CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
lips. The water only added to their sufferings, the sight of which the inhuman soldiers enjoyed, holding up blazing torches that they might see them fighting for a drink. When the maddened victims found that water but increased their agonies, they showered every imaginable abuse on their tormentors, and the nawab and his officers, in the hope of inducing the guard to fire on them and so end their sufferings, but without effect.
As the night wore on, one after another the prisoners sank and died, many even in that hour of supreme trial showing admirable calmness and fortitude. Among these were the Rev. Jervas Bellamy, the white-haired chaplain of the settlement, and his son, a young lieutenant, who laid them down hand clasped in hand and died; and Mr. Edward Eyre, a member of the Council, who, staggering over the dead, came to Mr. Holwell, and, asking him with his usual coolness and good-nature how he did, fell down and expired before he received a reply. Holwell himself, determining to die apart from the struggle at the windows, made his way back from the throng, assisted by the great strength of a ship's officer named Carey, whose girl-wife shared his prison and was the one woman who survived that night of horror. The two men laid themselves down,
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