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The Khwaja will, I am sure, give these orders correctly, for Surendra Nath will understand better than I what he says." With the Babu, the two peons, and Coja Solomon, who was now obviously ill at ease, Desmond went down the ghat to the place where the crews of the petalas were assigned to him. The man dared not depart by a jot from the words put into his mouth.
The lookers-on stared to see the craft put off and drop down the river with a crew of one man each: Desmond in the first, and the smaller boat that had contained Bulger and his party trailing behind. Floating down some four or five miles with the stream, Desmond gave the order to scuttle the three petalas, and rowed ashore in the smaller boat.
They must soon learn that three petalas lay wrecked in the stream below Amboa; but they could not satisfy themselves without examination that these were the vessels of which they were in search. Tramping across two miles of fields newly sown with maize and sorghum, he at length descried the trail of his convoy and soon came up with it.
The petalas, being cargo boats, were not provided with any accommodation or conveniences for passengers; and Desmond's thoughts as he lay panting on his mat, haggard from want of sleep, faint from want of food for though there was rice on board, and the men ate freely, he had no appetite for that reverted to the worst period of his imprisonment in Gheria, and he recalled the sufferings he had endured there.
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