Free Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy by Rudyard Kipling Page B

been here ever since two and a half years. Once I was Brahmin and proud man; and now I eat crows.’
    ‘There is no way of getting out?’
    ‘None of what kind at all. When I first came I made experiments frequently and all the others also, but we have always succumbed to the sand which is precipitated upon our heads.’
    ‘But surely,’ I broke in at this point, ‘the river-front is open, and it is worth while dodging the bullets; while at night—’
    I had already matured a rough plan of escape which a natural instinct of selfishness forbade me sharing with Gunga Dass. He, however, divined my unspoken thought almost as soon as it was formed; and, to my intense astonishment, gave vent to a long low chuckle of derision – the laughter, be it understood, of a superior or at least of an equal.
    ‘You will not’ – he had dropped the Sir completely after his opening sentence – ‘make any escape that way. But you can try. I have tried. Once only.’
    The sensation of nameless terror and abject fear which I had in vain attempted to strive against overmastered me completely. My long fast – it was now close upon ten o’clock, and I had eaten nothing since tiffin on the previous day, combined with violent and unnatural agitation of the ride had exhausted me, and I verily believe that, for a few minutes, I acted as one mad. I hurled myself against the pitiless sandslope. I ran round the base of the crater, blaspheming and praying by turns. I crawled out among the sedges of the riverfront, only to be driven back each time in an agony of nervous dread by the rifle bullets which cut up the sand round me – for I dared not face the death of a mad dog among that hideous crowd – and finally fell, spent and raving, at the kerb of the well. No one had taken the slightest notice of an exhibition which makes me blush hotly even when I think of it now.
    Two or three men trod on my panting body as they drew water, but they were evidently used to this sort of thing, and had no time to waste upon me. The situation was humiliating. Gunga Dass, indeed, when he had banked the embers of his fire with sand, was at some pains to throw half a cupful of fetid water over my head, an attention for which I could have fallen on my knees and thanked him, but he was laughing all thewhile in the same mirthless, wheezy key that greeted me on my first attempt to force the shoals. And so, in a semi-comatose condition, I lay till noon. Then being only a man after all, I felt hungry, and intimated as much to Gunga Dass whom I had begun to regard as my natural protector. Following the impulse of the outer world when 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, was of a different opinion. ‘Give me the money,’ said he; ‘all you have, or I will get help, and we will kill you!’ All this as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
    A Briton’s first impulse, I believe, is to guard the contents of his pockets; but a moment’s reflection convinced me of the futility 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 back-shish when I am in camp. Gunga Dass clutched the coins, and hid them at once in his ragged loincloth, his expression changing to something diabolical as he looked round to assure himself that no one had observed us.
    ‘Now I will give you something to eat,’ said he.
    What pleasure the possession of my money could have afforded him I am unable to say; but inasmuch as it did give him evident delight 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