have carried away all"[1] who remained to become a tyrant's captives; but even fifteen brave men were wanting for the duty!
The enemy at length entered, and the Company's servants, civil and military, became prisoners. They had at first no reason to apprehend any great severity of treatment, the Soubahdar having assured Mr. Holwell, "on the word of a soldier," that no harm should come to them.[2] Harm, however, did come, whether by the contrivance of the Soubahdar, or of some of his dependants. Difficulty was found, or pretended, in discovering a proper place of security; but after some search, a room attached to the barracks, which had been used for the confinement of military offenders, was selected for the purpose.
The dimensions of this place were eighteen feet by fourteen.[3] On three sides there was no provision for the admission of air or light; on the fourth were two small windows secured by iron bars; but these, it is represented, from their position not being to the windward, could admit little air,[4] an evil aggravated by the overhanging of a low verandah.
Within a space thus confined and ill-ventilated, on a sultry night, in the sultriest season of the year, were immured one hundred and forty-six human beings, a vast majority being Europeans, to whose northern constitutions the oppressive climate of Bengal could scarcely be made supportable by the aid of every resource that art could suggest, and several of them suffering from the effects of recent wounds. Few of these persons knew anything of the place; those who did could not at first persuade themselves that their guards seriously proposed to shut up such numbers in that narrow prison; or they might perhaps, as one of the survivors afterwards declared, have preferred to encounter instant death, by rushing on the
