Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/74

 all these horrors for eighteen months, and the final awful agony of dying like a rat in a hole from the effects of a bullet-wound in the stomach. Gunga Dass fancied I was going to kill him, and howled pitifully. The rest of the population, in all 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 anew.

"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!" 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. At the end of a few minutes I heard a rustle and a creak; then Gunga Dass's voice in a sobbing, choking whisper speaking to himself in Hindustani; then a soft "thud"—and I uncovered my eyes. The dry sand had turned the corpse entrusted to its keeping into a yellow-brown mummy. I told Gunga Dass to stand off while I examined it. The body—clad in an olive green shitár suit much stained and worn, with leather pads on either shoulder—was that of a man of between thirty and forty, above middle height, with light sandy hair, long moustache, and a rough unkempt beard. The left canine of the upper jaw was missing, and a portion of the lobe of the right ear was gone. On the second finger of the left hand was a ring—a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram that might have been either "B.K." or "B.L." On the third finger of the right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the body with my handkerchief, I turned to examine these. I give the full list in the hope that it may subsequently lend to the identification of the unfortunate man:—

1. Bowl of a briar wood pipe, serrated at the edge; much worn and blackened; bound with string at the screw.

2. Two patent-lever keys; wards of both broken.

3. Tortoise-shell handled penknife, silver or nickel plate, marked with monogram "B.K."

4. Envelope, post-mark undecipherable, bearing a Victorian