"No, I do not want any prisoners up here, and when they do come, there
is no sleep for me until I get the order to execute them. But they do
not often come now. Most of the prisoners who were not given up have
been killed since, and there are not many of them left."
Upon finishing their round, they returned to Seringapatam, where Dick
drew up a full report of the result of their investigations. The
sultan himself went through it with them, questioned them closely, cut
off a good many of the items, and gave orders that the other demands
should be complied with, and the guns and ammunition sent off at once
to the various forts, from the great arsenal at the capital.
Dick was depressed at the result of their journey. His hopes had
fallen lower and lower, as, at each fort they visited, he heard the
same story--that all prisoners sent up to the mountain fortresses had,
in a short time, been put to death. It was possible, of course, that
his father might still be at one of the towns where new levies had
been drilled; but he had not, from the first, thought it likely that a
merchant sailor would be put to this work; and had it not been that he
clung to the belief that there was a prisoner at Savandroog, and that
that prisoner was his father, he would have begun to despair.
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