"
"Do you think that there is any chance of his being still alive?"
"That is more than I can possibly say. You see, we have not known much
of what is passing outside our prison. Some of the guards were good
natured enough, and would occasionally give us a scrap of news; but we
heard most from the ill-tempered ones, who delighted in telling us
anything they knew that would pain us.
"Three or four months ago, we heard that every white prisoner in
Seringapatam had been put to death, by Tippoo's orders, and that
doubtless there would be a similar clearance everywhere else. Then,
again, we were told that the English had retreated, beaten, from
before Seringapatam, and that the last of them would soon be down the
ghauts. But whether the prisoners have been killed in other hill forts
like this, I cannot say, although I suppose not, or we should not have
escaped."
"Certainly no such orders can have been sent to the forts here, for we
have found a few prisoners in several of them. Of course, it may be
otherwise in the forts near the capital, which Tippoo might have
thought were likely to fall into our hands; while he may not have
considered it worth while to send the same orders to places so far
away as this, where no British force was likely to come.
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