She was not well secured upon the pile, and as soon as she felt the fire she jumped off and plunged into the river.

The people all ran after her along the bank, but the current drove her towards Benares, whence a police boat put off and took her in.
She was almost dead with the fright and the water, in which she had been kept afloat by her clothes.

She was taken to Harding; but the whole city of Benares was in an uproar, at the rescue of a Brahman's widow from the funeral pile, for such it had been considered, though the man had been a year dead.

Thousands surrounded his house, and his court was filled with the principal men of the city, imploring him to surrender the woman; and among the rest was the poor woman's father, who declared that he could not support his daughter; and that she had, therefore, better be burned, as her husband's family would no longer receive her.

The uproar was quite alarming to a young man, who felt all the responsibility upon himself in such a city as[10] Benares, with a population of three hundred thousand people,[11] so prone to popular insurrections, or risings _en masse_ very like them.
He long argued the point of the time that had elapsed, and the unwillingness of the woman, but in vain; until at last the thought struck him suddenly, and he said that 'The sacrifice was manifestly unacceptable to their God--that the sacred river, as such, had rejected her; she had, without being able to swim, floated down two miles upon its bosom, in the face of an immense multitude; and it was clear that she had been rejected.