"and I do not yet know anyone 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 so not your fault, of course, but none the less you are dead and buried."
At irregular intervals supplies of food, it seems, 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 breed 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 belaitee Heaven; there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage,"
Gunga Dass had been educated at a Mission school, and, as he himself admitted, had he only changed his religion "like wise man," might have avoided the living grave which was now his portion, But as long as I was with him I fancy he was happy.
Here was a Sahib, a representative of the dominant race, helpless as a child and completely at the mercy of his native neighbours. In a deliberate lazy sort of a way he set himself to torture me mentally, as a school-boy would devote a rapturous half hour to watching the agonies of an impaled beetle, or as a ferret in a blind burrow might glue himself comfortably on to the neck of a rabbit. The burden of his conversation was that there was no escape "of no kind whatever," and that I should stay here till I died and was 'thrown on to the sand." If it were possible to forejudge the conversation of the damned on the advent of a new soul in their abode, I should say that they would speak as Gunga Dass did to me throughout that terrible afternoon. I was powerless to protest or answer; all my energies being devoted to a struggle against the inexplicable terror that threatened to
