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The white flag at the masthead, and a loud, long-drawn hail from Hybati, apprised the grab that the Good Intent was no enemy, and averted hostilities. And thus it was, amid a convoy of Angria's own fleet, that Captain Barker's vessel, a few hours later, sailed peacefully into the harbor of Gheria. Desmond looked with curious eyes on the famous fort and harbor.
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. Seeing that the game was up, Hybati fled with thirty of his men, and was lucky in pushing off in the grab, unobserved by the enemy.
"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."
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.
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.
With the assistance of a Maratha fleet he had attacked the island fortress of Suwarndrug, and captured it, as Hybati had related. A few days afterwards another of the Pirate's fortresses, the island of Bancoote, six miles north of Suwarndrug, surrendered.
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