she fled for safety into the depths of the jungle, and so escaped.

The carriage and bullock games were drawn to an open space some little
distance into the jungle, the intervening bushes screening it to a
considerable extent from the road. The Collector and his clerks were
then brutally stripped of their clothing, and, having taken possession
of their money and other valuables, the wretches bound them, spread
eagle fashion, to the wheels of the vehicles. The terrified women were
next dragged forth, with more indignity and even greater brutality, and
secured in a similar manner, and in such a position that their tortures
might be witnessed by their helpless husbands. The children, with the
exception of the Collector's daughter, a bright, golden haired girl of
some ten summers, who had clung convulsively to her mother, were thrown
together into a small hollow in the ground about the centre of the
place, they being too young to make any opposition, the black devils
forming a complete semi-circle round their intended victims.

The first scene of the bloody drama they proposed to enact, to satisfy
their devilish thirst for the blood of the unfortunates, who had thus
fallen into their hands, was opened by a tall, burly ruffian bending
over, seizing one of the children, hurling it into the air, and yelling
with an awful imprecation while so doing, that he would wager a gold
mohur to five rupees, that he could, with his tulwa, strike off the
child's right arm at the elbow without touching any other part of the
body. This was accepted at once by half-a-dozen voices; the wretch
immediately raised his tulwa and, as the infant descended, made a sharp,
quick, upper cut, and ere it reached the ground its little arm was
disjointed, as though by the knife of an experienced surgeon. A groan of
horror burst from the lips of the agonized parents, and a convulsive
shudder ran through the remainder of the unhappy party; but this past