there before I did, as the
governor was transferred to some other fort--I never heard where it
was--and he took your father with him. I don't know whether he had
Tippoo's orders to do so, or whether he took him simply because he
liked him.

"At any rate, he was the only prisoner who went with him. The rest of
us remained there till a few months back, when the fort was abandoned.
It was just after the capture of Bangalore, and the place could have
offered no resistance, if a body of troops had been sent against it.
At any rate, an order arrived one morning, and a few hours afterwards
the place was entirely abandoned, and we and the garrison marched
here."

"My father was quite well?"

"Quite well. He used to talk to me, at times, of trying to make his
escape. Being a sailor, I have no doubt that he could have got down
from the precipice on which the fort stood; but he knew that, if he
did so, we should all suffer for it, and probably be all put to death,
as soon as Tippoo heard that one of us had escaped--for that was
always done, in order to deter prisoners from trying to get away."

"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. Still, at any
rate, it is a great satisfaction that my father was alive four years
ago,