dealing with natives, I put my hand into my pocket and drew out four annas. The absurdity of the gift struck me at once, and I was about to replace the money.

Gunga Dass, however, cried: ‘Give me the money, all you have, or I will get help, and we will kill you!’

A Briton’s first impulse, I believe, is to guard the contents of his pockets; but a moment’s thought showed me the folly of differing with the one man who had it in his power to make me comfortable; and with whose help it was possible that I might eventually escape from the crater. I gave him all the money in my possession, Rs.9-8-5

—nine rupees, eight annas, and five pie—for I always keep small change as bakshish when I am in camp. Gunga Dass clutched the coins, and hid them at once in his ragged loin-cloth, looking round to assure himself that no one had observed us.

‘Now I will give you something to eat,’ said he.

What pleasure my money could have given him I am unable to say; but inasmuch as it did please him I was not sorry that I had parted with it so readily, for I had no doubt that he would have had me killed if I had refused. One does not protest against the doings of a den of wild beasts; and my companions were lower than any beasts. While I ate what Gunga Dass had provided, a coarse chapatti and a cupful of the foul well-water, the people showed not the faintest sign of curiosity —that curiosity which is so rampant, as a rule, in an Indian village.

I could even fancy that they despised me. At all events they treated me with the most chilling indifference, and Gunga Dass was nearly as bad. I plied him with questions about the terrible village, and received extremely unsatisfactory answers. So far as I could gather, it had been in existence from time immemorial—whence I concluded that it was at least a century old—and during that time no one had ever been known to escape from it. [I had to control myself here with both hands, lest the blind terror should lay hold of me a second time and drive me raving round the crater.] Gunga Dass took a malicious pleasure in emphasising this point and in watching me wince.

Nothing that I could do would induce him to tell me who the mysterious ‘They’ were.

‘It is so ordered,’ he would reply, ‘and I do not yet know any one who has disobeyed the orders.’

‘Only wait till my servants find that I am missing,’ I retorted, ‘and I promise you that this place shall be cleared off the face of the earth, and I’ll give you a lesson in civility, too, my friend.’

‘Your servants would be torn in pieces before they came near this place; and, besides, you are dead, my dear friend. It is not your fault, of course, but none the less you are dead and buried.’

At irregular intervals supplies of food, I was told, were dropped down from the land side into the amphitheatre, and the inhabitants fought for them like wild beasts. When a man felt his death coming on he retreated to his lair and died there. The body was sometimes dragged out of the hole and thrown on to the sand, or allowed to rot where it lay.

The phrase ‘thrown on to the sand’ caught my attention, and I asked Gunga Dass whether this sort of thing was not likely to bread a pestilence.

‘That,’ said he, with another of his wheezy chuckles, ‘you may see for yourself subsequently. You will have much time to make observations.’

Whereat, to his great delight, I winced once more and hastily continued the conversation: ‘And how do you live here from day to day? What do you do?’ The question elicited exactly the same answer as before—coupled with the information that ‘this place is like your European heaven; there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.’