in payment for our aid, the possession of Devikota, a town at the mouth of the river Kolrun, a place likely to be of great use to us, we agreed to assist him. Cope, with the land forces, had marched to the border of the Tanjore territory, and the guns and heavy baggage were to go by sea.

      "But, unfortunately, we had a tremendous gale just after they sailed. The admiral's flagship, the Namur, of seventy-four guns; the Pembroke, of sixty; and the hospital ship, Apollo, were totally lost; and the rest of the fleet scattered in all directions. Cope entered the Tanjore territory, but found the whole population attached to the new rajah. It was useless for him, therefore, to march upon Tanjore, which is a really strong town, so he marched down to Devikota, where he hoped to find some of the fleet. Not a ship, however, was to be seen, and as without guns Cope could do nothing, he returned here, as we had just taken possession again.

      "Then he went to Fort Saint David, and there was a great discussion among the bigwigs. It was clear, from what Cope said, that our man had not a friend in his own country. Still, as he pointed out, Devikota was a most important place for us. Neither Madras nor Fort Saint David has a harbour; and Devikota, therefore, where the largest ships could run up the river and anchor, would be of immense utility to us.

      "As this was really the reason for which we had gone into the affair, it was decided to repeat the attempt. By this time Major Lawrence, who commands the whole of the Company's forces in India, and who had been taken a prisoner in one of the French sorties at the siege of Pondicherry, had been released. So he was put at the head of the expedition; and the whole of the Company's English troops, eight hundred in all, including the artillery; and fifteen hundred Sepoys, started on board ship for Devikota. I must tell you that Lawrence is a first-rate fellow, the only really good officer we have out here, and the affair couldn't have been in the hands of a better man.

      "The ships arrived safely at the mouth of the Kolrun, and the troops were landed on the bank of the river opposite the town, where Lawrence intended to erect his batteries; as, in the first place, the shore behind the town was swampy, and in the second the Rajah of Tanjore, who had got news of our coming, had his army encamped there to support the place. Lawrence got his guns in position and fired away, across the river, at the earthen wall of the town. In three days he had a breach. The enemy didn't return our fire, but occupied themselves in throwing up an entrenchment across the side of the fort.

      "We СКАЧАТЬ