In a few of these forts, English
captives were found. Some had been there for years, their very
existence being apparently forgotten by the tyrant. Some had been
fairly treated by the Mysore governor, and where this was the case,
the latter was furnished by the British officers with papers,
testifying to the kindness with which they had treated the prisoners,
and recommending them to the officers of any of the allied forces they
might encounter on their way home, or when established there.
Upon the other hand, some of the prisoners were found to have been all
but starved, and treated with great brutality. In two cases, where the
captives said that some of their companions had died from the effects
of the ill treatment they had received, the governors were tried by
court martial and shot, while some of the others they sentenced to be
severely flogged.
Every captive released was closely scrutinised by Dick, and eagerly
questioned. From one of them, he obtained news that his father had
certainly been alive four years previously, for they had been in
prison together, in a hill fort near Bangalore.
"I was a civilian and he a sailor," he said, "consequently neither of
us were of any use in drilling Tippoo's battalions, and had been sent
up there.
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