Desmond crept
noiselessly away and returned to his quarters. Not to sleep; he spent the
remainder of his watch below in thinking out his position--in trying to
devise some means of meeting this new and unexpected difficulty. He had
not heard what Fuzl Khan proposed ultimately to do with him. He might
share the Babu's fate: at the best it would appear that he had shaken off
one captivity to fall into the toils of another.
He had heard grim tales of the pirates of the Cambay Gulf; they were not
likely to prove more pleasant masters than the Marathas farther south,
even if they did not prefer to put him summarily out of the way. His
presence among them might prove irksome, and what would the death of a
single English youth matter? He was out of reach of all of his friends;
on the Good Intent none but Bulger and the New Englander had any real
kindness for him, and if Bulger were to mention at any port that a young
English lad was in captivity with the Pirate, what could be done? Should
the projected expedition against Gheria prove successful, and he not be
found among the European prisoners, it would be assumed that he was no
longer living; and even if the news of his escape became known, it was
absurd to suppose that all India would be searched for him.
The outlook, from any point of view, was gloomy. The Gujarati had
evidently won over the whole ship's company. Were they acting from the
inclination for a rover's life, coupled with the hope of gain, or had
they been jockeyed into mutiny by Fuzl Khan? Desmond could not tell, nor
could he find out without betraying a knowledge of the plot.
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