CHAPTER XI
_THE BLACK HOLE_
I have now to tell how we passed through that night, the memory ofwhich to this day moves me to tremble and sicken like a man in strongfear.
At sunset the Moorish soldiers who had charge of the prisoners marchedus all together into a covered gallery or verandah that ran along oneside of the courtyard, from which it was screened off by a row ofarches. While we waited here a part of the soldiers ran to and fro,as if looking for accommodation for us. Surajah Dowlah's promises,reported to us by Mr. Holwell, had so far raised our spirits that someof the prisoners made merry at the difficulty the guard seemed to bein. One man asked if we were to pass the night in that gallery.Another, who stood near me, observed in jest--
"They don't seem to know of the Black Hole."
"I'm afraid we shouldn't all go into that," replied another, laughing.
"What place do you mean?" I asked out of curiosity.
"It is the cell where they confine the soldiers of the garrison,"explained the person next me. "It won't hold more than one or twopersons."
Hardly had he given me this information before the officer in chargeof our guard came hurrying up. He gave some directions to his men, whocommenced pushing and urging us along the gallery to a small door inthe wall at our back. This they threw open, and beckoned to theprisoners to enter.
"By heaven, it is the Black Hole!" exclaimed some one in the throng.
There was a murmur of disbelief, followed by one of indignation, asthose who were in front looked in. The room was barely seven pacesacross each way, and very low. The only openings it contained, besidethe doorway, were two small windows giving, not on to the open air,but merely on to the covered passage in which we had been standing.
"But this is absurd!" cried Mr. Holwell, remonstrating with thesoldiers. "There is not even standing-room for a hundred and fiftypersons in there."
"They cannot intend that we are all to go in. We should besuffocated," said another.
The soldiers beginning to show anger, some of the company walked in todemonstrate how restricted the space was. Nevertheless the Moorscontinued to press us towards the doorway, and seeing that they werein earnest, I whispered to Marian to give me her arm, and went in withthe first. By this means I was just in time to secure Marian a placeat the corner of one of the windows, where she would have a chanceto breathe. I took up my position next to her, and we were quicklysurrounded and closely pressed on by those who followed. Before we hadwell realised what was happening to us, the whole of the prisoners hadbeen thrust into the cell, and the door, which opened inwards, pulledto with a slam and locked.
The moment this happened I found myself bursting out into a mostprodigious sweat--the water running out of my skin as though squeezedfrom a sponge--by the mere press of people in that confined space; andnear as I stood to the window I soon began to experience a difficultyin breathing, so foul did the air immediately become. The sufferingsof those further back in the apartment must of course have been muchworse. The door was no sooner closed than those next to it began tomake frantic efforts to open it again; but we were so closely packedthat, even if the door had not been locked, it would have beenscarcely possible to open it wide enough to allow of any persons goingthrough. Every mind seemed to become at once possessed with a sense ofour desperate situation, and the groans and cries for mercy becameheartrending.
Mr. Holwell, having been the first to enter, had been fortunate enoughto secure a place at the other window. He now exerted himself, as theleader of the party, to calm the tumult.
"Gentlemen," he said earnestly, "let me urge you to keep still. Theonly hope for us in this emergency is to behave quietly, and do whatwe can to relieve each other's sufferings. I will use my endeavourswith the guard to procure our release, and in the meantime do yourefrain from giving way to despair."
It was now dark within the room, but outside some of the guards hadlit torches, by whose light I distinguished one old man, a Jemautdar,who appeared a little touched with pity for our distress. To this manMr. Holwell appealed, through the window, offering him large rewardsif he would have us transferred to some more tolerable prison. Atfirst the old Moor merely shook his head, but finally, when Mr.Holwell offered him a thousand rupees if he would remove even half theprisoners to another room, he shrugged his shoulders, muttered that hewould see what could be done, and walked off.
During the few minutes which had already elapsed since our coming intothe cell, the heat had increased to that degree as to be no longertolerable. My skin and throat felt as though scorched by fire, and theatmosphere was so noxious that it became painful to breathe. I lookedat Marian. She was very white, and stood moving her lips silently asthough praying. Being the only female among us, those immediatelyround the window showed some desire to respect her weakness, but thepressure from behind was such that they were driven against her, inspite of themselves, and I had hard work to defend her from beingcrushed against the wall.
