by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans.  The number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six.  When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were joking; and, being in high spirits on account of the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion.  They soon discovered their mistake.  They expostulated; they entreated; but in vain.  The guards threatened to cut down all who hesitated.  The captives were driven into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them.

Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that night.  They cried for mercy.  They strove to burst the door.  Holwell who, even in that extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered large bribes to the gaolers.  But the answer was that nothing could be done without the Nabob’s orders, that the Nabob was asleep, and that he would be angry if anybody woke him.  Then the prisoners went mad with despair.  They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them.  The gaolers in the meantime held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims.  At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and moanings.  The day broke.  The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be opened.  But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate had already begun to do its loathsome work.  When at length a passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out of the charnel-house.  A pit was instantly dug.  The dead bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in number, were flung into it promiscuously and covered up.

But these things—­which, after the lapse of more than eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror—­awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob.  He inflicted no punishment on the murderers.  He showed no tenderness to the survivors.  Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be got, were suffered to depart; but those from whom it was thought that anything could be extorted were treated with execrable cruelty.  Holwell, unable to walk, was carried before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened him, and sent him up the country in irons, together with some other gentlemen who were suspected of knowing more than they chose to tell about the treasures of the Company.  These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings of that great agony, were lodged in miserable sheds, and fed only with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of the female relations of the Nabob procured their release.  One Englishwoman had survived that night.  She was placed in the harem of the Prince at Moorshedabad.