Excerpt from The Poison Tree: A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal On the third day of Nagendra's journey clouds arose and gradually covered the sky. The river became black, the tree-tops drooped, the paddy birds flew aloft, the water became motionless. Nagendra ordered the mcmji (boatman) to run the boat in Shore and make it fast. At that moment the steersman, Rahamat Mullah, was saying his prayers, SO he made no answer. Rahamat knew nothing of his business. His mother's father's sister was the daughter of a boatman; on that plea he had become a hanger-on of boatmen, and accident favoured his wishes; but he learned nothing, his work was done as fate willed. Rahamat was not backward in Speech, and when his prayers were ended he turned to the Babu and said, Do not be alarmed, Sir, there is no cause for fear. Rahamat was thus brave because the Shore was close at hand, and could be reached without delay, and in a few minutes the boat was secured. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.