Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/297

Rh nished; and our mouths and noses often met in the contest. This plundered I found afterwards was a worthy young gentleman in the service, Mr. Lushington, one of the few who escaped from death, and since pain me the compliment of assuring me, he believed he owed his life to the many comfortable draughts he had from my sleeves. Before I hit upon this happy expedient, I had in an ungovernable fit of thirst, attempted drinking my urine; but it was so intensely bitter, there was no enduring a second taste, whereas no Bristol water could be more soft or pleasant than what arose from perspiration.

By half an hour past eleven, the much greater number of those living were in an outrageous delirium, and the others quite ungovernable; few retaining any calmness, but the ranks next the windows. They all now found, that water, instead of relieving, rather heightened their uneasinesses; and, Air, air, was the general cry. Every insult that could be devised against the guard, all the opprobrious names and abuse that the suba, Monickchund, &c. could be loaded with, were repeated to provoke the guard to fire upon us, every man that could, rushing tumultuously towards the windows, with eager hopes of meeting the first shot. Then a general prayer to heaven to hasten the approach of the flames to the right and left of us, and put a period to our misery. But these failing, they whose strength and spirits were quite exhausted, laid themselves down and expired quietly upon their fellows: others who had yet some strength and vigour left, made a last effort for the windows, and several succeeded by leaping and scrambling over the banks and heads of those in the first ranks; and got hold of the bars, from which there was no removing them. Many to the right and left sunk with the violent pressure, and were soon suffocated; for now a steam arose from the living and the dead, which affected us in all its circumstances, as if we were forcibly held by our heads over a bowl of strong volatile spirit of hartshorn, until suffocated; nor could the effluvia of the one be distinguished from the other; and frequently, when I was forced by the load upon my head and shoulders, to hold my face down, I was obliged, near as I was to the window, instantly to raise it again, to escape suffocation.

I need not, my dear friend, ask your commiseration, when I tell you, that in this plight, from half an hour after eleven till near two in the morning, I sustained the weight of a heavy man, with his knees on my back, and the pressure of his whole body on my head; a Dutch serjeant, who had taken his feat upon my left shoulder, and a Topaz bearing on my right: all which, nothing could have enabled me long to support, but the props and pressure equally sustaining me all around. The two latter I frequently dislodged, by shifting my hold on the bars, and driving my knuckles into their ribs; but my friend above stuck fast, and, as he held by two bars, was immoveable.

The repeated trials and efforts I made to dislodge this insufferable incumbrance upon me, as last quite exhausted me, and towards two