Tramping across two miles of fields newly sown with maize and sorghum, he at length descried the trail of his convoy and soon came up with it.  If pursuers were indeed upon his track, only by the greatest good fortune could he escape them.  The carts creaked along with painful slowness; the wheels halfway to the axles in dust; now stopping altogether, now rocking like ships in a stormy sea.

With his arrival and the promise of liberal bakshish the hackeriwallahs urged the laboring oxen with their cruel goads till Desmond, always tender with animals, could hardly endure the sight.  By nine o’clock the morning had become stiflingly hot.  There was little or no breeze, and Desmond, unused of late to active exercise, found the heat terribly trying.  But Bulger suffered still more.  A stout, florid man, he toiled along, panting, streaming with sweat, in difficulties so manifest, that Desmond, eying him anxiously, feared lest a stroke of apoplexy should bring him to an untimely end.

The country was so flat that a string of carts could not fail to be seen from a long distance.  If noticed from the towers of Hugli across the river, curiosity, if not suspicion, would be aroused, and it would not take long to send over by a ford a force sufficient to arrest and capture the party.  To escape observation it was necessary to make wide detours.  At several small hamlets on the route Desmond managed to get fresh oxen, but not enough for complete changes of team.

So, through all the broiling heat of the day, at hours when no other Europeans in all Bengal were out of doors, the convoy struggled on, making its own road, crossing the dry beds of pools, skirting or laboring over rugged nullahs.

At nightfall Desmond learned from one of the drivers that they were still six miles short of being opposite to Hugli.  The patient Bengalis could endure no more; the oxen were done up, the men refused to go farther without a rest.  Halting at a hamlet some five miles from the river, they rested and fed till midnight, then set off again.  It was not so insufferably hot at night, but on the other hand they were less able to avoid obstructions:  and the rest had not been long enough to make up for the terrible exertions of the day.

By daybreak they were some distance past Hugli, still keeping about five miles from the river.  Desmond was beginning to congratulate himself that the worst was over; Barrackpur was only about twelve miles away.  But a little after dawn he caught sight of a European on horseback crossing their track towards the river.  He was going at a walking pace, attended by two syces {grooms}.  Attracted, apparently, by the sight, unusual at this time of year, of a string of hackeris, he wheeled his horse and cantered towards the tail of the convoy, which was under Bulger’s charge.

“Hai, hackeriwallah,” he said in Urdu to the rearmost driver, “to whom do these hackeris belong?”