“Throw her into the wind,” shouted the captain.

Mr. Toley at the wheel put the helm down, the longboat was lowered, and with some difficulty, owing to the heavy sea, the thirty men on the grab were taken off.  As they came aboard the Good Intent, Diggle, who was leaning over the bulwarks, suddenly straightened himself, smiled, and moved towards the taffrail.  One of the newcomers, a fine muscular fellow, seeing Diggle approaching, stood for a moment in surprise, then salaamed.  The Englishman said something in the stranger’s tongue, and grasped his hand with the familiarity of old friendship.

“You know the man, Mr. Diggle?” said the captain.

“Yes, truly.  The Gentoos and I are in a sense comrades in arms.  His name is Hybati; he’s a Maratha.”

“What’s he jabbering about?”

The man was talking rapidly and earnestly.

“He says, captain,” returned Diggle, with a smile, “that he hopes you will send and fetch the crew’s rice on board.  They won’t eat our food—­afraid of losing caste.”

“I’ll be hang if I launch the longboat again.  The grab won’t live another five minutes in this sea, and I wouldn’t risk two of my crew against a hundred of these dirty Moors.”

“They’ll starve otherwise, captain.”

“Well, let ’em starve.  I won’t have any nonsense aboard my ship.  Beggars mustn’t be choosers, and if the heathen can’t eat good honest English vittles they don’t deserve to eat at all.”

Diggle smiled and explained to Hybati that his provisions must be left to their fate.  Even as he spoke a heavy sea struck the vessel athwart, and, amid cries from the Marathas she keeled over and sank.

When the strangers had dried themselves, Diggle inquired of Hybati how he came to be in his present predicament.  The Maratha explained that he had been in command of Angria’s fortress of Suwarndrug, which was so strong that he had believed it able to withstand any attacks.  But one day a number of vessels of the East India Company’s fleet had appeared between the mainland and the island on which the fortress was situated, and had begun a bombardment which soon reduced the parapets to ruins.  The chief damage had been done by an English ship.  Hybati and his men had made the best defense they could, but the gunners were shot down by musket fire from the round tops of the enemy, and when a shell set fire to a thatched house within the fort, the garrison were too much alarmed to attempt to extinguish the flames; the blaze spread, a powder magazine blew up, and the inhabitants, with the greater part of the soldiers, fled to the shore, and tried to make their escape in eight large boats.  Hybati had kept up the fight for some time longer, hoping to receive succor; but under cover of the fire of the ships the English commodore landed half his seamen, who rushed up to the gate, and cutting down the sally port with their axes forced their way in.