CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
riches which he had expected to secure must have been concealed. Twice during the evening he sent for Holwell, questioning him closely, and urging the disclosure of the concealed treasure. At the second interview he gave Holwell his assurance, on the word of a soldier, that no harm should come to the prisoners, and, ordering his officers to guard them securely for the night, he retired to rest.
The tragedy that followed is too well known in all its details to need recapitulation. It may have been caused by gross carelessness on the part of the officers in charge of the prisoners, but Holwell, whose vivid narrative of his experiences in the Black Hole is the only reliable and full account, says that it was "the result of revenge and resentment in the breasts of the lower officers, or jemadars, to whose custody the prisoners were delivered, for the number of their order killed during the siege."
Whatever may have been the reason, at about eight o'clock in the evening the prisoners were all driven into a small room which had been used as a prison for soldiers, and which was known by them as the Black Hole prison. This room was about eighteen feet square, and, situated against the curtain wall of the Fort, had no window nor door on two sides. On the third side was one
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