Excerpt from The Thackerays in India: And Some Calcutta Graves The same day, however, Francis took to bed with fever, and for six weeks Hastings kept his Minute loaded to the muzzle in his desk. On August 1 4, 1 780, Francis having recovered, Hastings politely sent him a copy of it, to avoid anything like a scene at the meeting of Council next fore noon. When they reached the ground three morn ings afterwards, Hastings objected to fourteen paces - adopted on the precedent of the late Fox and Adam duel in England - as being a great distance for pistols.' Himself nothing of a marksman, he let Francis deliberately raise his weapon three times to the present.' When it missed fire, he waited till it was freshly primed, and again allowed his adversary the first shot. Hastings then fired. Mr. Francis staggered, ' wrote Colonel Pearse, and in attempting to sit down, he fell and said he was a dead man. Mr. Hastings, hearing this, cried out, Good God, I hope not! And immediately went up to him.' Francis was not killed. But a few months later his broken health drove him home to England. 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.