But when I glanced back into the room the sights revealed by theflickering torchlight convinced me that our sufferings were almostlight in comparison with those of others. I saw one man, a few pacesbehind me, turn purple in the face, as if some one were stranglinghim. Two or three others had already fainted from the heat, and Iheard some one whisper that they had fallen to the ground.
The Jemautdar presently returned, shaking his head, and said to Mr.Holwell--
"I can do nothing. It is by the Nabob's orders that you are locked up,and I dare not interfere."
"But we are dying, man!" cried Mr. Holwell. "The Nabob swore that hewould spare our lives. Listen! I will give you two thousandrupees--anything--if you will procure us some relief!"
The old man went off once more, and hope revived for a moment. Whilewe were thus waiting some one at the back of the room suddenly saidaloud--
"Let us take off our clothes!"
Hardly were the words out of his mouth than in an instant, as itseemed, nearly every one was stark naked. They tore their things offfuriously and cast them to the ground. I resisted the contagion aslong as I could, but when I saw even Mr. Holwell, though nearer theair than myself, stripped to his shirt, I could not resist followinghis example; and in our dreadful extremity my unhappy companion waspresently forced to do the same, hiding her face with her hands andchoking down great sobs.
When the Jemautdar returned for the second time he made it appear thatour case was hopeless.
"No one dares help you," he said, speaking with evident compunction."Surajah Dowlah is asleep, and it is as much as any man's life isworth to awake him."
As soon as the meaning of these words was understood by the hundredand fifty miserable wretches inside, a pitiful, low wail went up. Thencommenced that long, dreadful agony which so few were to survive, andwhich I only remember in successive glimpses of horror spread overhours that were like years.
One of the last things we did, before all self-control was lost, wasto try and make a current of air by all sitting down together, andthen suddenly rising; but unhappily by this time several had grown soweak that, having once gone down, they proved unequal to the effort ofgetting up again, and fell under the feet of their companions. Amongthese unfortunates was Marian's father, Mr. Rising, who had come inwith us, and stood a little way off in the press. Although preservinghis dazed, unconscious air in the midst of these calamities, he hadexhibited many symptoms of physical distress. He now remained sittinghelpless on the floor, and while I was trying to contrive some meansof assisting him, I saw the next man behind him very coolly step overhis body, spurning it with his foot. Poor Mr. Rising fell on his back,groaning, and was instantly trodden out of sight.
My first impulse was to spare Marian the knowledge of her father'sshocking fate. Turning round hastily, I whispered--
"Don't look behind you, for God's sake!"
The words came too late. She turned her head, saw what had happened,and shrieked aloud.
That shriek was the signal for fifty others, like w
ild beastsanswering each other in a wood, as the manhood of that tortured mobsuddenly forsook it, to be succeeded by brute despair. Some began tohurl themselves against the door, others broke into frantic prayersand imprecations. The clamour died down, rose again, and finallysettled into a monotonous, incessant cry for water.
All this time I had preserved my self-control very well, but when thiscry for water was raised, either the excessive pain I endured, or elsethe mere example of so many persons around me, so shook me that Icould no longer command my motions, and I found myself screaming thewords in Indostanee at the old Jemautdar as though I would have tornhim in pieces.
The old man seemed to be really moved by our sufferings. He sent twoor three of the soldiers to fetch water, and they presently came tothe windows bearing it in skins.
It was a fatal act of mercy. The mere sight of the water instantlyoverthrew the reason of half the unhappy wretches behind us. A wildhowl went up, and a frantic struggle commenced to get to the windows.Those who a few minutes before had been rational Christian beings werenow to be seen fighting and striking each other as they leaped andplunged to climb over those in front. Marian, terror-stricken by theoutburst, put her hands before her eyes, and would have been sweptaway from her place like a leaf if I had not set my back to hers andfought furiously against the lunatics behind. I can see now the dark,flushed face of one man, his parched tongue dropping out of his mouth,and his eyes rolling horribly, quite mad, as he flung himself upon meand tried to tear me down. To add to the horror, the Indian soldiersbrought their torches to the windows in order to gloat on this scene.I heard them laugh like devils as the red light flashed on the nakedheap of infuriated Englishmen writhing and fighting in that narrowhell.
