s} on griddles in the streets, grinding their meal
in handmills; the sword grinders, whetting the blades of the Maratha
two-edged swords; the barbers, whose shops had a never-ending succession
of customers; the Brahmans, almost naked and shaved bald save for a small
tuft at the back of the head; the sellers of madi, a toddy extracted from
the cocoanut palm; the magicians in their shawls, with high stiff red
cap, painted all over with snakes; the humped bullocks that were employed
as beasts of burden, and when not in use roamed the streets untended;
occasionally the basawa, the sacred bull of Siva, the destroyer, and the
rath {car} carrying the sacred rat of Ganessa. But with familiarity such
scenes lost their charm; and as the months passed away Desmond felt more
and more the gnawing of care at his heart, the constant sadness of a
slave.

Chapter 11: In which the Babu tells the story of King Vikramaditya; and the
discerning reader may find more than appears on the surface.

Day followed day in dreary sameness. Regularly every evening Desmond was
locked with his eight fellow prisoners in the shed, there to spend hours
of weariness and discomfort until morning brought release and the common
task. He had the same rations of rice and ragi {a cereal}, with
occasional doles of more substantial fare. He was carefully kept from all
communication with the other European prisoners, and as the Bengali was
the only man of his set who knew English, his only opportunities of using
his native tongue occurred in the evening before he slept.

His fellow prisoners spoke Urdu among themselves, and Desmond found some
alleviation of the monotony of his life in learning the lingua franca of
India under the Babu's tuition. He was encouraged to persevere in the
study by the fact that the Babu proved to be an excellent storyteller,
often beguiling the tedium of wakeful hours in the shed by relating
interminable narratives from the Hindu mythology, and in particular the
exploits of the legendary hero Vikramaditya. So accomplished was he in
this very oriental art that it was not uncommon for one or other of the
sentries to listen to him through the opening in the shed wall, and the
head warder who locked the prisoners' fetters would himself sometimes
squat down at the door before leaving them at night, and remain an
interested auditor until the blast of a horn warned all in the fort and
town that the hour of sleep had come. It was som