A week later the Bridgewater arrived from Gheria, with Diggle on board.  He was imprisoned in the fort, being allotted far too comfortable quarters to please Mr. Merriman.  But Merriman’s indignation at what he considered the governor’s leniency was changed to hot rage three days later when it became known that the prisoner had disappeared.  Not a trace of him could be discovered.  He had been locked in as usual one night, and next morning his room was empty.  Imprisonment was much less stringent in those days than now; the prisoner was allowed to see visitors and to live more or less at ease.  The only clue to Diggle’s escape was afforded by the discovery that, at the same time that he disappeared, there vanished also a black boy, who had been brought among the prisoners from Gheria and was employed in doing odd jobs about the harbor.

Desmond had no doubt that this was Diggle’s boy Scipio Africanus.  And when he mentioned the connection between the two, it was supposed that the negro had acted as go-between for his master with the friends in the town by whose aid the escape had been arranged.  Among the large native population of Bombay there were many who were suspected of being secret agents of the French, and as Diggle was well provided with funds it was not at all unlikely that his jailer had been tampered with.

Merriman’s wrath was very bitter.  He had been waiting for years, as he told Desmond, for the punishment of Peloti.  It was gall and wormwood to him that the villain should have cheated the gallows.

Diggle’s escape, however, gave Merriman an opportunity to secure Desmond’s services.  The culprit being gone, the evidence was no longer required.  Finding that Desmond was still ready to accept the position of mate on the Hormuzzeer, Merriman consulted Mr. Bourchier, who admitted that he saw no reason for detaining the lad.  Accordingly, the first week in March, when the vessel stood out of Bombay harbor, Desmond sailed with her.

The weather was calm, but the winds not wholly favorable, and the Hormuzzeer made a somewhat slow passage.  Mr. Merriman was impatient to reach Calcutta, and Desmond was surprised at his increasing uneasiness.  He had believed that the French and Dutch were the only people in Bengal who gave the Company trouble, and as England was at peace with both France and the Netherlands, there was nothing, he thought, to fear from them.

“You are mistaken,” said Mr. Merriman, in the course of a conversation one day.  “The natives are a terrible thorn in our side.  At best we are in Bengal on sufferance; we are a very small community—­only a hundred or two Europeans in Calcutta:  and since the Marathas overran the country some years ago we have felt as though sitting on the brink of a volcano.  Alivirdi wants to keep us down; he has forbidden us to fight the French even if war does break out between us at home; and though the Mogul has granted us charters—­they call them firmans here—­Alivirdi doesn’t care a rap for such things, and must have us under his heel.  Only his trading profits and his fear of the Mogul keep him civil.”