slip of paper had been inserted between the binding and the back, and dropped out as I opened the pages. This is what it contained: ‘Four out from crow-clump; three left; nine out; two right; three back; two left; fourteen out; two left; seven out; one left; nine back; two right; six back; four right; seven back.’ The paper had been burnt and charred at the edges. What it meant I could not understand. I sat down on the dried bents turning it over and over between my fingers, until I was aware of Gunga Dass standing immediately behind me with glowing eyes and outstretched hands.

‘Have you got it?’ he panted. ‘Will you not let me look at it also? I swear that I will return it.’

‘Got what? Return what?’ I asked.

‘That which you have in your hands. It will help us both.’ He stretched out his long bird-like talons, trembling with eagerness.

‘I could never find it,’ he continued. ‘He had secreted it about his person. Therefore I shot him, but nevertheless I was unable to obtain it.’

Gunga Dass had quite forgotten his little fiction about the rifle-bullet. I heard him calmly. Morality is blunted by consorting with the Dead who are alive.

‘What on earth are you raving about? What is it you want me to give you?’

‘The piece of paper in the notebook. It will help us both. Oh, you fool! You fool! Can you not see what it will do for us? We shall escape!’

His voice rose almost to a scream, and he danced with excitement before me. I own I was moved at the chance of getting away.

‘Do you mean to say that this slip of paper will help us? What does it mean?’

‘Read it aloud! Read it aloud! I beg and I pray to you to read it aloud.’

I did so. Gunga Dass listened delightedly, and drew an irregular line in the sand with his fingers.

‘See now! It was the length of his gun-barrels without the stock. I have those barrels. Four gun-barrels out from the place where I caught crows. Straight out; do you mind me? Then three left. Ah! Now well I remember how that man worked it out night after night. Then nine out, and so on. Out is always straight before you across the quicksand to the north. He told me so before I killed him.’

‘But if you knew all this why didn’t you get out before?’

‘I did not know it. He told me that he was working it out a year and a half ago, and how he was working it out night after night when the boat had gone away, and he could get out near the quicksand safely. Then he said that we would get away together. But I was afraid that he would leave me behind one night when he had worked it all out, and so I shot him. Besides, it is not advisable that the men who once get in here should escape. Only I, and I am a Brahmin.’

The hope of escape had brought Gunga Dass’s caste back to him. He stood up, walked about, and gesticulated violently. Eventually I managed to make him talk soberly, and he told me how this Englishman had spent six months night after night in exploring, inch by inch, the passage across the quicksand; how he had declared it to be simplicity itself up to within about twenty yards of the river bank after turning the flank of the left horn of the horseshoe. This much he had evidently not completed when Gunga Dass shot him with his own gun.