Then the others came up.
"The captain had just time to say, 'We are going to be parted, Ben.
God bless you! If ever you get back, give my love to my wife, and tell her what has happened to me, and that she must keep up her heart, for I shall make a bolt of it the first time I get a chance.' "The next day, I was taken off to a place they call Calicut.

There I stopped a year, and then the rajah of the place joined the English against Tippoo, who was lord of all the country, and I was released.

I had got, by that time, to talk their lingo pretty well, though I have forgotten it all now, and I had found out that the chaps who had taken your father away were a party sent down by Tippoo, who, having heard that two Englishmen had been cast on shore, had insisted upon one of them being handed over to him.
"It is known that a great many of the prisoners in Tippoo's hands have been murdered in their dungeons.

He has sworn, over and over again, that he has no European prisoners, but every one knows that he has numbers of them in his hands.

Whether the captain is one of those who have been murdered, or whether he is still in one of Tippoo's dungeons, is more than I or any one else can say." "Well, as I have told you, Ben, that is what we mean to find out." "I know that is what your mother has often said, lad, but it seems to me that you have more chance of finding the man in the moon than you have of learning whether your father is alive, or not." "Well, we are going to try, anyhow, Ben.