A RESCUE. 
177 
been ‘"‘'quietly inurned” in the maw of some alligator, 
had not a boat happened to pass at this critical junc- 
ture with a party of European soldiers, who had the 
humanity to fish him up with a boat-pole and take 
him on board their budgerow. Releasing his back and 
breast from the earthen jars, and having rolled 
him on the deck of the boat, by which his stomach 
ejected the water deposited there, they landed him 
at the ghaut, and left him to make a second experi- 
ment against his life should he think proper. 
The Hindoos who had witnessed this unexpected 
rescue were clamorous against such an officious in- 
terference, and some of them were for again plunging 
the half-drowned man into the stream while he was 
yet weak and unable to struggle; but the devotee 
himself, upon being consulted, declined undergoing the 
sacrifice, which had been suspended for the moment, 
until a more fitting opportunity should be found for 
its consummation. 
When the Brahmin seriously reflected upon the cir- 
cumstances of his late rescue, it at once occurred to him 
that self-destruction in his particular case could not 
be acceptable to the gods whom he served, else they 
unquestionably would not have permitted a set of 
Christian soldiers, who did not honour them, to frus- 
trate an act of personal immolation intended in an es- 
pecial way to win their approbation. This opportune 
notion put an end to all further thoughts of suicide, 
and the saint determined to live on in spite of his 
misery. If he were really doomed to die in the Gan- 
ges between two pitchers, it was clear that he would 
not have been rescued from a watery death by the ene- 
