On the Tuesday following, Capt. McKay with the schooner Algonquin, proceeded to the wreck, and brought off the captain, crew, and remaining passengers, and all that could be saved of valuable property.
The hot season of 1849 was peculiarly oppressive, and the irksome garrison duty, at Cherootabad, in the south of India, had for many months been unusually severe. The colonel of my regiment, the brigadier, and the general, having successively acceded to my application for three weeks' leave, and that welcome fact having been duly notified in orders, it was not long before I found myself on the Coimbatore road, snugly packed, guns and all, in a country bullock cart, lying at full length on a mattress, with a thick layer of straw spread under it.
All my preparations had been made beforehand; relays of bullocks were posted for me at convenient intervals, and I arrived at Goodaloor, a distance of a hundred and ten miles, in rather more than forty eight hours.
Goodaloor is a quiet little village, about eleven miles from Coimbatore;--but don't suppose I was going to spend my precious three weeks there.
All loaded, and pony saddled, let us start: the two white cows and their calves; the mattress and blanket rolled up and carried on a Cooly's head Shikaree, horsekeeper, and a village man, with the three guns, while I, myself, bring up the rear. Over a few ploughed fields, and past that large banian tree, the jungle begins.
In a small clump of low jungle, on the sloping bank of a broad, sandy watercourse, the casual passer-by would not have perceived a snug and tolerably strong little hut--the white ends of the small branches that were laid over it, and the mixture of foliage, alone revealing the fact to the observant eye of a practiced woodman. No praise could be too strong to bestow on the faithful Shikaree; had I chosen the spot myself, after a weeks' survey of the country, it could not have been more happily selected.
To the deeply-rooted stump of a young tree on the opposite bank, one of the white cows had been made fast by a double cord passed twice around her horns. Nothing remains to be done: the little door is fastened behind me, the prickly acacia boughs are piled up against it on the outside, and my people are anxious to be off.