the muster as to what was in store for
him. Creeping stealthily along the rear of the standing men, he timed
the arrival of the Superintendent going down the front on his
inspection; and, stooping down, he thrust his head between the legs of
the front rank men, and level with the ground, calling out only loud
enough for the Superintendent to hear, "Khabardar sahib Sikh kepas
tamancha hai"--"Look out, sir; a Sikh has a pistol." The Superintendent
took no notice of the warning until he had passed to about the middle of
that line, then he ordered the chief warder to take a dozen of the Sikhs
who were standing at the end of the line, and move them off into their
ward that he might inspect their boxes, and he added, "Search them
thoroughly."

As the Superintendent passed the end of the line, and was about to
inspect another line at right angles to it, no shot had been fired; so
he concluded that it was either a false alarm, or that the miscreant was
amongst the dozen men in the ward. And so it proved; for shortly
afterwards, the chief warder came to report that he had found a loaded
pistol on the person of one of the Sikh convicts, and had placed him in
a cell to await investigation.

After the muster an inquiry accordingly took place, and it turned out
that a fellow-tribesman had managed to pass the main gate with a pistol
secreted about his person, and had handed it to the man to whom the lot
had fallen to do the deed.

The would-be assassin was sentenced to heavy irons, and placed in the
refractory ward. The gang was eventually broken up, the ringleaders
being transferred to Penang, and the remainder kept in Singapore under
close observation. The Parsee convict, who checkmated the conspirators,
was advanced from the third to the second class, and otherwise rewarded.

The design on the life of the late Colonel Macpherson, the immediate
predecessor of the above, was also similarly frustrated by another
Parsee, who, on the evening before muster, observed a man burying a
knife in the sandy ground near which he had to stand for inspection.
Waiting his opportunity, he proceeded to the spot and withdrew the blade
from the knife, and replaced the handle just above the ground as he had
found it. When Colonel Macpherson passed the man on the morrow he
quickly seized the handle from the ground to make his stab, but only to
find that he was unexpectedly baulked in his villainous attempt to kill
his Superintendent.

*