After ten minutes the struggles began to die down through sheerexhaustion, and then those of us who stood next the windows wereallowed to drink from the skins; after which we filled hats with thewater and passed them into the back of the apartment. In this wayevery one obtained some, but no good effect was wrought thereby. Sofar as I was concerned, the heat and drought were so fearful that nosooner had I swallowed my share of the fluid than my throat became asdry as it had been before--the momentary relief served only toaggravate my torments.
Then as the fever gained upon me, my thoughts broke bounds, and theredanced confusedly through my brain odd scraps of memories and picturesof other scenes. For whole moments together I lost the knowledge ofwhere I was; those dark walls and haggard faces passed, and in theirstead came visions of the pleasant places I used to know, the rufflingof the wind upon the Breydon Water and the dykes, the stir among thereeds and rushes, and the cattle browsing in the Norfolk fields.Instead of the swarthy Indian soldiers with their torches I saw thefriendly, homely figures of the carters as they rode their horses tothe pool at sundown after the day's work was over, and the familiargroups of villagers, and the face of little Patience Thurstan as shelooked up at me, ready to weep, that time I said goodbye to her on mylast day at home; and there rose before me the likeness of the dearold homestead, the gables and the crooked chimney, and the porch withjasmine growing over one side and boys' love on the other; and I sawmy father and my mother where they sat and faced each other across thehearthplace, and thought, maybe, of their son, so that there came overme a great and miserable longing to return to them; and, like theprodigal son when he ate husks among the swine, I repented of myrebellion and running away, and in that hour I took a resolution thatif I ever outlived the night I would leave the wicked land of Indiafor ever, and go back to my own country, and ask my father to forgiveme, as I knew my mother had forgiven me long ago.
Such were the thoughts that, by fits and starts, passed through meduring the first hours of the death struggle; but the worst horror ofthat awful night came presently. In the recesses of the chamber,furthest from the windows, a harder evil than the heat was theintolerable foulness of the air. Even where I was standing it hadbecome an excruciating pain to breathe, and my breast felt as thoughlaced about with iron bands. In the interior many had by this timedropped down, not so much suffocated as poisoned by the fetid gas theywere compelled to inhale. And now at length I detected a new,indescribably nauseous odour, added to the acrid smell of the place.At first I tried to conceal even from my own mind what this was. Butnot for long. In a very few minutes the secret was known to all there.The unhappy man I had seen trodden down had been dead for about halfan hour, and his body was already corrupt.
Then that whole den of madmen broke loose, raving and cursing; someimploring God to strike them dead, others casting the most foul andsavage insults at the guards without, if by that means they mighttempt them to fire in through the windows and put an end to what theyendured. They struck at one another, they clutched each other's hair,surging and trampling one another down to gain an inch nearer themiserable air-holes which afforded the only chance of life. The floorwas choked with corpses, among which the survivors were entangled inone seething mass. As for me, I became light-headed, and had only oneblind instinct left, to strike down any man who attempted to thrustMarian from her breathing ground. I was aware that she had lost hersenses and sunk down between me and the wall; yet I went on battling,as in some dreadful nightmare, with the furious forms that rose up andloomed out of the darkness. When I could no longer make out theirfaces I still struck out blindly, and heard them go down heavily uponthe pile of bodies behind which I stood entrenched. Hour after hourthat ghastly combat raged, till the corpses were thrice and four timesmore numerous than those who still breathed; and at last an awfullethargy settled down over the scene, broken only when one of thesurvivors roused himself for an expiring effort that sent a quiverthrough the dead and dying heap.
After that I know no more, for when the morning broke, and theofficers came to release the handful left alive, the energy that hadheld me up so long forsook me, and I sank down unconscious.