Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

three guests, Murdoch, Nichol, and Serjeant Hawley, becoming by degrees maddened with a liquor remarkable for producing that effect without the intermediate one of inebriation, a quarrel took place, according to the statement of Britton and his wife, between the two privates and the serjeant, and afterwards an affray, which terminated in bloodshed; Hawley having fallen, in consequence of severe blows given him by Murdoch and Nichol, one of whom mortally wounded him with a bayonet.

"Such a scene, though accompanied with the noisy wrangling which is the usual prelude to blows, was too distant from the cantonments to attract observation. A sentinel, indeed, heard something like a shriek, but as the festivities of the place were generally drunken ones, noises above the ordinary pitch were neither unusual nor appalling circumstances. The serjeant was, of course, missed, and inquiries made for him in every direction.

"Before, however, any suspicions were directed to the hut, Britton and his wife appeared before the commanding officer, to whom they made the following statement. They were well acquainted with Hawley, who frequently came to their boutique, as well as with the two privates. All three came there on the preceding night, and after drinking

rather freely, a violent dispute took place between Nichol and Hawley, arising from some jealous feelings entertained by the former as to certain attentions the serjeant was supposed to have paid his wife. Murdoch entered into the quarrel, having been aggrieved by some strokes of a rattan the serjeant had given him upon parade. In a short time after the commencement of the dispute, the two privates rushed upon Hawley, and Nichol, seizing a bayonet which had fallen on the ground in the scuffle, inflicted a mortal wound upon the serjeant, who died immediately, without a groan.

"Being asked, why they made no effort to separate them during the struggle, or to give the alarm at the barracks, they declared they had made the strongest efforts with that intent, but that the two men being muscular and strong, and they themselves in a weak state of health, they were easily overpowered, and were subsequently afraid to leave the hut, inasmuch as Nichol, having armed himself with a horse-pistol loaded with slugs, which hung up in the hut as a protection from the Looties (a wandering tribe, some of whom constantly hovered about Arcot and the adjacent places), threatened them with instant death if they attempted to stir, and, moreover, forced them by intimidation to assist Murdoch in removing the body of the de

ceased to a small enclosure at the back of the hut, where they found a piece of tent-cloth with which they covered it. They then went away, with the most horrid imprecations, and menacing them with immediate destruction if they dared to leave the hut; telling them also they would return in a short time to bury the body. On this information, Murdoch and Nichol were ordered to the guard-room, and the commandant, with the magistrate of the district, who happened to be then on a visit within the cantonment, proceeded back to the hut with the man and his wife.

"On entering it, they observed blood upon the floor, but much of it appeared to have been absorbed during the night; and proceeding to the back of the hut, where the witnesses described the body to have been left beneath a covering of tentcloth, they lifted up the cloth, but the body was not under it. They looked minutely about the premises, but could not discover it. The cloth, indeed, was bloody in many places; but the surgeon, who took a part in the investigation, expressed surprise that there was no appearance of coagulated blood, which usually follows from a stab inflicted by a sharp instrument. But the most striking circumstance was the absence of the body itself. The witnesses testified surprise at this incident.

Only one mode of accounting for it presented itself that of the deceased having been carried off by the Looties, for the sake of his dress or any valuable article he might have upon his person; and this was the more probable, as the serjeant had a gold watch in his pocket at the time of the scuffle, and nothing of the kind had been found upon either of the prisoners. Being asked, why they did not secure his watch after his death, they replied that, in their alarm and distraction, they had not taken the precaution. In answer to a question, why they gave information at so late an hour, they said they were afraid of being killed by the prisoners, and dared not leave the place till eight o'clock the next morning.

"There were some singular things observable in their statements, but they adhered to them, at least in their general outline, with little or no variation. On the other hand, from the first to the last, Murdoch and Nichol denied the crime imputed to them. They acknowledged, indeed, that feeling anxious to get the serjeant out of the hut, knowing he had valuable property on his person, a gold watch in his fob, and a bag of one hundred pagodas concealed in his dress, of which he had boasted in the course of the evening, they endeavoured to pull him forcibly away; but, having obstinately resisted for some

time, he sunk down at last in a drunken stupor, in which state they left him to the care of the man and woman. They supposed it to have been about ten o'clock when they left the hut and returned to the barracks.

"It was a nice point:-for, the corpus delicti not being proved, it did not unequivocally appear that a murder had been committed. This defect, however, was supplied by the positive assertion of Britton and his wife, that they had seen the serjeant die, and that when the body was removed, life was quite extinct. The hypothesis, therefore, of its abstraction by the Looties, was acquiesced in, as being the least improbable.

"The death of the serjeant, by the hands of Nichol and Murdoch, being thus sworn to, the prisoners were sent under a guard to Madras, to take their trial before the Supreme Court. They arrived there two days only before the sessions; but, prior to their final commitment to the gaol, they were confined, under the same guard which had brought them to the presidency, in a small arched room, beneath the ramparts of Fort St. George, which was occasionally used as a Company's godown. A strongly-barred window towards the sea was the only opening by which it was ventilated. The nights being sultry, the prisoners placed them

« FöregåendeFortsätt »