‘He is over there,’ answered Gunga Dass, pointing to a burrow-mouth about four doors to the left of my own. ‘You can see for yourself. He died in the burrow as you will die, and I will die, and as all these men and women and the one child will also die.’

‘For pity’s sake tell me all you know about him. Who was he? When did he come, and when did he die?’

This appeal was a weak step on my part. Gunga Dass only leered and replied: ‘I will not—unless you give me something first.’

Then I recollected where I was, and struck the man between the eyes, partially stunning him. He stepped down from the platform at once, and, cringing and fawning and weeping and attempting to embrace my feet, led me round to the burrow which he had indicated.

‘I know nothing whatever about the gentleman. Your God be my witness that I do not. He was as anxious to escape as you were, and he was shot from the boat, though we all did all things to prevent him from attempting. He was shot here.’ Gunga Dass laid his hand on his lean stomach and bowed to the earth.

‘Well, and what then? Go on!’

‘And then—and then, Your Honour, we carried him into his house and gave him water, and put wet cloths on the wound, and he laid down in his house and gave up the ghost.’

‘In how long? In how long?’

‘About half an hour after he received his wound. I call Vishnu to witness,’ yelled the wretched man, ‘that I did everything for him. Everything which was possible, that I did!’

He threw himself down on the ground and clasped my ankles. But I had my doubts about Gunga Dass’s benevolence, and kicked him off as he lay protesting.

‘I believe you robbed him of everything he had. But I can find out in a minute or two. How long was the Sahib here?’

‘Nearly a year and a half. I think he must have gone mad. But hear me swear, Protector of the Poor! Won’t Your Honour hear me swear that I never touched an article that belonged to him? What is Your Worship going to do?’

I had taken Gunga Dass by the waist and had hauled him on to the platform opposite the deserted burrow. As I did so I thought of my wretched fellow-prisoner’s unspeakable misery among all these horrors for eighteen months, and the final agony of dying like a rat in a hole, with a bullet-wound in the stomach. Gunga Dass fancied I was going to kill him and howled pitifully. The rest of the population, in the plethora that follows a full flesh meal, watched us without stirring.

‘Go inside, Gunga Dass,’ said I, ‘and fetch it out.’

I was feeling sick and faint with horror now. Gunga Dass nearly rolled off the platform and howled aloud.

‘But I am Brahmin, Sahib—a high-caste Brahmin. By your soul, by your father’s soul, do not make me do this thing!’

‘Brahmin or no Brahmin, by my soul and my father’s soul, in you go!’ I said, and, seizing him by the shoulders, I crammed his head into the mouth of the burrow, kicked the rest of him in, and, sitting down, covered my face with my hands.