"Your father did not come to for half an hour. He had been hurt a bit
worse than I had, but at last he came round.
"Well, we were kept three months in a sort of castle place; and then
one day a party of chaps, with guns and swords, came into the yard
where we were sitting. The man, who seemed the head of the fellows who
had been keeping us prisoners, walked up with one who was evidently an
officer over the chaps as had just arrived. He looked at us both, and
then laid his hand on the captain. Then the others came up.
"The captain had just time to say, 'We are going to be parted, Ben.
God bless you! If ever you get back, give my love to my wife, and tell
her what has happened to me, and that she must keep up her heart, for
I shall make a bolt of it the first time I get a chance.'
"The next day, I was taken off to a place they call Calicut. There I
stopped a year, and then the rajah of the place joined the English
against Tippoo, who was lord of all the country, and I was released. I
had got, by that time, to talk their lingo pretty well, though I have
forgotten it all now, and I had found out that the chaps who had taken
your father away were a party sent down by Tippoo, who, having heard
that two Englishmen had been cast on shore, had insisted upon one of
them being handed over to him.
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