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106 his four days' free run at Surat and shrank from no cruelty to extort money as quickly as possible. As the English chaplain wrote, "His desire of money is so great that he spares no barbarous cruelty to extort confessions from his prisoners, whips them most cruelly, threatens death and often executes it if they do not produce so much as he thinks they may or desires they should; — at least cuts off one hand, sometimes both."

The cowardly governor Inayet Khan, who had run into the fort in Tuesday night, formed an infamous plot from his safe refuge. On Thursday he sent a young follower of his to Shivaji with pretended terms of peace. These were so manifestly unreasonable that Shiva scornfully asked the envoy, "Your master is now cooped up in his chamber like a woman. Does he think of me too as a woman that he expects me to accept such terms as these?" The young man immediately replied, "We are not women; I have something more to say to you;" and whipping out a concealed dagger he ran full at Shivaji 's breast. A Maratha bodyguard that stood before the Rajah with a drawn sword, struck off the assassin's hand with one blow. But so great was the force of the desperado's rush that he did not

of Escaliot.) Bernier, 190, for the narrow escape of a Jewish ruby-merchant from the death threatened by Shivaji to extort his wealth.